This morning we were a little slower getting going, not by much, only about an hour. I still got up around 6:15 AM, and I enjoyed my coffee and worked on the blog post for yesterday.
Today, our plan is to head to the area called Grindelwald First. It is a different area from where we have been going, the gondola to the top of Grindelwald First is within walking distance of our apartment, on the other side of town, in the opposite direction we have been taking the last two days.
We got ready and enjoyed eating breakfast in, some bread, cheese and ham. Good for energy since we will be doing some hiking today at the top of Grindelwald First.
We headed out about 9:15 AM for the 10 minute walk to the other end of town where the gondola is located. However, it was up a pretty steep uphill walk to get to the actual gondola station. In this area, there are a couple of zip line type rides, bicycle rentals, and some three wheel vehicle rentals that just use gravity to go down the hill. Each of these activities is a separate fee. This early in the morning, no one was yet trying any of the rides.
The entire 8-person gondola we got on takes 25 minutes to get to the top if the mountain. Another benefit of getting there early was that we could ride alone, there was hardly anyone in line. There are two intermediate stops on the way up. These intermediate stops can be used for drop off points for the bicycles and three wheel carts. The carts are automatically loaded and unloaded from the side of a gondola by robotic arms as the gondolas enter or exit the station.
Stephanie on the Cliff Walk
When we arrived at the top, it was just a short walk to an attraction called the Cliff Walk. It is a grated platform that is attached to the side of a large rock outcropping and you walk around the perimeter suspended in the air on the platform. At the end is a walkway that projects out about 75 feet.
There was hardly anyone there when we first started, but by the time we were half way around the walkway, it looked like a large tourist group had arrived, and it got quite crowded. The platform is not that wide, so social distancing became an issue.
The Cliff Walk Projection
By the time we got to the end where the projection walkway was located, the tour group, who had passed by us while we were taking photos on the first part of the walkway, was now on that portion of the attraction, so we just headed into the snack bar and restaurant area and waited for them to clear out. While we were waiting we were able to use the bathroom in the restaurant. This restaurant building was located right above the actual gondola station
We thought we were about ready to visit the platform, but then a group of school kids arrived, and they totally clogged that part of the walkway. When they all finally left, we were able to go out and get some photos, everyone on the platform sort of helped the people in front of them with photo duty.
On the Cliff Walk
Once that was done, we headed to the top of another viewing area, and happened to run into a couple who noticed my Clemson sun glasses band. They were from Greenville, SC, and had been in France and Switzerland for about two weeks already. Grindelwald was their last stop. They were avid biking and hiking people, and the first part of their trip in France had been with a specialty hiking and biking tour.
Apparently when they go on vacation, they really disconnect, they did not know about much going on in the word in the past two weeks, and especially did not know about the new Covid restrictions in Switzerland that had been enacted last Monday. They had some similar issues in France with USA issued CDC Vaccine Cards, but had gotten through it without a lot of difficulty, they just had to be insistent about having their vaccine card accepted.
Views From The Top of Grindelwald First
They showed us a trail that they were going to take that was a hike to a reservoir high up on the mountain. We said goodbye and finished looking around the area we were in. We decided to do the lake hike also. The signs said the hike to the lake was 50 minutes, but it did not show any distance. It was a really steep uphill trail at the beginning, but then turned into more moderate up and down sections. It did not seem to be far to where the lake was located looking at the mountain, but when you could see the small scale of the trail against the size of the mountain, and see more of the the length of the trail at times, it really looked long.
Lake View
We guessed we made it to the small reservoir lake in about 60 minutes, but we had also stopped for photos. The lake was nice, but not that spectacular. There was a restroom of sorts there, so we used the bathroom facilities, which were much nicer that I had thought they would be. There were real flushing toilets inside a small rustic building and not just a latrine. We then took a few photos in the area with the tripod setup.
It was starting to get cloudy and the forecast had called for rain in the early afternoon today, so we started the hike back to the gondola station area. We were going to time the walk back to see if we matched the 50 minute pace. It was a little cooler with the cloud cover, and that made the hike nicer, but then the sun reappeared and it felt a little warm, probably 65 degrees.
Views From Grindelwald First
We stopped for a few more photo’s with the sun shining, and still made it back before 50 minutes has elapsed. More of the hike back was downhill so it was faster, but we both agreed walking downhill was harder on our knees than uphill.
It was now about 1:20 PM, so we stopped off in the restaurant above the gondola station to eat some lunch. I had a hamburger with fries and Stephanie had fried chicken nuggets and fries. This was a lunch that would make any fit hiker proud. The food was pretty good actually, and we chased it down with a 0.50 liter bottle of beer each, the same draft beer we had been having the last couple of days.
Nutritious Lunch After Our Hike
After lunch, it was getting cloudy again, so we headed down the mountain on the Gondola. We were able to see some zip liners and lots of people riding the three wheel carts, sort of like an adult size Big Wheel, just no pedals, and we hopefully assumed, some brakes. We saw a couple of carts go off the path on the way down. It was interesting to see them being automatically loaded up and taken off the gondolas by the robotic arms.
Cliff Walk From the Lake Trail
It was a restful ride to the bottom, there was no doubt we could feel the effects of the hike. The couple we had met earlier was talking about a 4 hour hike they were planning to take today, but had gotten off to a late start, so they were only taking the short lake hike. Kudos to them for being in shape! We had done a lot of waking before the trip, but not with the amount of up and down slope the trail today had, not to mention the altitude effect.
It was especially painful when we got off the gondola at the bottom after the 25 minute ride, sitting that long had caused stiffness in our legs, and it took us a while to loosen up again.
We headed back toward our apartment and headed to the train station to go one stop to the Grindelwald Terminal There was one other gondola we wanted to ride today, the Mannlichen. It does not really go anywhere special, it is normally used as the high speed access to the ski slopes to the right of the Eiger area. It was another 25 minute ride in gondola cars made for 12 people. There were not a lot of riders getting on the gondolas at the station, so once again, we were able to ride by ourselves and enjoy the ride to the top without masks on.
Top At the Mannlichen Lift
There was not much to see at the top, other than some of the towns on the back side of the mountain area, one of which we stopped at two days ago, Wengen. We could even see the park area where we had eaten lunch, it was just a few thousand feet down the steep mountain. This entire area is grassed and there were cows grazing in many areas, including up at the top. Stephanie got some photos of the cows sitting around. It is sort of soothing to hear their Swiss cow bells gently ringing.
We only stayed about 40 minutes at the top before heading back down. It was already almost 6:00 PM, and we were leg weary. Once again, we got to ride by ourselves in the gondola and relax. At the bottom, we headed to the train station platform and only had to wait a couple of minutes before the train arrived. We had actually really walked fast to get there, not wanting to miss that connection and wait another 30 minutes for the next train. We made it with ease, but it was not pleasant on our tired legs.
Once back in Grindelwald, we headed to a grocery once more, but this time we decided to try another one we had passed this morning, closer into the middle of town, oh boy, more walking. That grocery store was much smaller than the Coop right by our apartment, and their selection was poor, so that was a waste of energy! We did not purchase anything there because we needed to get other items from the Coop anyway.
We headed back to the Coop and got a few things for dinner to go with the leftover pasta we had from last night. We were still really full from the large, late lunch, so dining out tonight was out of the question. Plus, we were really tired, and needed to pack for tomorrow’s train journey to Zermatt. In total, today we walked over 21,000 steps, and we could feel it.
We were finally back at the apartment and started our last loads of laundry. From here, we have 10 days where we go without a washer, so it will stretch our clean clothing supply. I had sent an email off yesterday morning to a doctor’s office in Zermatt trying to schedule Covid Testing so we could have the certificate to be able to get on the Glacier Express Train on Friday. They had responded via email they were closed this morning, but they had misunderstood my original date for testing, so I sent them another one to clarify it was for tomorrow. This time the response was that they had no more appointments available for Covid testing on Wednesday or Thursday. They gave me another website for a large chain pharmacy there, but when I checked their schedule online, they also had no Covid testing appointments available until September 25, much too late.
I started to do some research online to find if there were any available places at any larger city stops we made on the train to Zermatt, or even in Interlaken. No one had any available Covid testing appointments. I was able to find some available appointments at a hospital in Bern Switzerland, about 90 minutes by train from Grindelwald. It was not necessarily directly on the way to Zermatt, but the connection from Bern to Zermatt had only one train change, not three like we have if we leave from Grindelwald and go to Zermatt, so that was a positive.
We made two online appointments for 9:50 AM tomorrow in Bern, the latest they had available. We were able to use the same online service to make these appointments that we used in Lucerne, OneDoc, so our information was already in our OneDoc online accounts to register for the appointment. The only issue was that they wanted us to fill out a PDF form and email it back to them before our appointments. The PDF form was not an auto fill, and we had no access to a printer and scanner to fill it out manually, so our only option was to download a trial copy of Adobe DC, which would give us the ability to do an online fill and sign on the form.
The other issue was the the entire form was in German, so I had to do a Google Translate on each line to see which ones we needed to fill in with what information. It was quite tedious, but I was able to get them done and send them in via the email link. Once the first form was completed for Stephanie, it helped to guide me to understand the answers I needed to fill in for mine.
With that done, we next looked at the schedule for trains to Bern and opted for one leaving Grindelwald at 7:18 AM, and arriving in Bern at 8:52 AM, an hour before our appointment. We then had to take a local train from the Bern Station one stop and then from there, it was a 5 minute walk to the hospital. I was able to use the Bern transportation app to get the local, or S-Train schedule so we would know what connection to take to the hospital. We could add a Bern City Pass to our SBB train tickets to Bern for less than a roundtrip ticket cost just on the S-Train, so we planned on adding that when we purchased train tickets from here to Bern in the morning. Adding the City Pass would keep us from having to purchase separate tickets for the S-Train when we arrived in Bern, it covers all local transportation for a day, so one less worry. We had a plan, we just hoped it would all work out
Stephanie made our dinner while I was doing all of this, and we were finally able to relax and eat, and have some wine with dinner to calm our nerves.
We finished our packing and finished the laundry except for some items I would need to dry more in the morning.
We set an alarm for 6:00 AM and headed off to get some sleep, although with tomorrow’s busy and potentially hectic day, sleep did not come easy. Our plan was to leave the apartment at 7:05 AM for the short walk to the train station to catch the 7:18 AM Train to Interlaken Ost, and then transfer to the train to Bern.
We turned in about 10:30 PM, it had been a long and tiring day, and the added stress of scheduling last minute Covid Testing had not helped.