Interlaken

We left Monterroso fairly early and had our longest day of traveling yet. Our next destination was Interlaken, Switzerland but we had a four-hour layover in Milan. We could have left the Cinque Terre later and had a shorter layover in Milan but we wanted to see what Milan was like so we chose for the longer layover. It turned out that there was no place to put our bags (so we had to carry them everywhere) and the city actually wasn’t that cool – so we hung out at the train station and had McDonalds. This is our only picture of Milan.


The train ride to Switzerland was beautiful. We slowly ascended into the Alps and it got much greener and lush. We stopped in Spiez, a small town 20 minutes from Interlaken, to switch trains and I am glad we did. Spiez (which we later visited again) was right on a lake and was very picturesque.



We later arrived in Interlaken (which means between the lakes, there are two large lakes in the area) and we loved it. Italy was very pretty in its own way but was fairly dirty and run down. Switzerland (at least what we saw of it) was completely different. It was very well kept and kind of felt like a prettier, more historic, version of Park City.

The town is very clean and well organized. Our hostel was the Happy Inn which was above a bar and when we arrived the Spain/Germany soccer game was on. It was crazy. Later that night we started looking for food and we found the biggest downside to Switzerland – its prices. Everything here is VERY expensive – easily the priciest place we have been. In fact, during most of our time here, we only ate one meal out and bought groceries for all the others.