Alpine Adventure: Day 1

In which we ascend to base camp
Uneventful flight to Zurich and the international entry process went smoothly. I had been looking forward to the Swiss rail system and I was not disappointed. The app I downloaded ahead of time generated the next 5 possible itineraries, each indicating the platform for the train, and linking to a progress bar of the train along the station route. Every connection involved getting off of one train and walking to another platform to get on the waiting train which then left within 5 minutes. It was unbelievable.

We were anticipating a shared room with twin beds and were amazed to find ourselves assigned to a 3 bedroom apartment with a patio overlooking Murren, the valley, and the Eiger and neighboring peaks. Here's a panorama from our deck:

From left to right, the peaks are:
Eiger (pointy)
Mönch
Then the ridge without snow is Lauberhorn.
Just behind that is Jungfrau, the one just under the clouds.
The center of the photo is a long ridge leading to Breithorn (rounded).
There is another rounded peak just to the left of the ridge on the right, which is Tschingelhorn.
Then the ridge just behind the patio with umbrellas leads up to Gspaltenhorn, a cute mitten shaped peak.

We walked to Grimmelwald, about 45 min on a paved path. Tiny village. We took the cable car back up to Murren for fun. The cable cars are loaded with tourists traveling up to the summit of Schilthorn, where there is a rotating restaurant which was featured as "Piz Gloria" in my favorite Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. We're going up today, the hard way.

With the train ride I nearly finished my Oscillo scarf. Just the cast off to do and it looks like I won't need the second skein of yarn. Now I have an extra 100g of Aurora ... What a problem! Not sure what I'll do with it as it's a rather distinctive colorway. I think it might be nice combined with a semisolid in Pure Joy.

We have "half board" at our hotels, which means breakfast and dinner are included. We sat on the sunny panoramic patio (with the umbrellas on the right in the photo above). They have a huge a la carte menu but I was pretty happy to not have to choose. Our set menu was a lovely salad with fresh strawberries, mozzarella, basil - fresh and delicious; roasted wild boar medallions and mushroom risotto; and caramel pudding.

We were fighting to stay awake all afternoon and evening. I made it til 9 then thought I'd just finish the last rows of the scarf. An episode of Outlander helped carry me to 10.