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Originally published 25 December 2015
Having lunch in the sun
For our last full day in Murren, we decided to hop around to other towns in the area. We took our handy Swiss travel passes and headed down the mountain on the train. We arrived at the cable car station and I observed and photographed the unloading again. I think I did a better job of capturing how they move things. A lot of the people following the blog are gearheads and folks that like machines....so I'm posting a few more pics of it.
After the transfer, we started down into the valley to Lauterbrunnen. We had not been through the town and thought we would walk through. We were on the valley floor and discovered that what held true back in the mountains where I grew up was even more true here. The valley is so deep (at home they call them "hollers") and the mountains so tall that at noon, the sun was yet to be seen. It was daylight, but direct sunshine was only for 3 or so hours a day. It may be more in the summer but we're not here in the summer....so I can't tell you about that.
Snowbike....way cool
We wandered up through the town and thought that most things would be closed, but found that more were open than we expected. We walked to the waterfall at the south end of town, doubled back through the cemetery, and came back to the train station. We had decided to check out a fair size town across the valley. We boarded the train that ran up the side of the mountains across the valley. Next stop, Wengen!
Another "car free" village that means not YOUR car, we wander about. It gets more sun than where we are staying. Consequently, it has no snow at all. People are taking the lifts up top to ski on the year round snow pack, but down by town it's mud and rocks. The town is much larger than Murren but nice as well. We do some souvenir shopping, wander the town, and stop to have our picnic lunch on a sunny bench. We think it is cool that we can see the town we're staying in from across the valley.
Train between the villages
We wander back to the main part of town and board the train back down the mountain to Lauterbrunnen. When we reach it again, we board another train for an 8 minute ride back down the valley and transfer to another train that will take us to Grindelwald. After about 15 minutes, we're there! The town is behind the mountains we see when we look off our hotel balcony.
Grindelwald is even bigger than Wengen. It is a regular town with cars, buses, and trains. It is very busy and has a lot going on. We walked the main drag and decided to have coffee in the cafe/bar at the sports center. Most towns have a sports center, even a smaller place like Murren. It is similar to a REALLY nice YMCA in the states. It usually has an indoor pool, ice skating/hockey, a sauna, and other sports related things.
We get really good coffee (they don't do crappy coffee here) at the counter and sit at a table. There are two vantages, one looks out on the indoor pool, and one looks out on the hockey rink. We sat at the indoor pool windows and watch families play with their small children in the pool. It's very nice to have something like a heated pool in a country that sees so much snow and cold. As Laurie pointed out, it's a great way to exercise when the weather is too bad to run.
Our hotel, viewed from across the valley
We head down to the train and hop our ride back "home" to Murren.....with all the stops, transfers, and cable cars of course. Tonight, we had a fantastic dinner in the hotel restaurant where we are staying. I had pork sausage (wurst) with onion sauce and rosti as a side. Laurie had a vegetable curry dish and a salad. We finished it off with ice cream. Every single item we had was excellent.
Our hotel in Murren has been so wonderful, we will be sad to leave tomorrow. We head off the mountain and back down the valley to pick up a train to Basel, Switzerland. It is a city right on the German Border and we need to be there to pick up our night train to our next stop.....Berlin.
Northward we go....... Murren/Wengen/Grindelwald Slide Show
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I'm Bill. My wife Laurie and I love to travel and share our stories. We especially love it when we have been able to motivate our readers to start traveling on their own, and making their own stories. 
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