Interlaken: Today we only rode 5 trains. However, we also rode 6 cable cars high into the Alps. The first three took us from the valley floor to the top of the Schilthorn, a tall mountain (9740 ft.) towering over the village of Stechelberg.
We lunched at the revolving restaurant there called Piz Gloria which was a set for the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It was incidentally the only Bond film starring George Lazenby as Bond. Avengers costar Diana Rigg was the film's "Bond girl," a bonafide filmic category, by the way.
On the way back we took two of the three cable cars down the mountain, then walked the tiny hillside village of Murren before taking a cog rail line and a final cable car to Wenger, and two more trains back to our "base camp" hotel in Interlaken.
It was a long day, and tiring. We were jammed into those cable cars like riders in a Japanese subway. Switzerland has been having a heat wave and isn't accustomed thereto. Even at nearly 10,000 ft. we were comfortable in shirtsleeves on the observation deck; we never took our windbreakers out of the daypack.
We haven't seen the Himalayas, but the Alps are truly more spectacular than any mountains in the Americas. We love the Tetons but alongside the Alps they are insignificant. The scale of the Alps is overwhelming, they are immense.
The Swiss seem to major in "verticality" as they build most buildings on relatively steep slopes. They run roads and rails to places most would find daunting or ridiculous. maybe they've made a virtue out of necessity.
Many grassy hillsides resemble sets from The Sound of Music; a young Julie Andrews should come running in her postulant's outfit, singing about the hills being alive with the sound of music. The whole country looks like Disney staged it.
Incongruity abounds, our hotel window overlooks the koi pond of a formal Japanese garden. The morning walk to the rail station is no chore, dragging our tired selves home from there at day's end is harder. E's cell phone ap says we're walking about 4 miles a day and I am not accustomed to it.
