August 20, 2012 (Day 3)
Itinerary: Travel from Geneve to Grindelwald
weather: sunny, hot
It all started with the Funky Chicken. Well, let me back up a bit. After a late night last night, we slept in this morning. Our hotel didn’t have a breakfast service, so the plan was to go out and get breakfast, get some SIM cards for the cell phones and maybe poke around a bit. Instead we were lazy in the morning. Thank goodness check out was not until noon, so we still had time to go out to a Swisscom store and get a couple SIM cards. This was our easiest experience with SIM cards so far in all our European travels. Not only did they speak English, but they had what we wanted and set us up right there with no issues. And, low and behold, our data plans started up in just 5 minutes! In other countries it has taken anywhere from an hour to 3 days, but never 5 minutes.
Then we found a place called Holy Cow for lunch. It sounded good and the cows were funny on the sign, so what more can you ask for. We had an early lunch of burgers and noticed all the funny cow signs all around the restaurant. I figured I’d take a photo of the Funky Chicken and post that on Facebook for all my friends. But that is when I found out that my cell phone (European purchased cell phone) would not change its settings to allow for data.
So, that’s how the day started. We eventually checked out of Geneve and started towards Grindelwald. First, we stopped in Broc to tour the Callier chocolate factory we toured once before. In fact the first week of our trip so far is basically a duplicate of our last trip to Switzerland in Aug/Sept of 2010. We have spent the whole time pointing things out to each other and saying, remember this, remember that! It’s been great fun.
Switzerland train in the Gruyere regtion
The chocolate factory tour was just the same as last time, though there were many more people on our tour. The best part of course is the chocolate tasting room at the end where you can taste test as many piece of chocolate as you like as long as you stay in the room. We tried our best to try them all, but there were so many!! Of course we ended up in the shop where we realized with all this abnormally hot Switzerland weather, it was going to be hard to transport the chocolate home. We’ll just buy most of our chocolate at the end of our trip instead. We still bought a few to snack on over the next few days though.
When do you enjoy chocolate? All the time!
Then, we took way too many trains to get to Grindelwald. I think we went from Broc to Bulle to change trains to Bern, to change trains to Interlaken, and then a change to Grindelwald. We were also about 30 minutes later than I told our host at our rented apartment we’d be arriving, but it was easy to call her and update her on the timing. We arrived in Grindelwald around 8:30pm and checked into the apartment. It’s just perfect for us. Very new, studio apartment on a chalet with others. We have a balcony overlooking the Eiger (tall mountain) as well. I am certainly happy with my choice especially considering I only booked this about a week ago!
Some of the chocolate buffet.
Just up the street from our apartment, we found a good restaurant (Wolter) for dinner and we managed to stay awake long enough to get home afterwards. It was a bit of a travel day, but we got to see the Gruyere part of Switzerland in really beautiful weather. It was quite hot, in the 90s again, but sunny and very pretty. We are so happy to be back in the country and so happy to be traveling together again.
I feel like the real vacation starts tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will be clear so we can go up to the “Top of Europe,” the Jungfraujoch and spend a day in the snow and look out over the whole region.
Until then, goodnight.
Watching chocolate being made.