Interlaken

I promised pictures, and well...you're getting pictures.  Interlaken, our first stop on block leave, was beautiful.  Breathtaking, actually.  These pictures don't even do it justice.  With that being said, the weather left much to be desired.  We had planned on going hiking, or doing something outdoorsy, but woke up to snow and rain on Easter Sunday.  However, through the rain, snow, clouds, and fog, we managed to have a pretty good time! 

 Interlaken is way smaller than we expected.  The town pretty much has one main road, and everything closes up at 9.  We did manage to get plenty of Swiss chocolate, and believe it or not, we had some amazing Mexican food there too!  Who knew we had to go all the way to Switzerland to get some descent guacamole?

Here's a look at our trip:

Driving through Interlaken. 

The town sits in between two lakes (inter-laken...between lakes...clever name, eh?) and is surrounded by the Alps. 

Even though it was a bit dreary, everything was still so green. 

Gargoyles on an old church.

The old church.

This is the hotel they stayed at on The Bachelor.  It's a five star hotel, and we thought about going to get a drink at the bar.  Thought about being the key words.  As soon as we saw the people going in that place and the way they were dressed, we quickly realized we were nowhere close to being on their level. 

We stayed in a town just outside of Interlaken, called Wilderswil.  It was just a few minutes from downtown and this was the view on the drive. 

Our hotel sat on the top of a hill overlooking Wilderswil and Interlaken. 

In the distance, you can see one of the lakes and the downtown area of Interlaken.

Hotel Berghof's grounds.

We woke up to snow on Easter Sunday, so this is how we spent our morning.  The Pope and chocolate bunnies. 

Later in the day it cleared up enough for us to venture out.  There are a lot of little towns on the lake, so we decided to go explore.  I can't begin to tell you how BLUE the water is.  You really can't tell in these pictures, but it is unnatural.  It almost looks fake. 

See!  Look at how much that duck stands out against the blue water.  Multiply that blue by about a million, and that's how blue it looks in real life. 

John Ralph really wanted to hike to the top of a mountain.  He had to settle for a walk around a lake. 

Snowy village.

There was an old castle right down the road from our hotel.  On Monday things had cleared up significantly and you could see lots of the snowy mountain peaks around us.

The castle was built sometime in the 1200s, so it was just a little old. 

I didn't exactly wear climbing shoes to the castle, so you should have seen me climbing those stairs.  I was pretty sure I was going to slip and fall to my death.  I mean, the building is not exactly "up to code".  A hand rail would have been nice. 

A real, live, dungeon!  No dragons though. 

This is the Jungfrau mountain peak.  I don't really know its significance other than you could see it from Interlaken and our hotel and it was pretty darn big. 

Our Easter Sunday lunch.  Fish and potatoes. 

In the town by the lake, people were dressed up as bunnies and chickens and were handing out Easter eggs.  Eggs here are good, fresh, farm eggs and ours was a funky orange color.

Another view of the mountains.

The other lake.

This was the view from our breakfast table on Monday.  Tulips are blooming and trees are budding and it's just so lovely this time of year. 

This picture got out of order, but it's a view of the castle from the road.  Castles are all over the place here, just sitting on the sides of mountains like it's no big deal. 

These pictures are all I'm showing from Interlaken, but after we left that city we headed for Munich.  I have plenty of pictures to share from that part of the trip too, so stay tuned!