Zermatt to Grindelwald

On Monday we had to catch 4 trains for our journey to Grindelwald but as we are now in Switzerland they all arrived and departed exactly on time. We had a 20 minute walk to the youth hostel - up the steepest hill yet. But it's worth it as we have a full on view of the Eiger from our room which has a shared balcony too. There is still a lot of snow and ice so there are no climbers to be seen.

Yesterday we went up on the highest railway in Europe to see the Jungfrau and the Monch. The weather was perfect thank goodness as it was an experience we had planned to do and cost a lot of money. The train goes in a tunnel right through the Eiger and stops twice so you can get out and see the view through huge windows built into the side of the mountain - an incredible engineering feat. It also passes a small window and climbers can request that the train makes a special stop there so they can exit through the opening to begin their ascent of the north wall.

On the train on the way to the special railway a man got on in the next carriage with a huge St Bernard dog with a barrel round it's neck. I got my camera phone ready for when we got off at the station but the reason he was travelling up soon became obvious. He was surrounded by Japanese tour groups - it is a pre-arranged daily photo opportunity.

                              The Jungfrau

                             
                              The Monch

We spent 3 hours up at the top. There is an ice palace, an exhibition about the building of the tunnel,  an alpine experience which was weird and rubbish, a snow plateau and an observation deck. You could see Germany, Italy to the south was in cloud.