Friday 24th July
We had morning tea at McDonalds, spoke to Luke and Karen on the internet, and received the best birthday present from them over the internet, a video of the family singing me happy birthday.I have played that one quite a few times as it is lovely to see them all together like that and hear them having a good time. I hope they enjoyed the birthday cake that they had on my behalf.After macca’s we went back to the camper and packed a picnic lunch and then rode our bikes to the Mt Pilatus gondola terminal to ride up to the top of the mountain. After a 20 min ride up we spent about 4hrs at the top walking up to the peak and going for a long walk along the side of the mountain. Unfortunately the clouds covered the view down to Lucerne, but we had intermittent views in other directions until about 4.00pm when the cloud cover came over heavier and as we arrived at the leaving terminal it started to rain.When we arrived at the bottom it had started raining heavier and we had no option but to get on our bikes and ride through it back to the camper. At least it wasn’t cold but it was good to get back “home” and have a warm shower before going into Lucerne for dinner.
We had a nice birthday dinner in a Swiss restaurant called Fritschi which was ornately decorated inside and out. We had the Swiss menu which consisted of a Cheese Fondue followed by homemade sausage and rosti.We enjoyed the dinner and then went for a walk near the lake which was crowded with people for the Blue Balls festival, a blues and jazz festival where we mingled with the crowd and came upon a band playing on a stage. We wormed our way through the crowd around the bars and got quite quite close to the stage and got to hear a couple of songs before they finished. One band member who played the violin, at the of their set broke her bow and flung it into the crowd which Ewout managed to reach out and catch it. The band was from Queensland and they were called “Wishing well”.
The next day we headed of towards Interlaken and drove through some wonderful countryside but being the weekend the roads were very busy with cars and motorbikes.We found Interlaken very busy and after trying unsucessfully to find a place to stop we decided to head off down the road to find some place to stay the night. We checked out the camping ground and found it was going to be $50 for the night with no electricity so thought it would be best to see if we could find a free spot. We stopped after a while in small town by their rail way station for the night and lucky for us the trains in Switzerland are very quiet so we had peaceful night.
Sunday:
We followed the road further along the valley and stopped in Col de Mosse at a small market where we bought a new kettle and then decided to find a place close by to stop as the road was especially busy.
We found a lovely spot at a carpark for the ski lifts at the bottom of a mountain and decided to stay for the night. We managed to do some washing and then go for a walk up the hill where we saw a fox running along the path and picked some wild strawberries on the side of the track.
As we returned to our camper we met a couple from Switzerland, she swiss and he was from Oregon in the US. They invited us to join them for a bbq and so we spent a nice evening by the fire with them
