lake – Energy and Time

Switzerland day 45: The Climbs of Grindelwald (part 3)

October 3rd: We bade farewell to Grindelwald and headed out. But our 3-day pass was still good, and we had one more mountain to climb. So we drove to Wilderswil and took the 1893 cog railway up to Schynige Platte. (On the first day, we didn’t do First. But on the second day, we did First first.)

The first part of the hike was going from the hotel to the Daube (the rocky peak) and around it to the overlook point beyond it.

The overlook point, looking back at Daube.

At that point, I suddenly discovered that my camera had a panorama feature. What can I say, I’m old and slow.

Looking down at the town of Interlaken (“between lakes”).

From the overlook, we basically followed the ridgeline to the right, towards Oberberghorn.

The ridge part of the trail, with a lake on the left, and the valley below Oberberghorn on the right.

… but the views down the Interlaken side got increasingly spectacular.

Eventually though, the ridge ended at the Oberberghorn.

Oberberghorn. We cut back right at the yellow sign, and headed back by a lower route.

But not before taking one more panorama of Interlaken.

The trail back to Daube. The rest of the hike was somewhat boring, and I was somewhat exhausted, so no pictures.

An hour later, we were back on the train.

Once we got back down, it was time to drive to Italy. The weather was overcast, but otherwise it was pretty scenic.

We stopped for lunch at a famous street-food stand called Sweet Ride, in Bönigen (near Interlaken).

I had the Lachs sandwich (foreground) with a ginger beer, while Carol went for Prosciutto. Then we had ice cream for dessert.

We got to watch swans in the lake while eating.

A bit further down the rod, we heard there was this famous waterfall near Meiringen. We drove close to the top of it, over an incredibly narrow road, only to find that there was no place to park at all, except for guests of a small hotel there. So we turned around and headed back down, without even a glimpse.

Even from the ground, you can barely see any of it.

There was a small car offering rides to the top, but we just missed one, and didn’t want to wait for the next.

So, we left it behind and continued on our journey. As we climbed out of the Swiss Alps towards the Italian Alps, there were lots of scenic views with other waterfalls.

Finally, we crossed the Sustenpass (2224 m) and could start descending.

Finally we made it into Italy. Our lodging that night was at a pizzeria, Della Torre, up on a hill overlooking Como. It was pouring rain and we had a hard time finding it, but once settled we had an excellent dinner in the restaurant.

Carol had the grilled mixed fish (sea bream, salmon, shrimp, prawn, squid, monkfish), while I had a Milanese risotto with quail breast and porcini mushrooms.

Slovenia day 33: Lake Bohinj

September 21st: We scored some nice raspberries and strawberries at a grocery store, so I cobbled together a fruit-and-granola breakfast with low-fat milk. Both kinds of berries in Europe tended to be smaller, darker, and more intensely flavored than their American counterparts.

We were thinking about biking around the lake, but the bike I got had rather sudden braking, and I fell while trying it out. So I stayed home while Carol biked.

On the way to dinner, we stopped and got someone to take a picture of us.

We ate at the Hotel Tripič. Carol got fried local trout filets in Bohinj corn flour with sour cream and buckwheat porridge with mushrooms, and I got the rumpsteak filled with smoked ham and Bohinj cheese, in pepper sauce, with Krapi (buckwheat ravioli).

Slovenia day 32: Lake Bled

September 20th: Headed to the bus station to take an early bus to Ljubljana airport to pick up our new rental car. Took a lot of pictures to document the existing dents and scratches. Then we drove up to Lake Bled, and had lunch.

Carol had pork in a plum sauce, while I got pounded chicken.

Lake Bled is famous for many scenic buildings on cliffs and islands.

The map (below) is not the territory (above).

Then we drove to our hotel near Lake Bohinj and Carol made omelets for dinner.

Iceland day 10: Ice Blue Glaciers Come And Go

Has it been a million years
since our memories embraced?
Stars are falling down like tears
Will I ever see your face?
Ice blue glaciers come and go
I ask them all but they don’t know
How much longer, baby, till you rescue me?
from Rescue Me, an imitation-Hendrix song I wrote for a proposed fictionalized biopic of Jimi Hendrix which could not get rights to any actual Hendrix songs and so put out a call for fake Hendrix-like songs. I responded with two (the second one written with Todd Wayne). Fortunately, the movie never got made. Jimi’s lyrics often had extreme exaggeration of scale (“I stand up next to a mountain, chop it down with the edge of my hand.”); here I was going for extreme exaggeration of timescale, with the protagonist seemingly stuck in one place for thousands of years.

The south of Iceland is sparsely populated. When people first arrived 1200 years ago, the glaciers stretched all the way to the ocean and there was no place to raise crops or even hunt. They’ve retreated quite a bit since then, but still dominate the landscape. The giant Vatnajökull (“Lake Glacier”) covers 8% of Iceland’s surface area and is up to a kilometer thick in places. Its tongues are so big and so numerous that they have their own names. All eleven of the glaciers in this post are parts of Vatna.

There was no way we could hike to each tongue, or even park at them all, so I became a drive-by shooter. 🙂

We stopped by a huge dairy, but their ice cream shop was closed for COVID. The building on the right (behind the tanks) was the cow milking room.

Finally we hit our first glacial lagoon.

I had time to grab a “lobster sandwich” (langoustine on a hot dog bun) before our lagoon tour on an amphibious truck/boat.

Our guide shows off a chunk fished from the water.

I took about 20 pictures like this, but if you’ve seen one iceberg you’ve seen ’em all. 😛

the famous Diamond Beach, which is glacial ice drifts on black sand and gravel

When you need ice for your cooler and there’s a glacier handy

Quest item: Find Dr Pepper in Iceland (took 4 days!). Quest item: glacial ice. Combo quest: Drink Dr Pepper with glacial ice (location bonus: at Diamond Beach).

Seals were hunting in the channel to the sea.

For dinner, I finally cooked. Rotini with choice of sun-dried tomato pesto or basil pesto.

Iceland day 7: Bug Lake

First stop after Akureyri was Goðafoss near the town of Fossholl.

We then entered the Mývatn (“Bug Lake”) region, which held multiple attractions. The bugs are small annoying flies; they don’t bite, but they will fly into your eyes or nose or mouth, and follow you around.

We branched off the ring road to head to the bird sanctuary near Skútustaðagígar. It was very windy, so most of the birds were hiding on the leeward side of small islands, and we didn’t get to see much.

Then we planned to see two geothermal areas, but we drove right by the Námaskarð one, which was not well marked or visible from the road. We caught the Hverir one just downhill, which was really obvious and easy to find.