We are very close to a beautiful lake in Switzerland, Walensee, so we drove the half hour there to take a ferry and hike up to a beautiful waterfall. The drive took us to the small village of Weesen, where the ferry starts from.
Quick note, Switzerland doesn’t use Euros, and the parking lot only accepted Swiss Francs, no credit cards. I had to run across the street to the restaurant there to get change. Keep this in mind so you don’t miss the ferry. There are only 3 of them a day, so if you miss it, you are SOL. Fortunately we made the ferry.
While onboard we sat next to Dr Eberhard Paul and his grandson Jan (pronounced Yan).
Jan is 10 years old, and is currently in his first year of English in school, so he was anxious to practice. I was surprised with how well he could not only communicate with us, but how much of what we said he understood, with a little help from his grandfather. Jan lives here next to the lake, which has got to be a really rough place to grow up! Super inquisitive kid, with no fear of talking to strangers from another country. He’s going to go far! If you ever make it to Northern California, look us up!
We only took the ferry to one stop, Betlis, where there is practically nothing, with the exception of cows wearing bells. There goes the ferry, with the flag of the Red Cross on the stern. Switzerland is a strange place.
This sign points toward the wasserfalle.
A group of cute little goats along the way.
The waterfall is not flowing very heavy right now, but it was still woth the short hike up.
We walked by a small vineyard, and I’ve never seen grape protection like this before. Every single cluster was covered in a net.
We had planned to have lunch at a small restaurant near the waterfall, but they said we needed a reservation. Hard to believe, as the place was half full, but so be it. We ended up walking back to Weesen, which only took about an hour, and was a beautiful walk.
It involved walking through several tunnels, but at least they weren’t 9 miles long like in Austria!
The restaurant right across from the parking lot for the ferry is pretty good, so I’d count on that place if you ever visit the lake. They even take credit cards, which is great, since I don’t need a whole bunch of Swiss Francs since we are heading to Italy the next day. One last beautiful shot of Walensee Lake.
As we were driving back towards Liechtenstein, we saw a gondola going over the road and up the hill. I quickly pulled over and checked it out, and it was just a short drive to Unterterzen, where the gondola departed from.
Here is a shot of the roadway where we saw the gondola…from the gondola.
This was an expensive gondola ride, at 42 Swiss Francs each (about $45), but we found out it was worth it after finding out how far up the mountain it really went. The first ride was about a half hour, and had the steepest section I’ve ever seen on a gondola. The picture doesn’t do it justice! At one point it was near vertical!
The second section was another 25 minutes. There are ski lifts everywhere you look. This place would be amazing in winter! You can still see a little snow on the ground from the prior night in the bottom of the photo.
Looking back down the hill. The clouds started rolling in about 15 minutes after we got to the top.
This is the view from the restaurant at the top. Such a gorgeous place!
The light was just right on the gondola ride back down. I took 5 photos and had a REALLY hard time picking what I thought was the best one! This is looking WNW toward Weesen.
Up next, Lake Como!
