Eldorado Hotel Crans-Montana

... the casualties of the Matterhorn.
Zermatt itself is tiny, with only electric taxis. It is much colder than Lauterbrunnen even though it's on the border of Italy.
Switzerland is strange. It has no language of its own. In Bern, Lauterbrunnen and Zermatt they speak German but in Montreux they speak French, even the train announcements change languages. It gets confusing, so I just stick to greeting people in English most of the time. When I had arrived here I was fuming a bit because I ...

... room, toilets and showers to myself. I rarely saw anyone and reception was really nice. I then headed to Cully to try the famous Lavaux walk but caught a train that didn't make all the stops so I ended up at Lausanne again. I decided to take a bit of a walk, making my way through Pully and then to Letvy where I caught the train to Cully. The view was great but the vineyards that I stumbled across in Letvey were better because there was noone around and you could really smell the wine.

... and beggars, especially here. I have gotten to the point where when I saw the man praying for money I just wanted to kick him. I have been told that there is work in Switzerland if you don't mind the cold and a little hard work.
It has been a while since I have encountered any of them, but it really made me hot under the collar. I have also found that I am much more suspicious of everybody, everytime someone approaches me I am a little more on my guard.
I think I also saw an old ...

... the snow. I was lucky enough to see a couple of Golden Eagles hat flew over me. They were massive. As I climbed up another point of the mountain I bypassed a couple of blokes climbing up to the path after taking the wrong direction (there was a fork in the path, luckily I chose the right one). It was very difficult for them but they said they would make it. I hope they were ok. At some points there is only a rope while you balance yourself on the edge of a cliff and ...

Unfortunately the weather was terrible. It was raining this morning but I decided to make the most of what I could Mannlichen as I thought I would go on a small hike between there and Kleine Scheidegg. Wengen and Lauterbrunnen are ok in the wet but Mannlichen was not. I suppose it was too high and the weather couldn't hold. It was very windy and I swear the rain was ice flakes. Twenty metres in front of me there was only white. It was quite amazing ...

... be a rest. Then I went up the opposite side of the valley to get a good overview of the marathon hike from the first day, see picture included. The views on this side were possibly even more spectacular than on the first day. I was elated.

On my last day I walked around Interlaken for a bit, only convincing myself that I made the right choice by not staying there.

Being from western ...

... for beer at the local bar. We got to talking to an Aussie guy who was there for Base Jumping, I had never met any one who was crazy enough for this, so it was quiet cool to chat to him for a while. Besides a cheese fondue, which quiet frankly wasn't that good, there wasn't much else to report from Lauterbrunnen. It was raining again the next day so we headed off. The drive out of Switzerland was fantastic though, and going over yet another mountain ...

... This chap (Andrew) had a tuned exhaust on his Elise and he went blatting through a tunnel making a right racket, brillient it was even if he did get a finger wagging from a french lady in a pug who didn't approve. *Gallic shrug* Such a day's driving infact that I didn't get to take any photos. Will try harder tomorrow (St Gothard and St Bernadino). Bring it on!

... Palace. As well as various restaurants and shops, the Jungfraujoch building complex also houses important telecommunication installation, a high-Alpine research station and weather station. And the Jungfraujoch-Top of Europe railway station has Europe's highest-altitude post office, the perfect place to sen "Wish you were here" postcards to love ones back home.

... from the previous day, which was actually just salami in a squared-off tube shape. It actually tasted really good with the bread. We walked back down and went farther through the town, stopping in little shops along the way. We also scoped out restaurants, and finally found one with a decently priced rosti dish. That's all I needed, so we planned to come back. As we got closer to the waterfall we saw that there were stairs leading right up to it, so we went. There was a steep ...