Aug. 20-21 - Arriving in Wengen

Thursday we said goodbye to Lucerne and to our beloved Hotel Lubo. Rita and I agreed that we could spend a month at this hotel and make it the base for exploring more of Switzerland. I made an interesting discovery an hour before we checked out. Unbeknownst to us, there was a free laundry and coffee room around a corner on the “first” floor (one flight up)! But it was too late to take advantage of it. We ended up paying 35 CHF ($45) for one load of laundry in Wengen, picked up this morning and delivered folded this afternoon.

We had been buying coffee (which is expensive like everything else in Lucerne) in the hotel’s own coffee bar downstairs and were never told about this free coffee spot! When we come back for that month, we’ll definitely take advantage of it!

By the way, the Lubo hotel building has this mural on it, boasting that Wolfgang von Goethe lodged here:

At the train station, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of one of their trash & recycling stations. “Abfall” is trash. Notice that they only take PET plastic bottles, not all plastic, but I guess that’s because this is for pedestrians. Maybe households recycle other plastics.

We caught the 11:06 Panorama Express train from the Lucerne Bahnhof (train station) and went immediately to the dining car, where we were welcome to stay for the full 2-hour trip to Interlaken. We love how the trains here (or most of them) have gap fillers when the doors open. Here’s a 3-second video of it in operation:

And here’s a video as we pulled out of the station, showing how extensive the view is from each car:

Rita was thumbing through the amazing 20 or 30-page glossy menu. I ordered chicken piccata with a spritzer drink, and Rita ordered the excellent gazpacho and wine. The waiter was a wonderful black man from Tanzania.

Here are a couple short videos I took during the trip:

A couple of the lakes we passed had a beautiful turquoise color to the water:

We saw a couple of these paddle boats on one of the lakes.

At Interlaken we changed to a “mountain train.” This was interesting, because it’s a hybrid train that is like any other train on flat or slightly inclined stretches, but it slows down and engages with a cog rail for sharper inclines. On the outside it looked much like the Panorama Express or other modern high-speed trains.

A second change of trains at Lauterbrunnen had us board a true cog railway train to Wengen, which is at 4,200 feet elevation. There are no roads to Wengen. People have to leave their cars in Lauterbrunnen and take the train. Within Wengen there are plenty of utility vehicles and trucks, however. The town is on a steep hillside with lots of shops and hotels as well as private homes and apartment buildings. I selected the Edelweiss hotel on Copilot’s advice because it is a 4-minute walk from the train station, but Copilot didn’t know that it’s at least 150 feet lower in elevation down a steep road! Here’s a view of the hotel when we first spotted it half-way down the hill:

We were able to control our 54-pound suitcase rolling down to the hotel, but I can’t imagine pulling it back up to the train station when we leave on Tuesday! Fortunately, the super-friendly clerk at check-in, Thomas, said he’ll get us a lift up to the station.

Here’s a video introducing the hotel that I shot after we checked in:

We love this hotel! Our room isn’t anything special (unlike the Lubo!) but the staff and facilities are great, including a coffee machine in the lobby and a dining room where they serve an amazing free breakfast and offer gourmet dinners in the restaurant each evening.

The room does, however, have a great balcony facing Jungfrau, the mountain peak that dominates this resort area: I took this video of us enjoying it:

My first task after settling in was to climb back up to the main street next to the station and rent an electric bike for four days so I wouldn’t have to climb it again! It came with a helmet and a lock “if it makes you feel better.” There is no concern here about the bike being stolen, and indeed I didn’t lock it when I plugged it in back at the hotel.

After dropping off the lock and charging cord, I went off on my first ride, first going about a mile downhill through village, and then a mile uphill from our hotel. There I stopped and shot this video looking back down the valley:

Rita took this picture of me from our balcony before I stowed the bike in a shed (a retired gondola) in front of the hotel.

These bikes have a much bigger battery and higher range than my electric Pedego back in Lakewood. It can go a full day of up-and-down riding on a single charge. It had 86% left on the battery after this first ride.

Dinner was delicious. The salad greens were handpicked by the chef from the vegetable garden in front of the hotel. Here are pictures of the garden (from our balcony) and the salad:

Here’s a picture of our entrees - pasta with salmon and spinach in a light cream sauce for Rita, and steak for me.

The dessert was a white chocolate mousse:

The three-course meal was 38 CHF for each of us or about $45 added to our hotel bill, so much less expensive than any of the meals we had in Lucerne, where we spent from $250 to $500 for dinner (for 3) every evening! In Lucerne we had to buy breakfast, too, which typically cost $50-75, including coffee and a protein item of some kind. I really had to just put money out of my mind on this whole trip, but this was a nice change in Wengen!

So much for Aug. 20. After a good night’s sleep in our super-quiet room with the door open for cooling, we rose to an amazing breakfast spread in the dining room. Here’s a video of it:

It was pouring rain all day, so we never left the hotel, but that’s okay. We still enjoyed being here, occasionally sitting on the balcony, although it was chilly — in the 50s most of the day. I was able to spend a lot of time perfecting my weekly newspaper ad before dinner, and then work on this blog post covering yesterday and today after dinner.

Dinner was another superb 3-course meal, served personally by the chef. Here’s a picture of him with Rita:

We both chose the meal of the day, which was rainbow trout with rice and vegetables in a delicious lemon sauce. Rita had the mushroom soup, and I had the mixed green salad again, this time with honey mustard dressing. Both were delicious! Dessert was an apple tart with whipped cream. Yum!

This was the view from our balcony for most of the day:

Tomorrow it’s supposed to be sunny, so I may take the mountain train up to the Jungfrau and/or take another bicycle ride around the mountainside.