Thursday was our long day. We left the hotel at 7:30 AM and returned after 6 PM. But what an experience it was. We took a train, to a train, to a train, to a cable car, and then to another cable car to find ourselves at an elevation of 2970 meters. As one who truly does not like heights, this whole day was unnerving. But I would not have missed it for the world.

The ride from Lugano to Lauterbrunnen was a relaxing, gorgeous ride of about 2 hours. From there we took a series of cable cars to the top of Schilthorn. Schilthorn is a summit in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland. The summit has a panoramic view which spans from the Titlis, Jungfrau, Mönch, Eiger, over the Bernese Alps and the Jura mountains up to the Vosges Mountains and the Black Forest. Mont Blanc is also just visible.

The panoramic revolving restaurant at the summit, Piz Gloria, was featured in the 1969 James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. A black ski run featured in the film starts at the summit and leads down to the Engetal below Birg. The restaurant revolves a full 360 degrees in 45 minutes, slightly faster than the minute hand of a clock.

After spending about an hour just taking in all the sights (the photos don’t do it justice) we headed back down through the same cable cars, but then on to a local bus that took us to Trümmelbach Falls. Trümmelbach Falls are a series of ten glacier-fed waterfalls inside the mountain made accessible by the tunnel lift, stairs, and illumination. Trümmelbach alone drains the northerly glacier defiles of Eiger (3967 m), Mönch (4099 m), and Jungfrau (4158 m) and carries more than 20,000 tons of boulder detritus per year. Its drainage area is 24 square kilometers (9.3 sq mi), half of it covered by snow and glaciers. The falls carry up to 20,000 liters of water per second.

After a quick lunch at the base, we went up to the falls. There are a few videos of the falls below, but it’s not possible to capture just how much water was moving through the interior of that mountain structure.

Leaving the falls we caught a bus to a train, to another train, to a bus, to the hotel. The Swssl Rail Pass is a great buy in that it covers most forms of transportation in the country and affords discounts at many of the places we visited.

We called it an early night and declared tomorrow a rest day!