Interlaken-Meiringen-Luzern July 2016 trip report
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Hello,
I would like to thank Slowpoke before anything else to help me in the planing stage. The reports as well as the help provided by this forum made the planning stage feel like a breeze. 😀 This post is also going to be long, so I am going to describe each day in a different post in this thread.
I was in Switzerland July 15th-July 19th. We had extremely clear days, beautiful weather and great travel companions. I was traveling with my parents and we were quite tired after attending conferences in Italy for a week. We met up in Torino, Italy and the journey to Interlaken was not an easy one, with all our luggages. My mom kind of got prepared for the worst weather and got for herself the clothing she would wear if there were subzero temperatures, and that took up a lot of space. Since I stay half a world across from my family, she also got me a lot of things, and while they are things I love, they occupied a lot of luggage. This is the premise to many decisions we made through the entire trip. Some other premises: I am extremely addicted to my gadgets, and decided to make this trip without any of them other than my camera. We did not get a sim, but for emergency purposes, my US carrier was on for my phone, which I did not require. Hence a good amount of pre-planning was essential, which saved us. We also had a 4-day Swiss travel pass and it was such a boon.
July 15th : Turin-Interlaken
We made the 2:19 pm train from Porta Susa (Torino) to Novara. Then after a few cancellations of trains which would have directly taken us to Domodossola, we went to Domodossola through Arona, then Domodossola-Brig, then Spiez and then Interlaken West, near which we booked our hotel. So that was a lot of pulling luggage. And trains in Italy did not co-operate. Some trains were canceled, some came so late that we had too little time to drag all the luggage across to avail the connecting train; for some, the platforms were changed repeatedly. Swiss trains, as usual, were extremely good. There were ticket-checkers, trains on time, slopes to drag our luggage on from one platform to another etc. Perfect for us. My parents were somehow scared that the trains won’t stop long enough to board or get down with all the luggages we had. This was unfounded, and nothing of that sort happened. However, other than that, the whole road from Torino to Interlaken was as beautiful as it gets. We had views of Alps through the whole journey, lakes suddenly appearing in view, getting closer to mountains as we got closer to Interlaken. Especially Torino-Novara looked beautiful with small villages with yellow fields and a view of Alps. While approaching Arona, we saw the beautiful lake Maggiore which we also saw when we started our journey towards Domodossola. Then there were numerous tunnels which took us through the mountains. The view while we were waiting at the Brig station made us so happy with a clear view of mountains around us, and we hoped for clear days ahead. We reached Interlaken West at around 8 PM. Took a taxi to the hotel, since we were exhausted after carrying stuff all day. Now, Swiss taxi fares, as you would find in every guide are much more costly than those in Italy. So 20 minutes in a taxi in Torino cost us 20 Euros, and 3 minutes in a taxi in Interlaken cost us 10 CHF. Anyway, once we arrived in our hotel in Interlaken West, we got an amazing view of the Alps in front of us from the balcony itself. We had quick food at an Indian restaurant just in front of our hotel. The food was really good. We had a little time before the sunset and we went on a stroll around the place. Unterseen looked so beautiful in the little we saw of it. The white peaks of the mountains looked golden in the sunset, but to add to our concerns, clouds started enveloping the peaks, and I was sad that our major plans will go to waste. Here’s how it looked : http://www.anony.ws/image/NNu P. Anyway, to have an early start to the next day, we went off to sleep early.
A few thoughts at the end of the first day. We should have stayed higher up in Grindelwald or Murren for a better view. We were not so sure of which train we would be able to avail from Torino (given we were meeting up after our conferences) and whether we would get enough time to make the journey up with our luggage. We also thought of trying for Harder Kulm that very day. But we were deadbeat after a full first day.
More to come on my next post on this thread.
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