Brienzer Rothorn

So another of our trips last week was to the Brienzer Rothorn, a beautiful mountain which is above Lake Brienz.  I even convinced Brett to spend some money so we could go on the cogwheel steam train up the side, which is something I feel like we wouldn’t ordinarily do- maybe if we had guests or something.  But anyway, we actually just paid for part-way up, because it was super expensive to go all the way to the top and then we wouldn’t have a hike, now would we?  Not that we actually hiked to the top, it would have taken about 4 hours but it’s okay because some people who had gone all the way up said it was cloudy and they couldn’t see much of the view anyway.  (On a clear day it’s a magnificent view of a lot of mountain peaks including Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.)

Anyway, what we saw was really gorgeous anyway. 

We had a little snacky on the way up.  I don’t know where that hat of Orrin’s is anymore.  Sigh.

 

That face cracks me up.

If you look on the far side of the lake, on the right side, you can see the Giessbach Hotel, which is where we went with Mom and Dad.

This was our stop.  On one of the cars of our train there was a huge group of Asians.  They were looking at the kids smiling and enraptured, and I told Talmage  and Ethne to wave, and so they did, and all of the group just went crazy waving and smiling.  It was funny.  Then the same thing happened again after we had gotten a little way up the trail, and the train pulled out and started going up again. 

 

The clouds started rolling in towards us and I told Brett I felt like we were in Scotland. (Not that I know how that feels, never have been to Scotland.  Sons of Scotland!  I am William Wallace!  And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! )

We didn’t really go very far, but it was okay, because as I said, realistically there was no way we were going to get to the top.  So when Brett got fed up with whiny kids (both Ethne and Talmage weren’t really into hiking that day) we turned around.  So the kids sat and threw rocks for awhile, which was a major highlight for Talmage.

Then the kids all found their second wind and ran down.

On our descending train ride we sat next to a couple from Canada and we talked to them for awhile.  They asked if Talmage and Ethne were twins.  Ha ha.  It started to rain a tiny bit on our way down, and when we got into the van it started pouring, so we had pretty perfect timing.

Have I mentioned it was nice having Brett home from work for a week?  :)