22 June 2010
We woke up to sunny weather and a spectacular view of Meiringen valley from the dining room at Zwirgi. At breakfast, they put out a huge slab of butter, which is just about the most appetizing thing you can put in front of a bunch of cycle tourists.
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After breakfast, we headed up the road towards Rosenlaui. (Zwirgi is basically at the cusp of Rosenlaui valley.) There was a short climb (with waterfalls!), after which the road flattened out and we got a view of the Wellhorn, shrouded in fog. I had come here in 2008 with Piaw, and Rosenlaui valley was every bit as serene as I remembered it.
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I slowed down a bit to soak in the sights. And the sounds, as well— I loved the sound of cowbells echoing across the valley. When I arrived at Hotel Rosenlaui, everyone was drinking tea.
We had been prepared to drop everything and spend a day hiking around Rosenlaui if they could accomodate us for the night. Piaw asked Andreas (the proprietor) whether there were any rooms free that night, but no luck. We continued up the road towards Grosse Scheidegg. (The road gets much steeper right after Rosenlaui.)
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At the pass, we bundled up for the descent into Grindelwald.
It got very cold on the descent, and I had to stop to put on my long-fingered gloves for the first time on the trip.
We ate a supermarket lunch in Grindelwald, and Cynthia went to the Montbell store to buy a lightweight windbreaker. (It folded down into about the size of a wallet. Witchcraft, I say!)
After lunch, we took the (mostly paved) trail to Lauterbrunnen valley.
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Staubbach Falls, in Lauterbrunnen |
We didn't find a suitable hotel in Lauterbrunnen. Piaw and I had seen all the falls the last time we were here, and Cynthia and Kekoa didn't seem interested in seeing them, so there was no point in staying to explore the valley. We backtracked and rolled down to Interlaken. At the tourist information center we found a nice place in Goldswil, on the hill overlooking Interlaken. There was wifi at the hotel for the first time since we had left Munich; after dinner we all disappeared off to our rooms to catch up with the outside world.
It was our first full day of riding, so I slept very soundly that night.