Glacier melt
The forest became dense at lower elevations
Direction signs along the trail
Sheep grazing on the hills
Our last meal in Berner Oberland: Fusilli with morel sauce
More photos can be found here:
Nikon (86 photos) - http://www.flickr.com/gp
Leica (22 photos) - http://www.flickr.com/gp
2 comments:
Your photos are amazing and you seem to explain the region well as i have been trying to figure out where to stay for our short 3-night stay in switzerland. i was deciding between a mountain hostel in gimmelwald, or, downtown luzern, as a home base. do you have any suggestion as to which would be better to both hike and see luzern/lake/downtown? it's hard to get a sense how far luzern is from the peaks/like mt. pilatus and murren, etc. i have never "blogged" before and am not sure how to communicate back and forth - if you could write a comment back i would really appreciate it. Thanks for the photos and explanations. Robin USA
Hi Robin. I was Jeemer's travel companion during our trip to Switzerland and agree with you that her photos (the Nikon ones) are amazing :) I *believe* the train ride between Lauternbrunnen Valley (where Gimmelwald and Murren are) is about 1.5-2 hours. (I could be off by 0.5-1 hour here.) So my opinion is that if you really want to hike close to a lot of majestic Swiss Alps peaks, and would be happy to spend most of your time Switzerland in the mountains instead of in the cities, then staying in Gimmelwald or Murren is definitely better. (The difference between Gimmelwald and Murren is that Murren is larger and has some more amenities; Gimmelwald is really rustic.)
Mt. Pilatus is a lot closer to Luzern, maybe 30-45 minutes by train, but the hiking may not be quite as exciting since Mt. Pilatus is farther away from other Swiss Alps peaks. (That's just my guess, since we didn't actually go to Mt. Pilatus. From Luzern, you can easily see Pilatus but not the peaks surrounding the Lauterbrunnen Valley.) But if you're OK with not getting a *really* up-close look at the Alps during your hikes, and if you also really want to see the sights of downtown Luzern and the lake, then I would use Luzern as your home base. If you get tired of the city, you could always take an early morning train to Lauterbrunnen Valley, do some hiking close to the alps, and then catch a late afternoon train back into Luzern on the same day.
Having said that, if I were back in Switzerland for 3 days, I would spend it all in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, hiking from sunrise to sunset :)
We're glad you enjoyed our blog. Jeemer tells me she's very busy this week, but feel free to write back with more questions and one of us will be happy to help if we can. Happy travels!
P.S. We used Rick Steve's Switzerland guide book during our trip and would definitely recommend it.
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