Plans tried and failed

After a nice breakfast, we headed back toward the train station.  Opposite the station there is a cable car up and out of the valley, and from there we took a little train to the town of Mürren.  Mürren is a car-free little town that was actually popularized by the famed traveler Rick Steves.  We were originally going to hike from Mürren over to a children's adventure trail, but we failed spectacularly!  First off, there was no signage and any maps were equally useless, so we tried to just wing it (the way we sorta have been?) but after 30 minutes ended up on like a 45-degree logging road.  Everybody was miserable and complaining and after a few other attempts of making sense of the maps, We. Gave. Up.

The old train we rode into Mürren

Looking back toward the Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger (right to left)

Paragliders were just launching

Piz Gloria

Joey was fascinated with the Eiger's north face ("death face", the steep slope on the left, in shadow)

After much deliberation and some more complaining, we decided to change plans entirely and take a different cable car up to the summit of Schilthorn, the nearby peak with a place called Piz Gloria at the apex.  Piz Gloria was being constructed when discovered by James Bond Filmmakers, and appeared in the film On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the headquarters of Blofeld, the villain/nemesis/I don't know, I haven't watched it.  It was interesting and we attempted in having lunch in the revolving restaurant.  I say attempt because we finally got a table and with no servers taking our order for at least another 20 minutes We. Gave. Up. Again.

On our way up/down there's a stopover in a place called Birg. While descending we decided to get out and explore a little bit, and it turns out there's a little cliff walk that brave souls can try out.  It's a little hard to describe, but basically there's a catwalk around the peak of this little place, with wire-walks and glass-bottomed paths... it wasn't that terrifying to us but I can imagine some people would be a little freaked out.  From Birg, Malorie and Siraj wanted to hike still, and even though I wanted to as well, our family took the cable car back down to Mürren and walked around a bit, looked for souvenirs, played around at the soccer field... just sort of relaxed. 

a chain-link tunnel with nothing below - the kids loved it.

Hiking around after the cliff walk

Once we met back up with Malorie and Siraj, we took the train and then cable car back to Lauterbrunnen. They had some dinner at a cafe that served their healthy stuff, where as we all went to the butcher/deli where we had sausages, chicken sandwich, and Melissa even had fondue! She was really the only one to enjoy the strong-flavor of the cheeses, but at least we all got to try some. And it was authentic. And we didn't give up on it, even if some of us might have wanted to.

Looking back toward the Schilthorn

Fondue!