Baker European Tour: Switzerland, Part Two

Whew, we had more visitors in town, but I'm still posting about Darren's family's trip!

After everyone arrived, we spent three days in Switzerland going to the Interlaken region and Zermatt.  On the first day, we went to the Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg.  This outdoor museums sits on 160 acres and contains about 100 historic houses from all over Switzerland that were dismantled, moved, and reconstructed here.  The buildings are grouped according the region where they came from and you are able to tour inside most all of them.  The museum is located just outside of Interlaken on Lake Brienz. The forecast had called for heavy rain all day and as we were driving to the museum, there certainly was heavy rain, but we were fortunate that right where the museum was, it was not raining and even a bit sunny at times.  We spent most of the day visiting the different buildings and learning more about the different regions of Switzerland.

The home of a wealthy family near Bern built in the 19th century

The special types of bread made in all the different cantons in Switzerland

Goofing around inside one of the houses

An old house from the Ticino region

Most of the old buildings, as you can imagine, were farmhouses.  So to give the experience of rural Switzerland, some of the old farmhouses and buildings still house farm animals.  We saw chickens, roosters, pigs, horses, and goats.  There was even a section where you could go in and pet the goats.  Darren and I spent some time at the pen petting and feeding the goats as well as some rabbits that were there, too.

Nervously petting a baby goat

Some of us at the museum

The Richterswil House, built in 1780, was one of our favorites

After visiting the museum, we made our way over to the Jungfrau region because we were staying in a hotel there that night.  We parked our car at Lauterbrunnen and took the train up to Wengen to get to our hotel.  One of the rooms had a fantastic view of Lauterbrunnen valley!  Even with the clouds, it was still beautiful, but it did clear up for us the next day, as scheduled.

The view from the hotel room when we first arrived

The view from the room the next morning!

We spent the day exploring the Jungfrau region.  We took the cable car up to Mannlichen, and hiked over to Kleine Scheidegg.  Then we took a train up to the Jungfraujoch, which is the highest train station in Europe.

Taking the cable car up from Wengen

The view from the cable car

Roger made a friend!

Another great Jungfrau shot

A fantastic shot by Darren, it has everything I love about Switzerland!

The couples in front of the three famous peaks

The view from the train on the way up the mountain

The train travels through the Eiger and the Mönch to reach the train station

Me and Darren at the Jungfraujoch

The view from the observation deck, which looks back down at Kleine Scheidegg

The Baker family in the ice cave

Darren showing off our current home's flag

This next picture needs some explanation.  Switzerland, and specifically the Interlaken region, gets a lot of Indian tourists, thanks to its frequent appearance in Bollywood movies.  I learned about this from a recent NYTimes article.  So as proof that there are a lot of Indian tourists, Darren took this picture below. :)

An example of the massive amount of Indian tourists that visit the Jungfraujoch

After visiting the Jungfraujoch, we went back down to Kleine Scheidegg, then back down to Wengen to grab our stuff from out hotel, and then went down to Lauterbrunnen to get the car.  That evening, we drove from Interlaken to a town near Zermatt.  Part of the road was very windy, which meant it wasn't really fun for me, but the scenery was still beautiful.  We stayed in a town just outside of Zermatt because the home of the Matterhorn is a car-free zone.  

We all got some sleep and then woke up the next morning to head out and see Zermatt and the Matterhorn.  We took a train to Zermatt, then a train up to the Gornergrat peak (10,134 ft) to view the Matterhorn and some glaciers.  Darren took a video that shows the view from Gornergrat.

The view of the Matterhorn and the train we rode

From Gornergrat, all of us took a short hike down the mountain to see a small lake that has a nice reflection of the Matterhorn in it.  After that, some took the train back down to Zermatt, while some of us hiked most of the way down.

The Matterhorn reflected in the small mountain lake

On our hike back down

The hikers with the Matterhorn in the background

We then spent some time seeing the town of Zermatt before we drove back home to Zurich.  That was our quick, initial tour of Switzerland!

The cute town of Zermatt