Travel With Phie

Well Grindelwald and Interlaken that is….

Day 23

So, as I stated in my previous blog today was a large travel day to Switzerland. We took a flight from Barcelona, Spain to Basel, which was one of the scariest flights of my life. We hit a storm in the air, so had terrible turbulence and everyone was freaking out – the flight attendants were rushing back and forth down the aisle. But somehow, some way we safely touched down in Basel around 6pm and that was just the start of the journey. After our flight we had 55 minutes to catch the 6:55 train to interlaken, thankfully again, we made it. We even had a whole 10 minutes to spare. From interlaken we had 5 minutes to catch the train to Grindelwald – thankfully, again we made this one and finally arrived at our final destination at around 9pm.

We quickly checked into our Airbnb and headed out to see the town before going to the vending machine to get dinner, since every restaurant we looked at, had stopped serving food. We grabbed our little snacks and away we went to our Airbnb to eat ‘dinner’ and head to bed for a BIG next day.

Day 24

Today is the day! Right now you are probably thinking, “today is what?!,” well let me tell you.

We woke up at 6:00 am to catch the 6:48 train to interlaken. Once we arrived we went to the Co-op to get a little breakfast and then waited outside at the designated pick-up location. Around 8:10 our van had arrived and we began signing our life away and talking to our instructor about the best things to do around the area while we waited for the others. Around 8:30, everyone had shown up and away to the air field we went.

We arrived to our semi-final destination and got all suited up to jump out of a plane. Yes, today was the day we went skydiving.

I was terrified, while Ashley (who is terrified of heights) was extremely calm. Once we were suited up we met the men we would be jumping with and loaded ourselves onto the plane to go 13,000 ft in the air. The plane ride for me was the most terrifying part. I hate small planes and the nerves I had were crazy. However, we were all hanging out and vibing which helped a little with the nerves.

Once we were up to the correct altitude, we prepared to jump. Thankfully, I was the first out the plane. There was no count-down just a push and a long fall. The first 5 seconds were scary and then the rest you just had to embrace it and have fun. It was a blast and I loved every minute (after the plane and the first couple seconds of the fall).

After surviving our 13,000 ft jump out of a plane, we thought it was only right to go on a big hike to walk it off. We road back with our man and he gave us some amazing recommendations for hikes in the area, so we decided to listen and do one of his suggestions.

We got back to Grindelwald, quickly changes and took the gondola up to First. From there we did the quick little cliff walk around the outside of the mountain. It was super cool but also a little terrifying, I highly recommend doing this little walk if able. From there we hiked to bachalpsee lake and took in the view for a while. That was only around 3 miles, so we decided to continue on straight and see where we ended up. Our original plan was to hike a while and then turn around and hike the whole way down to Grindelwald, however, as we hiked we realized we didn’t want to turn around (a little scary at parts). So, with that, we decided to hike until we could go down the mountain. We assumed this would be around a 5/6 mile hike, but it ended up being 10 miles and 5 hours later until we were able to finally make it back down the mountain.

Although, I wouldn’t have changed any of it. The views were immaculate, we saw cows, we met some cool people, and we concurred a lot of fears. It was an amazing hike and would highly recommend it – I couldn’t tell you were we went after the lake, except we continued on the path that went up, until around the 2nd sign that said we could go down.

After our hike, in which we some how finished right behind our place. We quickly changed and went to dinner at a cafe recommended by our Airbnb host. Ashley got a delicious sandwich and I got an amazing summer special ravioli. I would have to say that this dinner was a lot better than the first night (lmao). After dinner we headed to bed for another long day of hiking tomorrow.

Day 25

Today we had to check out of our Airbnb in Grindelwald and check into our hotel in Interlaken. We couldn’t store baggage until later in the day, so we decided to store our bags at the train station, which was awesome and so convenient.

We train from Grindelwald to Lauterbrun than catch a bus to the bottom of the gondola and took that up to Gimmelwald to begin our hike. It was very nice out when we began, but the weather looked like it was going to rain later in the afternoon. We assumed this would be like the day before and a light drizzle that didn’t affect our plans, so we planned a large hike that had cool views even with clouds.

We begin our hike towards obersteinberg. The first 2.5 miles were what we thought was the hard part, straight up. According to my watch in the first 2.5 miles we went up 290 ‘flights of stairs’ (our elevation gain). It was brutal, but the views looking back were unbelievable. We made it up to the top, and began continuing up to an offshoot that was even higher to get a better view. We were almost at the top of that point when it started to rain and we thought it would be smartest to not continue on and begin our decent down. This was a smart move because around 10 minutes later it began to snow.

We were still very high up and so our only goal was to get down before it got worse. A good 15 minutes later as we went down the snow turned into rain and every inch of the hike became very slippery. This was not ideal. We knew we had around 2 hours left of the hike on a good day l, so with our conditions probably another 2.5 hours. We took it slow and steady down the rest of the mountain and the rain eventually stopped but the conditions were still wet. Although, it wasn’t an ideal hiking day we made it down with only one of us falling (that would be me).

Although we were cold and stopping wet by the end the views were amazing and the experience was even better.

After the hike we made it back to the Lauterbrun train station, grabbed our bags and headed on the train to check-in to our hotel. We checked-in fairly quickly, showered and then changed before heading out on the town and getting ready for our fondue dinner.

We walked around the town for a bit, found a chocolate shop and a browsed a few stores. Once it hit 7:00 we decided to see if we could go early to our 8:00 reservation. Thankfully, we were able to and we sat down for dinner. We went to the restaurant taverne in interlaken and man was it fantastic. We both just ordered cheese fondue with bread and potatoes. We both probably ate over our body weights, but every second of it was worth it!

After dinner, we walked around a bit longer and then headed off to bed with full stomaches!

Day 26

We woke up and stored our bags at the hotel, which was very nice of them to let us store them all-day. We wanted to get another full day of Switzerland in, so we decided to take one of the last trains to Como at 6pm.

After we stored our bags, we went on a little 3 mile hike that showed a pretty view of interlaken. Then we decided to have ourselves a little relaxing day and walk along the river to one of the lakes for a swim.

We hungout at the lake for a good 3 hours. We swam, chatted, hungout, watched some tug boats, and vibed. It felt nice to just relax after our busy past few days.

We then walked back into Interlaken to get some groceries for lunch as well as for dinner on the train. We got the usual bread and bananas since we already had peanut butter, Nutella and jelly to make sandwiches with. We than went and grabbed our bags, so we could make the sandwiches with the ingredients we already had stored.

We walked with our bags and had a picnic at the park. This was a great spot to hangout and people watch, especially because it was the landing center for many paragliders. We made our sandwiches and simply just hungout for another hour and a half or so because heading to the train station and hopping on the train for another travel day!