Switzerland

Pictures can never do justice to the beauty of Switzerland.     It was totally awesome and not only the natural beauty of the landscape, but everything is so neat and clean.     It seemed that everyone had enormous pride in their homes, yards and even streets and roads.     We never saw a piece of trash on any highway.

Our first stop was Lake Geneva and we stayed in a delightful place right on the lake.    We drove from there to Interlaken and stayed a couple of days in this delightful spot, taking a drive around that lake the first day.

The following day was a real adventure.     We decided to go the top of Schiltorn (I believe either the second or third highest peak in the area).     For any of you that are James Bond fans, one of the earliest movies with Sean Connery was partly filmed on top of Schiltorn, I think it was called something like "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".     You might recognize it from the brochure picture following, what you see was blown up in the movie.

In order to get to the top, one had to take a series of cable cars.     The first leg took you to 4,000 to the village of Gimmelwald.

The next leg went to Murken (pictured above) at 5,500 feet, then another cable car to 9,000 feet Berg, and a fourth leg to the summit of 10,000 Shilthorn.

The views were beyond belief and I wish I could have enjoyed them more than I did.     I have to be honest and tell you that I have a height problem, and on top of that am terrified of things like Cable Cars.     I clung to a pole in the center of each car and was barely able to look straight out at the surrounding mountains.    All the other brave people were up against the windows taking it all in!

Once at the top, I was able to take it all in.     I spent probably an hour or more just walking around, watching the skiers take off from that height and head down the hills and generally enjoyed the whole experience.     There was a small, but interesting, museum up there and a coffee house.     Unfortunately, it was here that we realized for the first time that Dick had a problem.     He just couldn't take the altitude, and was not able to walk around and see anything, spending his whole time just sitting at a table and waiting for me.
It was hard to leave Switzerland, I would love to go back and see a lot more of this gorgeous country, but time and money was running out, so we left and headed towards Germany........