Off to Interlaken We Go...

We departed Montreux early on Sunday morning to head to Interlaken.

A quick lesson, Switzerland is divided, it is half French and half German. Montreux was obviously the French side of the country, Interlaken is on the German side of the country.

Back to the action...

So we drove about 1.5 hrs to get from Montreux to Interlaken. During our drive I was reading the highway signs and realized that "Ausfahrt" is German for exit. Enough said. I took some pictures to bring back home for all of you.

We both enjoyed Interlaken much more than Montreux. There were great restaurants everywhere, lots of random shopping, and the mountains looming behind you were just astonishing. I swear the people at Disney went to Interlaken when they designed the World Pavilion at Epcot! If it wasn't for the menus that were written in German I would have thought I was in Epcot for sure.

We stayed at the Victoria Jungfrau Hotel and Spa in Interlaken, set right at the foot of the Jungfrau Mountain. This is a really nice 5 star hotel, and we were able to get a great deal on the room rate which is why we took it, but no air conditioning in the rooms - ouch! They told us to open the windows, ha, like that did anything.

So here is where the fun food starts, as we got to the German side of the country, that is were the good beer, fondue and chocolate appear! For lunch we went to the Hotel Toscana and ate at the Trattoria Toscana. Though Italian by name, the place had a ton of Swiss food, so I got a sausage platter and we got a cheese fondue as an appetizer, yum! I also had my first of many Eichhof Beers. At this particular restaurant I had the lemon beer which was interesting (and refreshing) to say the least.

As we walked around Interlaken we started going into many of the chocolate shops. Our favorites were either Sprungli (home of the famous Luxemburgerli) or Laderach.

For dinner we went to a very "odd" place, Chez Pierre which was located in the Carlton Hotel. Everyone was sitting outside on the patio drinking and smoking, but no one was ordering food. When we asked for menus they seemed shocked but gave us menus. We both had fish dishes and I thought it was ok, and neither of us got sick thankfully. I had my first Rugenbrau, a local beer brewed in Interlaken. My second beer was from the Cardinal Brewery, also located in Switzerland.

That evening, we went back to the hotel and met our favorite person of the trip, and we shall call him Nils because we are not sure of his actual name. He is the bartender at the hotel's late night bar. Our first night he gave us a plate of 20 small pastries to go along with our wine selection for the evening. Yes, you are finding a theme, a lot of eating and drinking on this trip!