Aareschlucht

Last night I spent a really long time trying to figure out what to do today. Originally we'd planned to go to Chateau de Chillon in Montreux, but it would have been 3 hours each way and that was just more than we wanted to do. The weather forecast wasn't very good so I finally came up with a rainy day option and a not so rainy day option. If it was really rainy we were going to go to the castle in Thun and possibly to Bern. We decided if it wasn't too rainy, we'd go to the Aare Gorge. This was something I had highlighted in my Untours book because it looked interesting. When I showed the pictures to Dan he thought it looked fun too.

We got up and it was cloudy and drizzly but not pouring. We decided to take our chances and head for the Aare Gorge, the trip was about an hour and a half on the train. We didn't leave until later in the morning, it was nice to have a slow start and leisurely morning.

We arrived at the gorge and decided to start the walk right away. There is an entrance fee, I think it was 7.50 for adults and 4.50 for kids. We started at the east entrance and walked to the west, the gorge narrowed in the direction we were walking. There is a path and tunnels that you walk on through the gorge, it was really cool to see how powerful nature can be! Over thousands of years the Aare river forced it's way through the rock formation to form the gorge. It took us about 45 minutes to walk from one end to the other.

Beginning of the walk

Bundled up because it was drizzling

Pathway through the gorge

Cool waterfall

Starting to narrow

Towards the end it was very narrow

When we arrived at the west entrance we realized that there wasn't really a good spot to eat our picnic lunch, we decided to head back to the train station in Meiringen and eat it there. This was a good plan until Ali saw a playground, she was pretty unhappy that we didn't stop and play especially because they had bars to play on. We continued on with our plan and the poor girl didn't get a chance to play, she didn't let us forget it for a couple of hours!

We found a bench in Meiringen and at our lunch before we caught the train back home. It was a very laid back day but the gorge was interesting. We arrived home before it got too late and stopped at the store because we knew it would be closed all day Sunday. Dan and I got some chocolate and cookies to bring home in our suitcases. We watched a bit of the Olympics when we got home, the commentary was in German but we could still tell most of what was going on. Overall it was another good day!

 

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