9/4 – Day 6: Niederhorn and Goats
We arrived into the town of Thun at around 10:30. Our plan was to do a hike where we could see the Aletsch Glacier from a couple mountain tops.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned out how we were going to get back from the hike – and when I started to look into it when we got to the airBnB (which had a great view from our bedroom btw), I realized it wasn’t going to be possible because of when the cable cars shut down for the day. So we had to find something else to do. Our host suggested that we could hike the Emmental Alps, to the Niederhorn peak, only a 1/2 hour away – so we went with that.
While on the bus ride over to the base, we picked out a 5 hr trail from the map that looked to have some beautiful views. We would take the funicular up maybe 1/3 of the way up then mountain to our starting point of the hike (walking up to the peak – opposite of the map’s suggestion). However, again, it looked like if we did this, we’d miss the last cable car down from the peak, so decided to cable car it up to the top, then hike down from there.
By the time we made it to the Niederhorn peak, it was already 1pm. We spent an hour just taking in the views from up top, eating lunch, as well as playing around on this kids ‘adventure course’ before starting our hike down.
The first 1.5-2 hrs of the hike actually wasn’t downhill as I had expected. There were some downhill sections, but it was overall up, as we were going to 2 different peaks (Burgfeldstand and Gemmelphorn) on the way. This part was a little slower than suggested since we took more pictures up here…looking out to the Thun, the lake, and the Jungfrau alps region on one side, and on the other side, more alps, and a valley of cow and goat pastures. Really beautiful!
When we go to the Gemmelphorn peak, we were treated to a family of mountain goats! I think there were 5 total, including a baby. They were all pretty shy, and we had to be pretty still and quiet to keep them from running off.
From here, it was pretty much downhill for the next 2 hours, as we made our way down into the valley of the pastures. We were able to see and hear this lady calling in her cows with a true Swiss cow calling – I think.
Maybe 20 minutes later, we saw about 9-10 more mountain goats way out in a field off the path, grazing on the grass – maybe…200m out? (Zoom in on the first picture below for how far out there were from us). For fun, I decided to try the cow call that the lady had done. At first, a couple of the goats looked up, then decided to keep eating. We continued to walk away from them up the path, and I did it once more. This time, a couple of them started walking in our direction… slowly. And as we walked away, they all started coming towards us…now at a trot. We were getting a little concerned now…so started to walk a little faster. They trotted faster…we started to jog…they started to run. They were catching up quickly now, and we weren’t sure of what to do. But up ahead, I saw a barbed wire fence, made to keep the cows and goats in place, so as long as we got there, we’d be fine! We made it – but as I looked back, I saw the lead goat go right under the wire…. great! They were coming up real close now… so I told Norina to go off the path and up the hill beside us a bit. I knew they could climb hills, but I was hoping they would just trot on by us. When they came near us…they slowed down…examined us for a little, and then thankfully moved along. Thank goodness! I was really worried about getting a goat horn to the leg or just getting trampled!
So as they trotter up ahead of us, we continued on our way up the path safely behind them. We realized now that these were farm goats, as they had bells on them, and must have thought we were the farmers calling them in – a few minutes later, we saw the farmhouse and the goats hanging out in the field in front of there. We came up on them again, and Norina was brave enough to get up and close. Not me…I just wanted to get away… especially when I saw 2 of them playing around and head-butting each other…. and then another goat trying to follow me – I thought it wanted to play around with me! Thankfully, after a minute it stopped following me, and we were on our way back down the path…alone! Ok…drama over!
We finally made our way down, and now there was a farm with some pigs, horses, chickens… and an electric fence blocking the path out to the road. Did we go the right way?? After rechecking our guide, it looked like we were on the right path, as we would need to walk on a paved road for about an hour – so we proceeded to go under the fence and made the rather dull journey on the flat paved road. At least it was neat to be walking right in between 2 mountain ranges..and having the sun start to set behind one of them.
So, it’s a little after 7 now, and we finally got to the point where we would turn off the road and back to the trail which would take us back to the funicular… which the sign told us would be another 1.5 hrs away! And I knew the funicular was closed by now, so then we’d have to hike down another hour from there. I was worried about losing sunlight out on the trails, so with some google mapping, saw that we could just continue down the road for another 3.5 miles or so, and we’d be back down on the main road where we could catch the bus back – so opted for that route instead.
The road was narrow, so we’d need to always stop whenever cars came by, but it was fine for the most part. Maybe midway down, we came upon a beautiful viewpoint, which we just happened to come upon right as the sun was setting from that view. It was a nice little surprise – but we didn’t stay for the whole sunset, or it would get too dark on us. So we started to jog down now, as we were able to rest our feet some.
We eventually made our way into a beautiful little town – made our way through there for another mile or so, and then we were finally down at the bus stop at about 9pm! Hungry, we decided to get some dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant before heading back to our place. When we walked in the waiter said they could only serve us pizza since it was so late – perfect! Pizza lakeside to end a long adventure… just what we needed!
Average Step Count: 41,308
Note: 7000 Step Count difference between the 2 of us today!
9/5 – Day 7: Thun
Today is the start of what is forecasted to be about 1 week of rainy or snowy or otherwise gloomy weather. So with rain in mind for today, we decided to stay in Thun and visit some caves to stay out of the rain and do a little Thun city touring via bus.
Thankfully though, we woke up to some clear skies, so decided to walk around the old town for a little bit while the weather was still nice. It was a pleasant walk through town and their covered bridges. Along the way, we saw some river surfers riding a constant wave being created from the rush of water coming from under the bridge – pretty awesome to see!
We decided to stop by the Stadtkirche (city church) first, which seems to have a smiling face on its tower outside.
Then we went to the Schloss Thun castle prior to lunch. The tour through the inside of the castle was pretty neat, and they had a lot of neat artifacts to see/touch and and stories to tell. In fact, at one point, Norina was sentenced for her criminal thieving activities the previous night! The views of Old Town (and the smiling city church) were also fantastic from the 4 castle towers.
After we had our fill of Old Town, we went back to our place to eat some lunch, and then went out to Schadau Park to walk around a little bit – before making our way out to the St Beatus Caves.
The caves were interesting…but nothing too special as we’ve both seen other caves before. The timing worked out perfectly though, as it started to rain heavily just as we got there…so we got our day walking in (in dry weather) and had our indoor activity while it was raining!
On the rainy bus ride back from the caves, a thought popped into my mind to check out the weather in Italy. Looked like sun for the most part in the coming week… so Norina and I chatted about it a little and decided we’d look into changing our plans later that night – to go down south for a few days instead of stay in rainy Switzerland.
Before that though, we made our way a little outside of the main part of town, to a local Swiss restaurant to experience some authentic Swiss food, since we might not be there for too much longer. We got some stares when we came in and sat down… no English menus, but thankfully, our waitress was able to speak a little English, and give us some suggestions of some classic meals. We decided to go with a Cordon Bleu and another chicken with krauterbutter. The Cordon Bleu was pretty massive and tasty (which a ton of cheese oozing out of it). The other chicken was cooked perfectly and had a delicious topping over it…so definitely a nice meal to end the day.
This was the last night that we had rooms booked for the rest of the trip until Paris – so we spent the rest of our evening figuring out our plans for the next few days and booking some rooms and train tickets. And to both of our surprises, we were going to Italy in 2 days!!
Average Step Count: 20659
Note: We switched the garmin and fitbit with each other, and noticed that the fitbit counts steps even if you only move you arm (so that seems to be why Norina always has a higher step count that me)
Jump to:
Switzerland
Zurich > Lucerne > Zermatt > Thun > Lauterbrunnen
Italy
Milan > Cinque Terre > Florence > Bologna > Venice
The Dating Life of Norina and Jonathan 