Finally - the Alps!

I am posting from the Post Hardermannli hotel in Interlaken
Our first Budget Hotel

And to my surprise (it took me a while to figure out what it was) the Jungfrau !! (translates to 'young girl') outside the window of my hotel room!!
It's beautiful and a TRUE ALP. There is also a building up there called the Top of Europe!

Anyway.. we are not going up there. It's just cool that I can see it from my hotel room!

It was hard to leave Lucerne (cause I so want to live there). I'm loving that we have been staying in every Altstadt (Old Town) so far. Same in Interlaken. We are staying in the Unterseen area. Horse drawn tourist carriages come by all the time. We can watch the parasailers high up above the city (They have ****S!)

But today's big thing was the Golden Pass train ride here !!! The first class car was super spacious! Great area for our luggage and only four other people in there with us. Plus a waitress brought be some hot tea (which I was thankful for cause it was really cold in there!). But off we went. Btw, I agree with everyone (aka Rick Steves) that the Swiss rail lines are super, super nice.. . clean.. easy to use..

When we got up into the mountains and saw the real Switzerland in my mind! Cows, Beautiful waterfalls. Houses perched on sides of mountains. Green!! Cute Villages (where I want to live). Though the pictures from my phone are worthless to the impact of seeing the steep mountains and waterfalls. The snowcovered peaks which peak out from behind the green ones are huge and right there! In your face! The camera pushes them out and blurs the rocky crags which are crystal clear in my eyes.

So thought I tried to get some shots, I gave up over time.

Though the color of the water in the lakes was AMAZINGLY turquoise! This is lake Brienz! As we first came into the Interlaken area.

The green is still getting to me. Is it possible to OD on that color?

We were pretty bushed so decided to just have dinner in the restaurant attached to the hotel. Though it was pretty darn good! Rated #2 in TravelAdvisor for the Unterseen area. Patrick has Swordfish with Veges, and cause it was an Italian place I had Spaghetti Bolognaise.

and FINALLY - I got a good shot of the Jungfrau! I also tried to get one of the moon coming up next to it.. but as you can see (you kinda have to figure out the round white dot to the left is the moon. In real life it was like WOW!!!)

btw, I didn't get a picture of Pat's gig at the Shamrock Pub! He did great! Played for a couple of hours. Got applause. There was a group of older people from New Zealand who particularly liked him. We chatted a bit with them afterwards and they really liked that I lived in 'Oz' for three years back in the day..
But he did great.. I had chips and lager.. it overall it went really well.
Trip Advisor's Page on the Shamrock