Eyrealm: The Merriest, Harryest, Scariest Ride Ever!

Truly the past two days since we left Anita’s house have brought us past scenery that is just unbelievable! As I said before, there is no way to capture the grand scale, the brilliant hues of green, nor the thrill of coming so close to death which I will explain later.

Here’s a try at showing you some of the fabulous scenery we enjoyed the last two days through gorgeous little villages pasted on the slopes of the hills and little farms that had been carefully cleared of the madding crowd of trees. There is just enough space for a house and barn, a little grazing space and a garden.

This ribbon of cloud nestled along the mountain on our way to Lichtenstein:

Here is a fortress in Lichtenstein, hanging on the mountain. You’ve got to ask yourself how in the world they got that thing up there!

This delightful village said it contained “Heidihous” which we assumed meant the house where Heidi lived. Even though we never found it, the streets looked as though Heidi could show up from the mountains any minute.

We especially like this very authentic “pooper scooper” cleaning up after these horses.

Every village’s highest point is the church steeple. We wondered how well the churches are used now.

Those of you who have never traveled on “white road” on the map of Switzerland you have missed one of the craziest rides of your life! Again, there is just no way to show that you are within twelve inches (unless a van passes you, in which case the margin goes to about 3 inches) of…to quote Noah when he was little…”tumbling down the rock” in a sheer 2000 foot drop off the edge of a cliff. There were little wood markers on the big turns but they wouldn’t care a bit if you hit them…they’d just give way! Since there is no way I could take the pictures straight down and there is also no way for you to see how this drops off, just trust me…it was the harryest, scariest ride ever!

You just never knew when you were going to come around one of these hairpin turns to find a big truck coming straight at you!

Note the road we traveled across the way!

“On the way” we dropped by Davo where all the world leaders meet in Switzerland (no too impressive) and St.Moritz (below) which was really a gorgeous place!

And after that, one of these crazy passes led us right to Lake Como in Italy last night. This was the scene out our doorway this morning:

What a wonderful place this is! The girls will remember having gilato here when we went on our first grand MFME adventure 11 years ago!

Stairways like this hang on the mountain leading to homes crammed into the hillsides.

Dad looked like the cat who caught the mouse all day!

We must have gone through 50 tunnels, the engineering of which has to be one of the wonders of the world!

It was so fun to see Bellagio again as we passed by!

As we drove from Lake Como to Interlaken, we were again “treated” to amazing mountain passes and scenery to die for!

There were literally thousands of waterfalls falling out of the mountains because of this:

Here’s a scary picture…looks like there are also rockfalls! Instead of “tumbling down the rock” the rocks apparently came tumbling down!

After a fabulous, albeit harry day on the road, we arrived in Interlaken and the lush valley that is shrouded by towering peaks!

We had a lovely dinner at the fabulous five star Grand Victoria Hotel and watched hang gliders glide in one after the other.

We arrived in Grindelwald before dark and of course, found the very best, most serendipitous hotel at the end of the road. This is the scene from our balcony:

The only other building in our sight is this charming little farm house with the barn below which houses a mom and dad cow and about six baby cows that run around in the yard playing like little dogs. The “parents” live above the barn and we’ve heard that used to be very common in Switzerland because the animal heat helped keep the family warm in winter.