Mission accomplished. Bryan and I have gotten a full night's sleep. Yay! We awoke this morning (after 5 a.m.) to the sound of thunder echoing through the valley. We went downstairs and ate breakfast outside on the front porch, watching the lightning show. Bolts of lightning would strike at the peaks (still mostly covered in clouds) and then the thunder would roll around in the valley. It was pretty impressive. We were able to see across the valley enough to watch the streams and waterfalls making their way down the green mountainside. It was raining steadily as we ate our tiny open-faced peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. I drank tea, and Bryan sipped on some hot chocolate.

With the rain continuing steadily, we followed through on our plan to leave early . We stripped the sheets off our bunks and remade them with the clean bedding provided, skipped the 1 franc per 5 min shower, and packed our bags to go. We used our rain flies for our backpacks, to keep everything dry. Before we knew it, we had tickets in hand for the cable car ride back down to Stechelberg.

Our first activity of the day, and one that I was really looking forward to, was going to Trümmelbach Falls. They are a series of waterfalls of glacial runoff from Jungfrau. The best part is, they are inside the mountain! So you buy your ticket, take the lift up into the mountain, and hike up the stairs looking at the various viewing stations at the water rushing through the rock below. It was really cool! And wet. It was wet, too. :)

When we were done with that, we caught the bus and then the train into Interlaken. We walked through town, admiring the grand old hotels and buildings still adorned with window boxes, until we arrived at our hostel for the evening, Happy Inn Lodge . We had a private room arranged for tomorrow, but since we changed our booking, we will be bunking up again. This hostel is above a restaurant. So far it seems clean and the gal that checked us in was very friendly.

We went back and locked up our bags in the storage area, and quickly put the kitchen to good use making sandwiches for lunch. Baguette, ham and lettuce never tasted so good, I'm sure. :)

Next we went out and looked in the shops on the main stretch. It was nice to be inside where it was warm and dry. And looking at knick-knack souvenirs sure beats dodging raindrops and flies! We are feeling pretty good about our decision to bail out of Gimmelwald early given the weather. We did the walking tour in our guidebook and took pictures along the way. By the time it was done, we were soaked through. We returned to the hostel common room to await check in time. Enjoying the free WiFi (that seems more reliable than in our previous locations) and being out of the rain, we waited for 3 p .m.

At 3 p.m. we checked in, took our showers, and left to go do laundry. (High excitement, I know). We found a nearby laundromat with a helpful local woman in it. Her English was limited, but she was persistently helpful. The sun was out by this time, and we left our laundry in process and took another walk along the river. The water is such a beautiful aqua color, and the current moves much more quickly than the Columbia at home. On the other side of the street were beautiful old houses, each with gardens to die for.

When laundry was done, we went on a hunt for something to make our dinner a little more interesting. We had a handful of change to our name (not wanting to take out any more Swiss francs since we will be leaving the country tomorrow for Austria, where they use the euro). We ended up with a single tomato. Bryan said he would wait and use the rest of the change to get a soda on our way out tomorrow . But having looked at our grocery bag, we are going to see if we can hunt down an ATM that will let us withdraw less than 100 CHF.

Dinner tonight was salad again with ham and carrots (and tomato for me) with bread dipped in red meat sauce. Each of the places we've stayed seems to have a quirk or two. The first location the WiFi was on again off again causing us to wander about in a "Can you hear me now?" manner, the second unfortunately had flies in the common room. This place has their lights on motion sensors, and they go off about every few minutes if you are sitting down to eat (or type a blog). Also, we figure the Happy Inn Lodge must be featured in an Asian guidebook, because we are (as far as we can tell) the only ones staying here that are not of Asian decent. I guess maybe we should have guessed from the name? But none of the people who work here are Asian. Just a quirky thing. :)

After dinner we managed to withdraw some cash, took a walk to a stone church that we liked the looks of, and poked around in a couple of convenience stores looking for something tasty for tomorrow's lunch on the train . We were indecisive though, so we didn't end up buying anything.

When we got back to the hostel, we decided to grab some fries in the restaurant. They brought us a basket of fries, water with ice in it (the first drink with ice we've had since the flight here) and a pitcher to help ourselves to refills. Then we FaceTimed the nephews and said, "Happy birthday!" to Dylan. Tomorrow we will move on to another town.

Thanks for following along! Don't forget to leave us a comment so we know you've stopped by. :)

Interlaken had been among my favorite stops on my past trip and here it was no disappointment, although it was wet. We had a nice relaxing day including our walk and trip to the laundromat. Looking up into the valley we could see that if we had stayed in Gimmelwald, we would have just been soaked. If we ever make it back to Switzerland, I know we will try to visit the Alps again, with hopefully better weather .

As Merilee mentioned in the blog, Switzerland runs on their own currency. After this we would have the convenience of using the same currency for the rest of our trip.  ATMs certainly make travel easy as we never had to deal with any currency exchange offices.

This was also one of the times on our trip where our backpacks paid off big-time. We took our packs with us as we toured the falls. They were light enough for us to carry around even up and down the stairs, although thanks to the funicular it was mostly down. Some other travelers had to go all the way down to Interlaken, drop their rolling suitcases, and then come back up to the falls, costing both time and money. We had the freedom to stop and make a side trip that was afforded by our backpacks!