Making it up as we go!

We woke up to low cloud and rain this morning with heavy rain falling through the night. Our decision to skip the Jungfrau was a good one as the ceiling is about 300 feet in the valley and the weather reports above have similar conditions.

We had a bite of breakfast and planned out our morning. Pat wanted to see a castle so after a bit of search on the net we settled on Schloss Thun Castle in the town of Thun. It is about 50 km west of us at the end of.... yep you guess it... Lake Thun :-)

Off we went to the town of Thun for a tour of the castle. We made an emergency stop at a huge mall as Hartley's belt succumb the pressures of vacation eating:-) New belt in hand... or should I say waist (?) :-)  and our trip resumed. 

The TomTom took us to the base of the castle and we quickly found a parking spot. It was all within easy walking distance to both the castle and the downtown core with it's neat island setup and fast moving water.

Lovely planters with tourists.

 The downtown was very pretty with lots of shops along the water front. The small island is surrounded by nice vegetation and lovely planters.  Ideal for pictures and a nice stroll.

Upper side of the sluice.

Great spot!

Lower Sluice

 We walked around the stalls and shops and then headed up the small hill to find the entrance to the Castle. After searching around a bit, and with some guidance from a local lady, we found it!

Town Square Pano

Thun Castle... look up..way up!

 We picked up tickets and stored our packs in a locker before heading up the many stairs to the towers above. Each level presented a piece of history and interesting artifacts of the numerous era's.  The dungeon was actually on one floor and I thought about shackling up Kelly... just to see how they worked. (It was a brief thought :-) We spent about an hour looking at the views and the interesting items on display.

View from the towers.

Tower from the other tower :-)

Incredible view showing Lake Thun, the canal and Stadtkirche Thun (Protestant Church)  

The Swiss are inventive!

Guard Tower along the wall.

After our tour of the castle we headed down along teh waterfront and stopped for lunch by the river. We people watched during lunch then decided to head to Grindelwald to check out the bottom of the Eiger (which the clouds obscured today... aaarrgh! ). Worth the trip to see anyway as it is not far from Interlaken. We drove up the windy road and soon past the mini golf of Akimoto fame. We found parking easily and walked the shops along the way. Hartley bought a watch and we bought chocolate, wool and souvenirs. 

Lunch cooking in Grindewald

Very nice yard work on display!

We headed back to Brienz and topped up the car with gas for our morning escape to Aosta ,Italy. A quick stop at the Co-op for dinner supplies then back to the apartment. Drinks and blogging to keep our peeps in the know!

We planned the route to Aosta via Bern, Montreux and then the Tunnel Du Grand St. Bernard through to Aosta... should be interesting.