DAY 114 TUESDAY JULY 17 MORE WORLD HERITAGE RAILWAY

We had tried to reserve seats on the famous Jungfraujoch Railway on the internet in Munich but we discovered yesterday that they only reserved one seat (20 franks).  From comments about the area on the internet we gathered that  there was plenty to see and do even if we did not pay for the Jungfrau train.  Caught the same train we will be using tomorrow to get to Zurich and passed a forested hill that appeared to have been severely burnt.

The naked trees looked like bristles on a pig's back. We changed trains at Spiez and travelled around Lake Thun to Interlaken.

We followed the trip plan given to us in Brig, by getting on the train to Lautersbrunnen, but we forgot to buy our Jungfrau tickets at Interlaken as advised. While changing trains we saw a strange sight:

DID ONE OF CADEL'S TEAM DROP OUT AND POP DOWN TO INTERLAKEN?

 The ticket inspector  was curt and told us to buy the proper ticket at Lautersbrunnen as this was a private train and our Eurail Pass only entitled us to a 25% discount.

FAIRLY ORDINARY PRIVATE TRAIN AT $150 EACH RETURN

We looked at the clouds on the Alps and decided that with only one reserved seat it was not worth shelling out $300 for the trip to the highest station in Europe and bought $5.40 tickets back to Interlaken.

We climbed up 200 metres higher along the walking track to Kleiner Scheidegg  and followed another track to a spot behind a waterfall. This involved a tunnel

and a steep climb through arches.

From this point we got a good view of the neatest and most colourful cemetery we have ever seen.

On two occasions we saw paragliders today.

As usual we saw rushing streams

and alpine peaks all day.

But we did not see Jungfrau.  At Spiez on the way back we walked down to the Thunsee and found the wait for a ferry trip was over an hour.

Spiez had its own nice castle and church

That is the castle.  We added to sculptures to our collection.

The surprise of the day was the trip back to Brig on board a train nicely decorated with the alps like this one.

Much nicer than the "private train".  Our train took a different route which took 3o minutes longer but used a new track which was another one to be given World Heritage status.  High bridges and tunnels through rock gave us another great rail journey to add to our collection.