Day 6 7 & 8 - Paris and Interlaken

So getting online to type up stuff is pretty hard. Especially when the z and y are inverted on this Swiss keyboard. At least its better than France, where the a was in the top row, w was in the bottom row, m was where the semicolon is supposed to be, and you can only type numbers by holding shift.

I guess where I left off was the last day in Paris. We woke up early to hit the Eiffel Tower before any traffic came, and arrived there at about 8:30 after taking a long metro ride. Since it doesnt open till 9, we were some of the first people there. We met Kate, Keelan & Rachel there at about 9, and took one of the first lifts to the top. The first lift only goes halfway up the tower, then you have to change to another. Before you get on the last lift, you think the first stop is pretty cool. But the final destination at the top of the tower is ridiculous. Even though its the cliche thing to do in Paris, its definitely worth going all the way up to get the best possible vantage point over the entire city.

Next we headed across the Seine to check out the Arc de Triumphe and the Champes de Elysee. We stopped at a ridiculously expensive market to get 'cheap' food, and ate it right near the Arc before walking down the street through the shops. At this point it was pretty much pouring rain, but since it was our last day in the city, it was tough luck. Jon and I left and headed over to some cool looking museum that had a huge Andy Warhol exhibit, but decided that the Museum d'Orsay, which has some classic stuff post-Louvre, would be a better bet. We walked there in the rain, but of course when we got there, it was closed. At this point we were drenched and decided to just keep heading down the Seine to check out one of the must-sees in Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral.

Admission to the cathedral was free, which we appreciated. Once we got inside, I was pretty much blown away everything I saw. We had seen Westminster and Saint Pauls, but Notre Dame was, to me, more of a sight than both of them. It was very dark, with gothic architecture and elaborate stained glass windows. We walked around, lit a candle, and stopped to meditate, relax & pray in the nave of the church. After a little while we left, and went back out into the rain. We were going to climb one of the towers of the church but there was too much traffic. So we stopped at a cafe and ordered some very expensive, delicious drinks. I had the gran chocolat, which I can highly recommend to all fellow Paris travelers.

We then spent some time meandering around the streets of the Latin Quarter trying to find a book shop, since we were going to be taking a long train ride the next day and had nothing to read. It took a very long time, but we found a bookshop called Shakespeare right down by the Seine. After browsing for a while, I decided on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and The Great Gatsby. Even though I already own 2 copies of The Great Gatsby, its one of my favorite books and figured it would be good stuff for being so far away from what Im used to. Then we went to a flower shop and bought some flowers for the girls to bring them when we went out later for dinner.

In a few hours we went back down to their hotel & met up to go eat one last time before splitting up. Jon & I looked like sleazeballs on the train, carrying flowers in one hand and beer in the other; since going out to eat in Paris is really expensive, we figured wed do a little bit before leaving. Eventually we met up, then walked around the Latin Quarter looking for a good restaurant. We found a place that looked good & was good, so we ate and then left happy.


The next day was our first day of travel on our Eurail passes. Let me just say: more of a hassle than you might think. We had wanted to leave at 11:00 am, but our train was booked and the next one left from Paris Gare d'Lyon at 12:52 pm. In that meantime, I figured Id go to a nearby internet cafe to look up the location of our next hostel in Interlaken, so we could find it when we got off the train. I went to the cafe and did that - the trouble was it was a little more confusing than I remembered getting back. I allowed enough time, though, and I got back to the station around 12:32, which was 20 minutes before our train. Unfortunately though, getting to the station itself was the least of my worries. Once I was there I could not find where I had left Jon, no matter how many times I retraced the same routes. I figured that was OK for about 5 minutes, but when the time reached 12:45 I started getting a little urgent. I was literally running around the station with jeans, a nice shirt, and a huge pack on my back looking for him. Somehow, by an honest miracle, I found him with about 3 minutes left until our train was set to depart. He asked where the hell Id been, but there was no time to answer so we both just started running toward the platform, because Id seen where our train was while I was trying to find him. We sprinted through Gare d'Lyon, finally ending up at our platform about 30 seconds before our train was to depart. We pretty much stepped on the train and it started moving. Id had my days workout.

The trains themselves were actually very comfortable and I spent the ride from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland mostly reading The Curious Case of the Dog & sleeping. Once we were in Lausanne, we had to transfer on a separate train to Bern, and then to Interlaken. We were told that our train would be arriving at platform 3, so we waited there and boarded it when it came. However, when the ticket-puncher came around to validate our passes, he kindly informed us that we were on the wrong train. This one was going to Brig. The one we had wanted to take was apparently at another part of platform 3, literally connected to the wrong one we boarded. It figured. So we got off at the next stop, Montreaux, retraced our steps to Lausanne, and boarded the next train - actually - to Bern. In Bern we connected more seamlessly to a train straight to Interlaken. When we arrived at Interlaken, we got off the train and walked from the station to our hostel, Backpackers Villa, in a downright downpour. It was wet, but pretty unreal to have a view of the alps shrouded in clouds from the storm. We eventually made it here. In short, we bought a cheap dinner, relaxed for a little while, and eventually went to bed.

Today we woke up early to go hiking in a nearby village called Grimmelwald, which kind of sounds like a creepy place that Hansel & Gretel might wander in a Hans Christian Andersen story. However, it didnt end up happening quite as we had planned. In short, we had met some pretty cool roomates at our hostel, and had planned to go hiking with them in the morning - they just had to book a ticket to their next destination before leaving. However, they ran into some trouble making reservations from Interlaken to Barcelona, and had to call the hike off to go back to the hostel to consider some more options for making the trip. At this point it was getting a little late to go to Gimmelwald, so Jon & I just decided to do a hike from Interlaken called Harder Kulm.

Let me just preface this whole thing by saying that Interlaken, while a little touristy, is pretty much the nicest place on earth. If i didnt know better I might mistake this for some sort of heaven. Im not sure that I would deserve such a nice afterlife, but I did hold the door for a crippled old French lady in Paris, even though I was about to miss my train, so maybe that put me over the edge. Its in a little valley between two lakes and two enormous ridges of the Swiss Alps. The Jungfrau, one of the highest and most well-known peaks of the Swiss Alps, presides over the whole scene. Its a picture out of a postcard.

Anyway, we decided to take the Harder Kulm trail from Interlaken rather than travel in toward the Jungfrau since we were a little short on time. The peak is about 4,500 feet tall, and pretty much straight up from the road. Imagine something like hiking Cannon from the tramway parking lot. The hike wasnt too far but was really pretty steep, and I found myself sucking wind for most of it. But I felt better about feeling like that after I noticed we climbed the peak in about 1 hr 20 minutes, compared to the stated time of 2 hr 10 minutes. The top featured an awesome 180 degree view of the prominent Jungfrau and the surrounding ridge, as well as a resting area and a restaurant (since trams also access the peak). We napped there on a picnic table for about half an hour, during which time I got a nice sunburn, and ate a ton of Nutella and Swiss chocolate to energize. After eating our lunch and resting up, we headed back down to the road.

Getting back into town, we just walked around for a bit to check out all the stores and stuff in the city center. We decided we were hungry and stopped into a McDonalds. Talk about your cultural differences. The inside looked like some kind of designer cafe, and the Big Mac meal was 12 CHF, which is just about equivalent to 10.50 USD. Instead of getting one of those we thought it would be better to cook up a burger of our own, so we went to the supermarket, bought up all the ingredients, and cooked up a nice all-American meal at the hostel. We ate outside with our roomates, and it had to be about 70 out as the sun set.

At night, we walked around town with our roomates for a bit, then came back and drank some Swiss beer and played cards all night in the hostel. (Which is by far the nicest place weve stayed and Im sure will stay on the whole trip) It is so beautiful and relaxing here that we decided to book for an extra night, so well be staying here tomorrow night too. That works out OK, because Kate & our other friends will be arriving here tomorrow as well. We were going to miss them by a day with our original plan, but now we might be able to all meet up and hang out for a night in the Alps.

So tomorrow were planning on actually doing the Gimmelwald hike with our roomates, then just hanging out in the evening and maybe meeting up with the girls. I think another American burger will be in order, and the chocolate just goes without saying. If we didnt have to fly out of Barcelona on the 17th, Im not sure how you could get me to leave...