Grandhotel Giessbach

 

Oeschinensee

 

Switzerland 2025 - Brienz part 2

Since we spent five nights at Giessbach, we were able to make several day trips throughout the surrounding area. We drove to the small city of Thun and visited Thun Castle as well as Castle Oberhofen which was our favorite of the two.  Oberhofen has five different levels to explore with some fun things to discover along the way. Hint: if someone is tapping on one the kitchen doors, open it! We had a lovely bit of cake at the restaurant terrace too. We saw some people surfing the wake created by the water gates under the old covered bridge in Thun as well.

One day we drove to Kandersteg to take the cable car up and hike to the lake Oeschinensee. As we were driving into Kandersteg, we found ourselves on the same street as a herd of local cows being brought down to their home barns from the summer pastures in the mountains.  They all wore lovely headdress of little trees with flowers and their cowbells would clang-clang as they walked by. It was a real treat to see this bovine parade. Once we took the cable car up, we hiked up to a mountain hut restaurant where we get a nice view of the lake.  We didn’t do the hike around the lake as I hurt one of my knees before we left on the trip. It’s a beautiful alpine lake and worth seeing. They do suggest making a reservation for the cable car as Instagram has made this a very popular spot and they now limit the number of people who go up via the cable car. You can hike up from the village of Kandersteg but to hike up there and then around the lake would take a lot of stamina I think as the hike around the lake itself is supposed to take more than two hours. 

Did you know that you can make your very own Swiss Army knife? When I found this out, Mike was keen to do it so I made an appointment with the Victorinox store in Brunnen. So we drove to Brunnen and a lovely young lady named Katrina helped Mike build his very own knife. It took about twenty minutes and he had some options of the type of knife and the pieces he could choose, the cover he wanted, the type of engraving, what you want it to say, etc. He was quite pleased with the result and very happy with the experience, so that was definitely a worthwhile activity. After leaving Brunnen we drove to Lucerne to look around a bit and then it was back to our hotel to lounge in our wonderful terrace and watch the sunset over the lake. 

We also visited the Aareschlucht gorge which we liked. We like gorges and seeing what the power of water can create from flowing over the stone.  We started at the west end and it was a flat, easy boardwalk that took about 40 minutes to walk, stopping for photo and to look at various features. There was even an old military bunker on the opposite side of the river that was built into the stone of the gorge but never used. We turned around at the end and walked back through the gorge rather than waiting for the bus and it only took us about ten minutes to walk back lol. 

We rode the Brienzer Rothornbahn train to the top of the mountain overlooking Lake Brienz and Lake Thun.  This was a very slow one-hour ride each way so it does take all morning to do this with time enough to look around at the top. It was not our favorite activity unfortunately. 

We spent some time looking around Interlaken as well and enjoyed watching the paragliders taking off from Harder Kulm landing in the park.

Switzerland 2025 - Lake Brienz (Brienzersee) part 1

We are finally here in Switzerland! We decided to land in Zurich but not stay the night there as we have been to Zurich once before. Instead we picked up our rental car and drove past Lucerne to the Stansserhorn train and cable car. We took the first stage up the mountain by train, then everyone gets off and switches to a cable car for the remainder of the journey. We had a lovely sunny day with just a bit of haze on the mountains. There are a few different viewpoints there plus a restaurant and nice terrace. We saw several mountains and Lake Lucerne as well. A little Swiss boy tried to have a conversation with me but my German is unfortunately not good enough to actually converse. He was very sweet though and reminded me of the son of one of my daughter’s friends  

Once we left Stansserhorn, we traveled to our hotel in Giessbach on beautiful Lake Brienz. We stayed at the Grandhotel Giessbach in the Giessbach suite which was a bit of a splurge for us but was soooo worth it. We found this hotel because Mike is a fan of the TV miniseries Band of Brothers and part of the series was filmed at the Giessbach and in our suite.  I cannot say enough wonderful things about this hotel! The view from our terrace was so beautiful every day, no matter the time of day. We looked out over the lake and if we looked to our left, we saw the pretty Giessbach falls. The staff were wonderful, the breakfast was delicious and so many choices, everything was of the highest standard. Our suite had a large terrace with two sets of tables and chairs as well as two loungers. 

There are day visitors to the hotel because it is part of a nature park and you can actually hike to the top of the falls. We went as high as the second bridge which is about two-thirds of the way up. The day trippers can drive to the hotel or they can take the lake ferry to the hotel dock and ride the funicular up to the hotel, but in the late afternoon they leave with the last ferry and you have only guests remaining. 

We spent a total of five nights here, venturing out to enjoy the sights in the area. I loved this place and I was so sorry to leave it. We told each other that it might have been better to end our trip at this spot as we don’t think any other place will compare. 

Switzerland 2025 planning

 I'm currently working on plans to visit Switzerland this year but it's a bit overwhelming given the train system is quite extensive in the country and there are many, many regional passes, half fare passes, etc from which to choose. I don't often feel defeated about planing a trip but this one has my head spinning. We think we are going to drive to have the most flexibility and also because I hate dealing with luggage on trains. No matter how hard I try, I will never be one of those people who can manage a 3 week trip with just a carry-on. 

The other thing about Switzerland is that people say it is very expensive. I joined a Facebook group and of course I also still use TripAdvisor for advice. I don't feel the costs are substantially higher than in California right now. Most travelers complain about the cost of food more than lodging but I think if we stay in hotels where breakfast is included we should be okay. We typically don't eat much for lunch so the only cost would be for dinner. Im not sure about the cost of fuel but European cars typically get better mileage than cars here at home, we normally only have to fill up a couple of times in spite of the fact that we cover a lot of ground. Some of the hotels where we are staying offer a local pass for transport and admission so that's helpful. 

Our rough itinerary is to fly in and out of Zurich and staying in these cities:

Zurich-Brienz-Wengen-Ascona-Annecy(France)-Montreux-Colmar(France)-Tubingen(Germany)-Zurich. 

There may a day trip to Zermatt depending on the weather. I don't think there's any point in going to Zermatt if it's cloudy or raining and we can't see the Matterhorn. We're staying in a cool hotel in Brienz that was a filming location for Band of Brothers so Mike is excited about that. I'm really hoping we have good weather as our last two vacations have been cold, wet, and windy for the most part.

I'm still pricing everything out but I think this may be our most expensive trip yet, mostly because we upgraded to first class on the flights between Atlanta and Zurich. We arrive in Zurich at 8am and I want to be able to try to sleep on the plane, which never happens if I have to sit up the whole time. I want to mention that although I have a lot of Delta Skymiles it still wasn't enough to upgrade to first class.  I'm beginning to wonder if the Skymiles program is really worth it. Maybe if we flew a lot more? I don't know. We now have Visa cards that offer rewards too so I may begin to use that more than my Delta AmEx card. Also AmEx still charges a foreign transaction fee while the Visa card does not. All those fees add if your spending a lot of money lodging, car, etc. Who wants to pay a bunch of fees? Certainly not me.

This will be a trip of beautiful mountains, lakes, and castles - just what we love!

Grand Teton National Park Sept 2024

The Teton mountain range is so beautiful and we're glad this wasn't our first trip because a storm moved in on our second day and you couldn't see the mountains at all for two days. We felt so sorry for the people who came to see the mountains and never got the chance.

We got up early on the first day to photograph the sunrise on the mountains. As we were driving out to an overlook we passed a female moose in a field, barely visible in the pre-dawn darkness. It started to rain while we were waiting for sunrise, but we just put on our raincoats and covered the camera and lens with its own little raincoat. The photos were not quite the great sunrise I was hoping for, but we did get a full rainbow so that was nice. We drove over to Gros Ventre campground area where we have seen moose in the past, but didn't find any. We couldn't spot any wildlife at Schwabacher's Landing either and Moose-Wilson Road was also a bust for wildlife until our last day. We saw a bull and cow moose at the ponds area on Moose Wilson on our last day in the park. We did see six moose total though half of those were from a distance and fairly brief sightings. 

This was our third trip to the park but we had never stopped at Menor's Ferry or the Chapel of the Transfiguration so we pulled in to have a look. Menor's Ferry was actually very interesting to us, we love history and learning about early settlers. The Chapel has a beautiful view of the Tetons on a clear day and is still a functioning church. I found myself wondering how much attention I would give the sermon if I could stare at the Tetons the whole time. 

We considered walking out to Moose Pond by Jenny Lake but it started to thunder, lightning and hail so we decided to skip that. We did stop at a boat landing along the Snake River and saw fisherman and rafters(!) putting in. This was absolutely crazy to me with the lightning strikes coming all the way down to the ground! We also saw two outfits going out on horseback rides in this weather, one group had the long duster coats on but the others just had their puffy jackets which would be completely soaked in a couple of minutes. I imagine they were questioning their decision to ride in that weather, I would be for sure. 

The weather was so changeable on this trip. We had sun, wind, rain, hail, thunder and lightning, and snow! We usually have good weather in September so this was just due to a random storm coming through for a couple of days. Its okay, we just continue on and still have fun regardless of the weather.

Chapel of the Transfiguration 

Rainbow sunrise 

Moose pair

Yellowstone National Park Sept 2024

We love going to Yellowstone! This was our third trip and our main focus was to find wildlife, specifically bears and wolves. We also think the bison are cool and the moose, elk, pronghorn antelopes, bald eagles - it's quite an extensive list really. 

We hired a wolf guide for our first full day in the park with Yellowstone Wolf Trackers. Our guide Quinn was so knowledgeable and we had great conversations about wolves and wildlife management in general. We spent an hour or two watching a young wolf and other animals feeding on a bison carcass. Quinn identified the wolf as a one year old female from the Junction Butte pack. Even though she was the only wolf we saw that day, we still were quite happy because it was the closest we had ever been able to observe one. Everyone is supposed to stay 100 yards away from bears and wolves and everyone at this site was respectful of that limit while we were there. The first time we saw wolves in the park in 2020, they were a couple of miles away and very difficult to see even with a spotting scope so this viewing was definite closer. 

Once the wolf left the carcass some coyotes moved in to feed as well.  The coyotes in Yellowstone are so big and healthy that lots of people mistake them for wolves and these coyotes were big and fluffy. There were also adult and juvenile bald eagles that came in to feed. 

We like to go out to the B Bar Ranch in Tom Miner Basin to watch for grizzly bears. We have never been there without seeing some, sometimes we see quite a few. Viewing is better in the evening and this evening we saw 8 grizzlies -  a mom with 2 cubs at the ranch and then a pair of adult or subadult bears in a meadow near Grizzly Creek Ranch and a mother and 2 cubs not far from those other two bears. You need binoculars or a spotting scope if you want to see them very well. We rented a scope on our first trip to the park but then bought one of our own for the next trip. We have an adapter that allows you to attach your iPhone to the scope so you can take photos and video and zoom in even more. 

We also saw the grizzly known as the Lake Butte sow, nicknamed Raspberry by local photographers. We have seen her on each trip as she likes to hang out close to the road by the Lake Butte Overlook, She was a little farther east this time than we've seen her in the past but the weather had been very warm so a lot of the wildlife had moved to higher elevations to escape the heat. It had just started getting cooler when we were there, so the bears were starting to make their way back down to their usual areas. Raspberry has a new cub this year. It's an independent little thing, always wandering off and exploring.

We were driving east from the lake toward the park's east entrance when we saw a black bear, the only black bear of the trip in fact. It was in some bushes on a hill above the road and then came down the hill and crossed the road to go down the other side. It came relatively close to us and we were not super close to the car so Mike had the bear spray ready but we were happy not to need it. It would definitely be a measure of last resort but you should always be prepared. 

We saw lots of bison of course. We love the way they walk out into the road and just stop there. It's not like you're going to get out and shoo them or anything, they just don't care and you could end up getting hurt. We just sit and wait until they're ready to move on. They're so huge and make the funniest noises, it cracks me up but I have huge respect for how powerful they are and make sure I don't get close to any when we're out waking around.  

Black Wolf

Black Bear

Raspberry and cub

Coyotes