The Ogre, the Monk and the Virgin

Children’s playground at Allmendhubel, Mürren, Switzerland – with, from left to right, the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks in full view (if not for the darn clouds!)

The ogre, monk and virgin are the English translations of the names of the three most well-known peaks in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland, the Eiger (Ogre), Mönch (Monk) and Jungfrau (Virgin). And you thought this would be a juicy fairy tale about some virgin??

These 3 peaks can be seen clearly in all its glory from Allmendhubel, a hillock with a children’s playground, above Mürren. …On a sunny day that is (ahem).

Here’re the photos. Enjoy!


The funicular railway station to Allmendhubel, Mürren, Switzerland






Allmendhubel, Mürren, Switzerland


“I love to go a-wandering, along the mountain tracks,…” and this time with a friggin pram!


Jayden, trying to wriggle himself out of mommy’s grasp – he still can’t walk at that time, he was 10 months’ old


I think, Justin had the most fun – Swinging on a ropeway with the majestic mountains looking by


Another picture with the Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger in the background

You can actually take a train up to Jungfraujoch, at the saddle (the lowest point on the ridge) between the Jungfrau and Mönch as explained in my previous post. It’ll only cost you 212 Swiss Francs return per person from Mürren (bloody 945 ringgit!! The cost of maybe 5 Air Asia flights! For a friggin train ride – that’s Switzerland for you).


Bye-bye Allmendhubel, descending back to Mürren on the funicular train


Allmendhubel-Bahn Station, Mürren, Switzerland

Little Swiss Mountain Villages

Anu and the kids, Mürren, Berner Oberland (Bernese Highlands), Switzerland

Another holiday photo post coming up! I guess it’ll be holiday photos till at least the end of this darn project. (By the way, the project was supposed to finish by the end of last month!)

More Swiss mountain villages for you! The Jungfrau region was where we went to after our visit to the Matterhorn. We left car-free Zermatt by train to Täsch to collect our car. We then decided NOT to take the car-train (again) (which is the fastest route) but to drive the long way through the countryside to Lauterbrunnen. (We’re not gonna be stuck in some friggin tunnel under the mountains on a beautiful day like that day, OK?) I was glad we drove! We had one of the best days of our trip picnicking along the way, passing over interesting places like Reckingen-Gluringen and Grimsel Pass.

Our destination was our hotel in the little town of Mürren, another car-free town. It’s car-free because it’s friggin high up on a ledge in the mountains overlooking Lauterbrunnen. Go ahead, check it out on Google Earth!

To get to Mürren, we had to park our car at the multi-storey car park in Lauterbrunnen, take a cable car (yes, you heard correctly, a cable car, but a large one that feels more like a train than a cable car actually – technically called an aerial cableway) up to the train station (Grütschalp) high up above Lauterbrunnen (some 700m above!). Then we had to take a train, and voila, we’re in Mürren!


View from our hotel room, Hotel Blumental, Mürren, Jungfrau Region, Switzerland


In the lobby of Hotel Blumental


Justin, with a Dubai Eye flag, outside Hotel Blumental, Mürren – Dubai Eye is a talk radio station in Dubai which I often tune in to while driving (and in Dubai, you drive a lot!) – They held a competition for the best summer holiday photo, where people had to go around taking photos, with the Dubai Eye flag! No, we didn’t win. Some photo from Kenya won, if I remember correctly…


Yours truly in Mürren




More views of Mürren – the snow-capped peak on the right is the Jungfrau, which gave this region its name, and the conical shaped peak on the left, is the Eiger – these two mountains, together with the Mönch (hidden from view by the mountain in front of it) forms the trio of mountain peaks famous in the Jungfrau region

There’re a lot of things you can do in Mürren like hiking, or if you have a lot of spare cash, going for rides up the mountain, like taking a cable car to Schilthorn peak, where you’ll find Piz Gloria, a revolving restaurant featured in the James Bond film, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, or taking a train to Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe. The Schilthorn trip will set you back by about (let’s see, …Googling it), a whopping 82 Swiss Francs (today’s rate), 300+ dirhams per person! And Jungfraujoch, get ready for this, 212 friggin Swiss Francs i.e. 800 dirhams per person, bloody hell! (If your destination is Jungfraujoch, you’d be better off staying in Wengen, on the other side of the deep Lauterbrunnen valley, than Mürren. To get to Jungfraujoch from Mürren, you’ll need to change trains / cable cars 5 times and it takes nearly 3 hours to get there).

We were cheapskates, and besides, the weather ain’t too good (just look at the clouds in the photo), so we decided to just hop onto the small funicular train named Allmendhubel Bahn, to a children’s playground above Mürren. (It’s 13 CHF per person at today’s rate, 50 dirhams, …not too bad for poor people like us!) (I’ll put photos of the playground in another post). And when we were done with that, with still some time to spare, we walked from Mürren down to the next village of Gimmelwald and then took a cable car ride back to Mürren! (You think we’re gonna walk all the way back uphill after all that exercise?) We then had some Chinese food at a restaurant ran by a Singaporean / Malaysian Chinese Couple (yeah, in Mürren!), and then headed down to Lauterbrunnen to get our car to drive to our next destination! Bye, hope to see you again, Mürren!


Taking a rest, by the road between Mürren and Gimmelwald, Switzerland




Welcome to Gimmelwald!


Cable car, for the return trip back to Mürren from Gimmelwald




Views of the deep, immense U-shaped Lauterbrunnen valley from aboard the cable car


Approaching Mürren from Gimmelwald, by cable car


The village of Wengen, on the opposite ledge of the immense Lauterbrunnen Valley

A Train Ride up the Alps

Gornergrat, Canton of Valais, Switzerland – with the Matterhorn in the background

Here’re more pictures from the nicest day of our 2015 Europe trip! Our tryst with the Matterhorn.

One of the difficulties in creating a post, especially a holiday related post, is friggin sorting out the photos! Once that’s done, the post is a breeze. And that’s the case for this one! After that last post, I have a treasure trove of Matterhorn pictures, hehe. Here goes!


Views of the countryside from the Gornergrat Bahn (Gornergrat Rail) en route to Gornergrat, with Mount Matterhorn, looming behind

Yeah, we took the Gornergrat Bahn (Gornergrat Rail) from Zermatt up to Gornergrat. It’ll blow a big hole in your pocket. But what doesn’t, in Switzerland? If I recall correctly, each return ticket costs something like 80 – 90 Swiss Francs, a whopping 350 dirhams per person! But the views up there, are definitely worth it!!! On a nice sunny day. (Don’t waste your money if it’s cloudy…)




Anu & Justin with the Gorner Glacier

And here’s a link to another picture of Justin at Gornergrat.


A view of the mountains from Gornergrat


Anu and the Kulmhotel, Gornergrat, Switzerland


Chapel, Gornergrat

On the way down, we stopped at Rotenboden station (the second highest station, after Gornergrat, you can stop at any station), and spent a li’l time hiking …or more correctly, wandering around and taking photos (go ahead, try hiking on a hill track, with a baby pram, and see how fun that is!)




The Riffelsee (name of the lake) and the Matterhorn

And here’s a link to a photo of little Jayden having a field day at Riffelsee.




Our little mountain adventure at Rotenboden, Gornergrat


“I love to go, a wandering, along the mountain track, and as I go, I love to sing, with a knapsack on my back” (…and a baby on my front)


The Gorner Glacier, from Rotenboden

Face to Face with the Matterhorn

Let’s see how fast I can put together a blog post. In this Project, I don’t even have time to friggin eat!

Continuing from where I left off in the last post. After the long journey and reaching Zermatt in the middle of the night, waking up to the sight of Mount Matterhorn peering at you from the balcony window of your room was just …AMAZING!

Sure felt like all our hard work of planning for the trip paid off! Europe is a bitch when it comes to weather. In the two weeks of our Europe trip, the weather forecast we checked just 2 weeks before the trip, showed that most of the days during our trip would be friggin rainy or cloudy. And we can’t change a thing about it coz the air tickets are bought, I’ve taken leave and we’ve planned out almost everything! But our highlight was Switzerland (Anu’s dream destination), so we had to rearrange it so that we’d be in Switzerland during the best of the weather and this turned out beautifully, in Zermatt at least! Here’re the pictures! Enjoy!


The best morning in our Europe 2015 trip – Mount Matterhorn, from our hotel room balcony, Hotel Bristol, Zermatt, Valais, Switzerland


So, that’s where the Toblerone chocolate symbol came from, a view from the stream just outside our hotel


Zermatt Graveyard, supposedly a tourist attraction …sure it’s peaceful, but who’s gonna visit a graveyard? Must house some famous mountaineers who died trying to climb the mountain, huh?








More views of the little car-free town of Zermatt, Valais Canton, Switzerland


The oldest part of Zermatt – Hinterdorf


The Matterhorn at dusk, Zermatt, Switzerland


Lights on the Matterhorn at night, in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the first time someone reached the summit of Matterhorn – the lights mark the path taken by the climbers, and is slowly lighted up from bottom to top. It’s repeated a few times in the night – View from our hotel room, Zermatt, Aug 2015

Car Trains, to Take or Not to Take?

We’re not going anywhere for summer this year. We like the summer here in the UAE, with its 43 to 50 degrees C heat, naturally hot scalding bath water and the dust. Yeah, we’re that crazy.

Actually, dad, and niece Sweety are here for a visit. Told Dad, it’ll be HOT, but he didn’t believe how hot it could get! Sweety’s on a college break, so we brought her here from India (where it’s raining dogs and cats now) to see how heat and dust could actually be nice. If only that was true.

In actual fact, we didn’t plan anything. Besides, we’re saving (leave days and money) for a New Zealand trip to see sis Kim & family. And NZ flights are expensive, coz it’s so bloody far away. Meanwhile, here’re some pictures from my stock of holiday photos just for busy times like this.


Iselle Village, on the Italian-Swiss border, Piedmont Region, Italy

Continuing with our Europe trip posts from where I left off before. To recap, we were leaving Italy after a night in Milan. What was supposed to be a short visit at the Expo Milano 2015 in the morning before we left Italy, turned out to be a long complicated affair (we misunderstood where we had to meet and spent more than an hour looking for each other!). We then drove beside Lago Maggiore and here we are, at the Italian-Swiss border. How I wish we were in Europe now, sigh!


The Italian countryside, beside a gas station on the highway, near Villadossola town, Piedmont, Italy


Another photo of Iselle Village, Italian-Swiss Border

Here’s where we came across our first car-train! The Italian-Swiss Border at the Piedmont Region, coming from Italy. Switzerland apparently is full of car-trains, a train where you can drive your car up on, which then takes you, and your car, into a tunnel across and underneath the immense Swiss Alps, to your next destination.

Our car GPS led us to the car-train station, at Iselle di Trasquera, at the Italian border. But hey, I’m not gonna miss driving on the Swiss Alps for some train ride in a tunnel, …even if it’s at night, so, no way mate!

On hindsight, maybe we should’ve taken the car-train. The border was almost the last thing we could see before sunset. We travelled through the entire Simplon Pass at night! True, we noticed some nice hotel-like buildings and hill-slopes at very dim twilight, which must have been spectacular at daytime. But what a waste.

We were on our way to Zermatt, where the mighty Mt Matterhorn is. Zermatt is a car-free town. The nearest our car could drive to, was Täsch, where people could park their cars and take a train to Zermatt. We reached Täsch at about 11pm. By the time we parked, took our bags and all that, the train has left! The next train …12 midnight! …Hmmm, yup definitely should’ve taken the car-train!


There we were – Täsch Train Station, waiting for the next train


And here’s little Jayden at Täsch, Valais, Switzerland