Europe Trip: Day 8 (Interlaken, Bern, and Basel)

Eric's one hope for this day of our trip was to row on a boat in Interlaken. We headed out on a scenic drive and saw some beautiful sites.

We went to another gorge, which was cool. It was amazing to think of the engineering involved to build the pathways in the gorge, especially considering that they were started in the late 19th century. Those German engineers know what's what.

We reached Interlaken, and we were immediately excited by how pretty it was and how perfect the lake was.

But then the boat rental place was closed. And there were no other places to rent rowboats. We could have done paddleboats, but why would anyone want to ride on a paddleboat? Or, more accurately, why would anyone want to paddle a paddleboat?

So we picnicked in town looking out at the Jungfrau (the big famous mountain). We had considered doing activities at the mountain that day, and had we known that the rowboat would not come to fruition, that is what we would have done. Ah, hindsight.

We went on our way and saw more beautiful scenery.

We stopped by the Bern Temple. We knew ahead of time that it would be closed for cleaning, but it has some family significance for Eric's family, so we wanted to at least go visit the outside. (Eric's paternal grandfather served a mission in Switzerland; his paternal grandmother has Swiss ancestry; and his maternal grandmother sang at the Swiss Temple dedication in 1955.)

We popped into Basel on our way to France. We decided our favorite historic towns are the ones on rivers. Other than grabbing a bite to eat, we didn't do much there, which is too bad.

And the on we went to France!

All in all, Switzerland was not our favorite. The different currency (they still use the franc), the high cost of everything, and the one activity Eric really wanted to do not panning out made us all pretty ambivalent about Switzerland.