Room 21, Rössli Hotel, Interlaken
Well, it was a pretty crappy night on the plane. After listening to a few CDs, I switched to Michael Bublé and contrived to catch some sleep.Unfortunately, that didn't really happen. After lying about half-consciously, I awoke to find that barely an hour had passed - and the CD hadn't finished playing!
So I started playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? instead. Didn't get past £64,000 and finally gave up.
Was distracted by a band of orange outside the window - thought it was some brilliant celestial phenomenon, but it turned out to be hundreds of lights along the shoreline below (we were passing over the UAE at that time). COOL. PLus there were scatters of stars above, although the reflection of the cabin in the window made it hard to see clearly.
After some more attempts to get to sleep, I did - only to be awoken soon (or it seemed like soon) for breakfast. I turned down fruits and cereal and had a bun. Then came the main course of porridge with fish cake, meatballs and chicken slices. Was on the heavy side so barely managed to finish it.
Had breakfast whilst watching The March of the Penguins and trying to ignore the English subtitles whilst comprehending the French. Sad to say I mostly only identifed "froid" (cold) and "neige" (snow). I mean, obviously those two words appeared a lot in the film...
Was 1 hour into the movie when the plane began its descent. It was still dark outside and we seemed to sink into a humongous cloud. For some reason there were bright orange lights in the cloud; was trying to figure out what they were when the plane suddenly went bumping along, and I realised we had actually landed and the visibility was just VERY bad! :P
Disembarked and took the internal airport train to the airport exit, where we got out of immigration after the guy there asked my dad if I could speak English. (I found that a very sad question because I realised I can't speak anything else...) Hurriedly pulled my jacket on (had worn my sweater before getting off the plane) as we went outside briefly before crossing a road and entering the train station.
Took some time buying Swiss Passes and figuring out which train to take and where the platform was. Then was the wait till 7.43 a.m. for the Interlaken-bound train.
It was a very roundabout 2-hour ride, constantly entering stations just to leave in the direction we came from. We passed through industrial-looking places and sped past foresty areas and farms and mountains. For some time at the start, the fog had not lifted, so there was nothing much to see. Papa called me to work out our railway itinerary for the next week, so I got down to it.
Soon visibility improved and we got a wonderful view of the lake on either side of Interlaken, bluish-green like anything and flanked by mountains. However, of all times the camera decided to go berserk, so no pictures there. Had to settle for a few average ones on my handphone.
At the Interlaken West train station, we deliberated over a few hotels in the area. After deciding on one, we went looking for it. A looooong winding walk later, we still hadn't found it - but stumbled upon the hotel we'd initially wanted. Got a room and headed out not long after.
Walked for about the next two or three hours across bridges, down nice tree-lined streets, along rows of shops and hotels.
Had a short stop for a hot dog before continuing. Not long after, we decided to head back to the hotel to rest. By this time we were in Interlaken Ost (East), so we caught a train back to the West and returned to the hotel via a much shorter route. Napped for a while before I got up and ate far too many chocolate chip cookies. Had nothing better to do, plus the room was getting a little stuffy, so I popped out to the balcony to sit. Got chased in a couple of times by bees, so I took the time to change the camera's batteries. It miraculously started working again so I set about catching the views of the mountains from the balcony.
Not long after, we set off on another walk - this time shorter and with dinner in mind. Finally ended up with a pizza and beer, and mushroom cream pasta and black tea at an Italian restaurant. Quite a hefty bill, but was a large meal. After that it was almost dark and we browsed around a few tourist shops before once again returning to the hotel. Had a surprisingly warm bath and am now lying on the bed, getting sleepy.
*yawn*
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