When we booked today's trip I was amazed that Ian felt comfortable with taking a gondola (cable car) down the mountain. His dislike of heights is so much better these days, mainly due we think to the numerous and, once or twice, somewhat unnerving experiences we've had in small planes in Kenya. Fingers crossed he's OK once he’s actually on the thing.
We duly presented ourselves at the cable car station, thinking we'd be allocated a specific car for our allotted time. But no, the cars are on a continuous loop so they don't actually stop and you just have to jump onboard them quickly as they pass.
The moment before we went "over the edge and into the abyss!”
I've always assumed that the main problem with vertigo and the like is that you can see the ground below you, luckily this wasn't an issue today.
These photos are beyond hideous but we won't be passing this way again and they are all I have! Occasionally the cloud lifted a fraction and we could actually see something.
But mostly this was our view.
I'd been looking forward to this for several months, particularly as I'd never thought Ian would voluntarily ride on a cable car, but sadly it was probably one of the most boring half hours of my life.
Once we got below the cloud level we could see many quintessentially Swiss buildings.
At the bottom we had to jump off the moving pod, before it headed off up the mountain again
We then had a short walk to Grindelwald railway station for the next train back to Interlaken Ost. Surprisingly this was the most crowded train we've been on yet and we had to split up in order to get seats, but as the journey time was only around 30 mins it wasn't a great problem.
Once again I tried to take some snaps from the moving train without much success.
We've seen many, many buildings with massive stockpiles of logs like this - they remind me of giant "bug houses"
Once back at Ost we caught the shuttle back to West and headed straight to our hotel - we were shattered; it was a very long and tiring day but we're really glad we did it, especially as we were able to report back to Jan about Toni's family still living in Kleine Scheidegg. And it has certainly been worth bringing our thermals, hats, gloves and scarves all this way for just one day - although it was sub zero temperatures at the top of Jungfraujoch, neither of us felt the cold at any time.