Swiss Trip - Day 1

Waking up at 4 in the morning just isn’t fun, is it. Even when you have a fantastic trip ahead of you !!!

We woke up tired and sleepy, got ready and got the airport just in time for the flight to Zurich, all the time cribbing about how early we had to get up. Little did we know just how much fun was in store for us over the next 4 days.

Upon arriving at the Zurich airport, we had to catch the intercity to Interlaken. We had booked ourselves in a hostel in a village close to Interlaken. The train ride to Interlaken was exactly the wake-up call we needed to get our rear-sides in gear. As we gazed out of our windows in awe, our minds started waking up to the fact that we were in one of the prettiest areas in the world.

Once we got to Interlaken, we had to take a 30 minute bus ride to Iseltwald, a little known village with absolutely stunning views [Picture Attached]. We got there around 11am and woke up the hostel manager, Deniz. Deniz, who we later found to be the best hostess, woke up grumpy and complaining since we had woken her up from her precious slumber which she doesn’t get much of anyway running a pretty busy hostel. In all fairness to her, the check-in time is supposed to be 3pm and not 11am She got nicer as she woke up and showed us to our room, a 4 bunk bed really nice room with ample closet space. Will post the detailed review of the Lake Lodge here later.

Having dumped our backpacks in the room we headed out to Interlaken to explore the local cuisine since we were famished. Of course the first restaurant we run into was an Indian-Punjabi restaurant called Shalimar. We were greeted there by the one man army: manager, cook, seating host and waiter who before we got there was trying to pacify his girlfriend who walked away in a huff as we entered the restaurant. Not to be perturbed by the little tiff with his lady, the one-man-army proceeded to cook us some really nice food, freshly prepared and to our expectations. It hit the spot perfectly. Raghav nicknamed the restaurant Kamadhenu since it gave us exactly what we wanted.

All that food deserved some good exercise and we walked around beautiful Interlaken for a bit. We then took the rail up to snow covered Grindelwald and walked around there for the rest of the evening before coming back. It was dark and icy and thoughout we kept thinking - this is really pretty but its cold man.

It was cold but little did we know that that word would take on a whole different meaning the next day. That will be in the next post.