More mountains
Tuesday we drove to two small towns, Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen not far from Interlaken. Both villages are at or near the base of the Eiger and Jongfrau - the tallest mountain in Europe. The weather wasn't kind to us and both mountains were shrouded in clouds for much of the day, but we still managed to get glimpses of the tops of these and the surrounding mountains. It is incredible how high these are, up to 4100 metres high and they look every inch from close up. Absolutely stunning.
Lauterbrunnen is also known for the 72 waterfalls in its vicinity. We didn't see all of them but did see about 1/2 a dozen, including the two 'main' ones. Staubbach Falls drops 300 metres in a single go, one of the highest in Europe.
Trummelbach Falls is a series of 10 falls that can have a flow of 20,000 litres per second. The noise was deafening and watching that amount of water crash down was amazing. The other big deal with these falls is that you could take a lift inside the mountain to go most of the way to the top. From there the stairs and walkway went through tunnels with viewing ports as you reached each of the individual falls.
We woke early on Wednesday hoping to go back to Lauterbrunnen before heading to France. Unfortunately the weather was no better than yesterday, so we didn't go and instead headed to Epernay in the Champagne district at a leisurely pace. We saw one church that looked particularly interesting so diverted for a look. The town of Thann was the usual cute village so we stopped for 1/2 an hour or so for photos and a quick look around.
We arrived at our accommodation around 5:00pm and after checking in went for a short drive to look at the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. Most of the major champagne producers own property on this street.
Back to our accommodation to re-arrange and pack prior to our last night in Europe.
Thursday morning we walked across the road to Billiecart-Salmon for a tour of their Champagne house. The tour lasted 1 1/2 hours and was very interesting giving us a history of the house and explaining how Champagne is made. Afterwards we took part in a tasting of 4 of their finest, including one which was limited to 6800 bottles - and retails for 380 euros. They were all very nice.
We then drove to reims for a 3pm tour of Veuve Clicquot. The tour was similar but it was good to get a slightly different explanation and to have the mornings details reinforced. One difference was that Veuve store their bottles in 24kms of chalk caves, very cool - both temperature and to look at. This time we had only one glass as it was time to head to the airport.
We returned the car after just under 9000kms and without a scratch. Waiting now for a flight to Dubai. It has been an awesome 8 weeks, but we are keen to see what the UAE holds for us.
Lauterbrunnen is also known for the 72 waterfalls in its vicinity. We didn't see all of them but did see about 1/2 a dozen, including the two 'main' ones. Staubbach Falls drops 300 metres in a single go, one of the highest in Europe.
Trummelbach Falls is a series of 10 falls that can have a flow of 20,000 litres per second. The noise was deafening and watching that amount of water crash down was amazing. The other big deal with these falls is that you could take a lift inside the mountain to go most of the way to the top. From there the stairs and walkway went through tunnels with viewing ports as you reached each of the individual falls.
We woke early on Wednesday hoping to go back to Lauterbrunnen before heading to France. Unfortunately the weather was no better than yesterday, so we didn't go and instead headed to Epernay in the Champagne district at a leisurely pace. We saw one church that looked particularly interesting so diverted for a look. The town of Thann was the usual cute village so we stopped for 1/2 an hour or so for photos and a quick look around.
We arrived at our accommodation around 5:00pm and after checking in went for a short drive to look at the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. Most of the major champagne producers own property on this street.
Back to our accommodation to re-arrange and pack prior to our last night in Europe.
Thursday morning we walked across the road to Billiecart-Salmon for a tour of their Champagne house. The tour lasted 1 1/2 hours and was very interesting giving us a history of the house and explaining how Champagne is made. Afterwards we took part in a tasting of 4 of their finest, including one which was limited to 6800 bottles - and retails for 380 euros. They were all very nice.
We then drove to reims for a 3pm tour of Veuve Clicquot. The tour was similar but it was good to get a slightly different explanation and to have the mornings details reinforced. One difference was that Veuve store their bottles in 24kms of chalk caves, very cool - both temperature and to look at. This time we had only one glass as it was time to head to the airport.
We returned the car after just under 9000kms and without a scratch. Waiting now for a flight to Dubai. It has been an awesome 8 weeks, but we are keen to see what the UAE holds for us.
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