Breathless

Photo: Jungfrau

Day 26: Day trip to Jungfrau

We awoke to the sound of rain after two days of perfect weather. We even managed to get a little sunburned yesterday. Now we were heading up into the Alps and it was a grey, rainy day. We met our tour and headed to Interlaken then on to Lauterbrunnen to catch the first of the two rack rails to Jungfrau. At every stage we were below heavy cloud or in the cloud. The final part of the journey is in tunnels through the Eiger mountains. When we emerged at Jungfraujoch – the highest railway station in Europe, at 3454m – we were above the cloud and the view left us breathless. Our guide, Kid (from Thailand!) was a real character, grabbing our camera from us to capture the family moment at every vantage point. He took us quickly to the highlights of Jungfrau, then left us for a couple of hours to explore on our own. After we had seen the Ice Palace, Sphynx and Plateau, we headed for the ‘snow fun’ area where Lauren went on a huge flying fox, with a backdrop of the peaks of the Swiss Alps. Breathless again as Lauren and I walked back to the top of the flying fox. Not much air up here. Back to Lucerne to pack the bags for the next stage – Venice.