Celebration Trip Continued

We wanted to attempt to scale some of the Swiss Alps again, and since the forecast was looking more in our favor this time, we headed back through the Interlaken valley towards our previous retreat.

The skies even seemed to part just in time for our arrival.

So we headed back up the crazy cable car box suspended on a string thousands of feet up into our car-less mountain retreat in Murren. 

Waking up with the sunrise in our cozy little mountain hotel room:

HOORAY!  A gorgeous crisp and cloudless morning with the most vivid colors and perfect for taking a ride up another cable car, the Schilthorn to the Piz Gloria - a revolving restaurant with the 10,000 ft breakfast buffet with 360 degree views of the Swiss Alps. (Also famous and heavily commercialized for a James Bond movie filmed there.)

The big peaks - Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau (washed out by the morning sunlight. Translated, meaning the Monk in the middle keeping the Ogre from the Young Maiden).

It was pretty cool to see how fast the clouds could start to move in up there.

And mmm, on to breakfast.  Can I say how much I love the Swiss breakfasts?  Buffets full of Nutella and croissants, juices, fruit, cheese, salmon, ham, and I'm not sure what else.  I didn't make it too much further than the Nutella. And really, they're probably not intended for Americans like us who don't just nibble on a few items but instead fill up plate after plate.  Definitely gained 5 lbs just from free breakfasts.

But those clouds moved in so much so that by the time we were halfway through breakfast they were totally rolling in and even the next cable car or two up after us got none of the stunning views of the peaks that we had got being on that first ride up and they pretty much just got this:

So when it was time to go back down, here we were about to get into a cable car with nothing in sight but an abyss of white making me feel like I was going to plummet to a cloud-filled death.

Lucky for us we had gotten up there on the first ride up! And at least as we went back down the cable car we got out of the cloud cover.  That morning was DEFINITELY a highlight of our trip.

Then we started noticing all the paragliders (see the tiny red dot below?) and base jumpers.  We thought, this is nuts, people really base jump from here?  That has to be deathly.  Sure enough, when Ryan looked it up there has been like 30 people die in the last 10 or 20 years base jumping there.  Why are people still doing it????

We stopped back at our hotel for a last farewell (notice the views from our breakfast table every morning!) and final views of the three big peaks from our room.

  

Then we wandered around Murren a little while because man, can you imagine any place more inviting and serene to live than a charming little village in the mountains with no cars, fresh air and just away from everything??

  

Ahhh, such a dreamy place!