- Start of day: Somewhere over the Atlantic
- End of day: Hotel Bären, Wengen, Switzerland
We landed a bit early in Zurich and had to wait while they freed up a gate. The Customs and Immigration line was longer than I expected, taking around 30 minutes. With fresh stamps in our passports, we headed to the train station.
On last year’s trip to Switzerland I’d decided to get a room in Zurich to sightsee and wait out my jet lag before heading to the mountains. That meant it was an easy transfer from Zurich Airport to Zurich central station, 12 or 15 minutes or so.
This year I decided to head straight to the mountains. We landed and took trains from the airport to Zurich’s central station, transferred to a train for Bern, then transferred to a train for Interlaken Ost, then a transfer to a Lauterbrunnen-bound train, and then finally transferring to the train to Wengen. Our flight landed around 10:30am and we finally made it to our hotel right at 3pm. It was a lot of train travel after the international flights, and both of us were struggling at times to stay awake and not miss our stops, but it was worth it to be sitting here in Wengen this evening.
Sleepy on the train:
Making another connection, this one in Interlaken Ost:
We made it! Getting settled into our room at the Bären Hotel Wengen.
I had my favorite salad from Coop (sorry about the focus):
My old friend from high school and college and life, Joshua Levens, currently lives in Geneva. We’d planned to spend the first two towns together – Wengen and Zermatt. I was able to meet up with Joshua and his son Max shortly after checking in, and we did our first loop of town, having a look at things. Rowan didn’t sleep on the plane AT ALL, so I left him in the room to nap. I made it back to the room around 4:30 and had a nap of my own until around 6:30.
The four of us all met up for dinner at Restaurant Pasta & More. The food was fine and the company better. Oh, there was a guy in the restaurant playing live music. Joshua made the comment along the lines of “this is the kind of guy who would play The Gambler [the Kenny Rogers song]” and, I shit you not, it came up two songs later. Nobody left the table to request it, either. My mind was blown.
We wrapped the evening with another loop around Wengen and a quick stop at their hotel, Hotel Falken, before my energy level cratered and I needed to call it.
I’m now sitting on the balcony of our hotel room, 50-something degrees outside and the door open, taking in the clean mountain air. Tomorrow we have a full day of activities planned, and I should have no problem smashing my steps goal for the day.