Prague

A taxi took us to the airport in Budapest to pick up our rental car there. The bellman at the hotel and taxi driver were very excited about my little traveling ukulele and both asked me to play. So I played it for each, first in the elevator and then on the taxi drive.

Using our trusty GPS on our I-phones made the drive from Budapest to Prague pretty easy and smooth although the small streets in Prague’s old town were shared with the many street cars which added a bit of an extra challenge.

Aria, our music themed hotel, was delightful and located on a quiet street next to the US Embassy. The Prague part of our trip was short, with only two nights and one full day.

Our first night the weather gods continued to shine on us and we lucked into a table at the rooftop restaurant without a reservation and dined under a gorgeous sunset.

On our full day we hired a guide and crossed the 650+ year old stone bridge (now called the Charles Bridge after the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who ruled from Prague for 23 years beginning in 1355 and founded what is now known as Charles University in 1347 during what is now known as the “Golden Age of Bohemia). Across the bridge is the Old Town, including its Jewish neighborhood where we visited three synagogues and an old Jewish cemetery that somehow survived the Nazi occupation and commercial redevelopment. Only the oldest synagogue in Prague is still operating. The other two are museums. One of them is now a dramatic memorial to the 80,000 Prague citizens who were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. My step-father’s family came from this area and Lederer is a common name so it was no surprise that we found it repeatedly on the synagogue’s walls.

After our 3 hour tour we ate a hearty lunch and shared a local beer before heading back to our hotel to rest a bit before heading out to a late Italian dinner and evening walk in the “castle” district where our hotel is located.

The next morning we walked the adjacent UNESCO gardens that are adjacent to our hotel and the embassy. I must say this is the first time I felt underdressed for a garden walk. Jim did a great job climbing all of the stairs for the fantastic views.

Freeway driving on the German autobahn is fun. What can I say, I like no speed limit. While most of the them have only 2 lane, slower cars and trucks always move to the right lane so it’s easy to pass when necessary. On the drive we made two stops: at two familiar companies. We usually don’t stop at US brands when traveling but we needed a bathroom break and the Starbucks seemed like a perfect choice. Then we were hungry and tried the freeway Burger King, because it was easy. Both were good.

Then we got in the car and made our way almost to Switzerland, stopping at the little German border lake town of Lindau am Bodensee.

The sweet little Bodenseezeit hotel we stayed is very close to Lake Constance (“Bodensee” in German). Jim rested a bit while I went out for a walk exploring the area. I walked along a trail to a nearby campground. Car and RV Camping is very popular in this area. I had such a peaceful, happy feeling while walking among the families and people of all ages having fun on the lake, biking and enjoying the calm sunny. I literally did not hear a single child crying even though there were children playing everywhere.

When I got back Jim joined me for a second walk to the campground on the lake. We weren’t really hungry but needed to eat something. Jim got a beer, I got an Aporal Spritz, and we ate peanuts and fries while watching the kids play with rocks and sticks on the shoreline. This is one of those moments when you realize we are all so similar in this world. When near a lake, on a sunny day, with abundant rocks, children do the same thing everywhere and their parents and other adults just relax and enjoy the magic, peaceful moments. After our “gourmet” meal we walked some more, Jim skipped rocks in another spot and we slept well that night in the peaceful little town.

Switzerland: Berner Oberland

After filling up the car in Germany where fuel is cheaper than Switzerland, we headed to the “Berner Oberland” high country of Switzerland. My job as the “Admiral of Atmosphere” is to set the stage for our driving experience, so I turned on the movie soundtrack of the Sound of Music!

The music filled the car creating the perfect feeling as we drove through spectacular scenery up into the mountains, past turquoise lakes with big mountains in the distance.

We arrived at our hotel in Grindelwald on a sunny day with perfectly clear views. The Parkhotel Schoenegg was the place we were going to spend the next 6 days exploring the central Swiss Alps. Although the hotel had great view, friendly helpful staff and a good location, it was too centrally located, on the very noisy Main Street, and our very expensive “Deluxe Balcony Mountain View” room was clean but very small. We adapted by leaving most of our luggage in the car and rearranging with only one small suitcase in the room. Because this is a long trip with a cruise we had a much bigger suitcases than we usually use when traveling, which is why we rented a car instead of using the trains (where no one helps you get your luggage on or off the train even if you travel first class).

We plopped our rearranged stuff into the room and headed up our first big gondola ride to the top of the mountain area called “First”. Unfortunately, this was in the afternoon when the entire Grindelwald area is crazy busy with so many bus loads of tourists from around the world. Still, we enjoyed the views and watching what I like to call the “kite people” otherwise known as paragliders soar all around the beautiful peaks. Jim stayed near the top of the gondola at around 7,500 feet, while I tried to escape the crowds by taking one of the trails farther up “First” mountain.

After catching a bite at the summit restaurant, we made our way down the mountain and enjoyed dinner at our hotel outside on the patio with the huge mountains surrounding us. Our plan for the next day was to take advantage of the continued great weather and ride a different, larger gondola up to the Jungfraujoch Station and glacier. It is advertised as the “Top of Europe” but while the rail station there may be the highest in the Alps, Mont Blanc in France (at 15,776 feet) and the Matterhorn in southern Switzerland (at 14,692) and others alps peaks are higher, as are several European mountains outside the Alps (in Russia and Georgia). Fellow travelers at dinner gave us the tip to take the first gondola up to avoid the crowds, so we did and it was great advice. Of course it meant getting up really early to board the 7:45 gondola that takes you to the cogwheel train that ascends over 4,500’ through a tunnel carved out of the mountain.

All we can say is that if you want a giant gondola or need to build a cogwheel train that travels through a twisting tunnel blasted through solid rock, bring in the Swiss! The technology was amazing!

When we reached the top we went immediately to the “crows nest” on top, called the “Sphinx.” The sun was shining, the winds were calm and the mountain views breathtaking. From there we walked the Disney-like displays and made our way out to the glacier plateau. Again, it was so warm we took off our layers and took in the spectacular river glacier that flowed down the mountain below us.

The summit restaurant opened at 11 and most people had made reservations. But we made new friends in line who were from the Czech Republic and decided our best chance at a table was to sit together. Our plan worked perfectly. We got the only table not reserved. One of our new friends wanted to practice her English so we enjoyed our lunch and conversation before heading back down again by cogwheel train and gondola. If you buy the discounted early pass you have to head down the mountain by 1 pm. We left on the 12:17 pm departure.

Back at our hotel we took a short nap, then woke for a swim in the hotel pool before walking to the grocery store to get some snacks for tomorrow’s morning gondola adventure to another summit: The Schilthorn.

Strangely, nothing in Grindelwald opens early despite all the early adventure seekers. Even the town bakery doesn’t open before 8 am.

Best Day of our Vacation So Far: The Schilthorn

By now we were experienced “first gondola of the day” tourists and our next goal was the gondola to the top of Schilthorn Mountain. Fueled with our energy bars, drinks and coffee we purchased the evening before we left early to drive to Lauterbrunnen Valley and the parking lot for the World’s Steepest Gondola that leaves from the little town of Stechelberg on the valley floor. The beginning steeply climbs the first mountain face almost strait up over a big waterfall. It is a remarkable engineering achievement, which opened to the public only in the last year.

In a “what a small world” experience the couple next to us at the front of the 100 person gondola had at one time lived in Bellingham. When someone is from Washington we always ask them if they have heard of Dick’s Drive In. It’s our little branding survey. Not only had they heard of it, but Jen had worked for Jim’s brother Doug at his Challenger Ridge Winery. For another “small world experience that afternoon when shopping for some shirts at the top of the mountain, the person who helped us, Eva, had also spent time in Seattle. She loved Dick’s Drive-Ins and got teary when she heard that was our family business because she loved her time in Seattle so much (where unlike Switzerland, “you can get a great cup of coffee almost anywhere, not just at Starbucks”).

While the big gondola can hold over 100 people, on the first ride up there were only about 30 of us, so everyone had a great view. Three gondola stops later we submitted on to Schilthorn. Again, the weather was sunny, calm and our photos do not do the views justice. After grabbing a some hot chocolates, a donut and juice we spent two hours with virtually no crowds taking in the giant mountains and glaciers. Because we are used to the sounds of avalanches in the mountains of Alpental Valley, when I heard a rumbling in the distance I scanned for what I knew was going to be an avalanche and saw one. We spent a lot our time that morning helping others spot several more avalanches, which at a distance looked like waterfalls in a snapshot, but if you kept your eyes on them you could see them start and stop in different locations (something waterfalls don’t do).

The weather forecast called for an afternoon of clouds and possible thunderstorms, so we spent as much time as we could that morning, in the clear sunny weather, taking in this very special experience.

The clouds and the crowds eventually rolled in together, so we headed to the James Bond exhibit on one of the lower floors. I bet you weren’t expecting that! Yes, Schilthorn Mountain and this summit building was where “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” was filmed in 1968. Unlike movies today which use “green screens” and lots of Computer Generated Content (CGC) to create amazing scenes, back in 1968, most amazing scenes were created with stunt men and women who filled in for the movie stars in the dangerous scenes.

Prior to 1968, construction had paused on the Schilthorn summit building because of cost overruns and lack of funding to finish it, so the 007 Producers agreed to complete it in return for using it as the main location for the film.

Sean Connery had retired from the 007 role after “You Only Live Twice” so George Lazenby (an Australian) was cast as James Bond in this film. The film was a success and Lazenby was offered a $1,000,000 to play 007 again but turned it down because he thought no one would want to see another spy thriller in the age of flower children, peace and love. A “big mistake” as he said later. The exhibit documents the amazing stunts and filming techniques that were used to make the movie. The stunt camera man (who lost a leg in his previous film and died in an accident the next year while filming “Catch 22”), created a way to dangle from a helicopter on a halo of ropes so that he could capture the iconic skiing and toboggan scenes. The exhibit also documents the hazardous bobsledding scene. The producers hired local experts to rebuild the old bobsledding hill for the movie, but one of the crew fell into the bobsled run only a hundred yards in front of the bobsled. He would have been killed except that that the bobsled driver deliberately steered hard left and out of the track just in time before flying off the bobsled himself. In another almost deadly accident, the big avalanche scene almost killed the camera crew on the opposite side of the explosion because the avalanche created by the explosive charges was much bigger than expected.

Now we have to watch the movie again. Maybe tomorrow if it’s as rainy as predicted.

After leaving the top of The Schilthorn we stopped at the quaint “car free” town of Murren which can only be reached by train or gondola. We talked to other people on the gondola down and they suggested stopping at the Edelweiss Hotel for a late lunch for good food and spectacular views. They were right! We both decided right then that if we could get a room in the hotel for 2 or 3 nights we would leave our noisy hotel in Grindewald and come back here. After lunch I walked down to the even smaller town of Gimmelwald and Jim checked out the possibility of getting a hotel room at the Edelweiss before taking the old gondola down to Gimmelwald to meet me. Jim scored the only room available at the Edelweiss and my walk couldn’t have been more idealic with wild flowers, cows with bells, birds singing and the amazing views of mountains and waterfalls.

We met up in Gimmelwald and grabbed a dark beer at a funky little bar where a tourist who was also an opera singer unexpectedly sang an aria to the waitress Maria. We also met Sean and Kim from Baltimore and they were staying at the Edelwdeiss and we compared our plans for the next day.

One of the many quaint aspects of Gimmelwald is the number of self-serve, unstaffed “honor” stores selling everything from ice cream and beer to eggs, dried sausage and beer.

One more gondola ride down and we were back at the parking lot and our car for the relatively short drive back to Grindelwald.

We got to video with Jasmine and James that evening when we got back to our room (where James told us that he had hit the “walk off double” that won his last Little League baseball game) and later Jim exclaimed: “this was the best day of our entire vacation”.

On To Murren

It was another noise night in Grindelwald but we were able to sleep in a bit before packing up and heading out. I couldn’t wait to leave this hotel. Not only was it noisy but something about it was causing me to cough a lot. I have no idea what it was.

But before leaving Grindelwald, we did have one more fun adventure there. We drove to the Glacier Canyon Guesthouse and then bought $20 tickets to walk the Glacier Canyon trail that is bolted to the canyon walls or carved out of the canyon walls, permeated with the very loud sounds of the water charging down through the canyon. In the late 1800’s the glacier came all the way down to where the trail begins, and as the glacier receded, the trail was extended up stream, but now the glacier is only visible in the distance. 150 year ago parts of the trail were ice caves carved out of the glacier itself.

I’m writing this from our quiet hotel room in Murren. We got up here before the predicted heavy rain began and I’m writing the blog surrounded by spectacular views of the mountains, waterfalls and even some glaciers. We are looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and enjoying a restful day of walking and chilling tomorrow.

Today we road the funicular in town and hiked through waterfalls, rushing rivers, wildflowers and made it down the 2 mile hike which seemed harder than it should have been.

Ahhhh.

Thanks for reading!

True Love Adventures is written by Fawn Spady

and Edited by Jim Spady.