Interlaken

Wednesday morning was pretty mixed. We woke to sunshine and glorious mountain views from our hotel balcony after a blissful night's sleep in the comfiest bed of the holiday thus far.

Eleanor and I missed out on a pre-breakfast swim, owing to the lateness of the hour, but we had thoroughly sampled all the hotel had to offer by way of watery amusement last night and, dare I say it, I have pretty much had enough of swimming!

Breakfast was served in the fading grandeur of the Hotel Belle Epoch Victoria's lavish dining room.  Like much if this hotel, it showed signs of having once been luxurious, but it's gentility was now somewhat shabby.

Breakfast (or possibly a surfeit of pool water last night) Did not sit well with Eleanor and whilst I was at the self service egg station boiling some eggs  (the point of the mid holiday night in a hotel was that someone cooks my meals for me!) Eleanor was sick! Since Daddy was in charge, they headed, not for the open door and grassy knoll outside that we were seated next to, but through the dining room towards the loos. Consequently Eleanor puked next to the juice station and a lovely American couple who had, hitherto, been enjoying a peaceful start to their day.

Breakfast was somewhat truncated after that and, given Eleanor's general peakiness, we abandoned our original plan to check out and then head back up the mountain to the Oschinsee and instead headed straight to our final holiday destination of Interlaken. 

We got to Unterseen well in advance of the 4pm check in time for Camping Manor Farm, so drove round the Thunersee to Beatenberg, from where we took the cable car(s) up the Neiderhorn. This gave us a spectacular view of the Thunersee and the Bernese Alps behind Interlaken. The day was a little hazy, but the triumvirate of Eiger, Monch and the Jungfrau could be seen clearly, across the lake. 

Eleanor managed to find a precipice to play next to. This is the view from the back of the Neiderhorn, a pretty sharp drop to valley below..

And then we came across a real playground. With a view to keep Daddy happy.

Keeping Daddy happy was a pretty tricky task. Gaz was somewhat disgruntled as a result of a short altercation between his car and a concrete wall in the car park. I am apparently the major cause of the contretemps (which resulted in major disfigurement of the passenger side rear door) since I failed to realise that my instruction to look out for oncoming traffic referred to static as well as moving obstacles!

However, mountain air restored his spirits; Eleanor's distress at the broken car meant that Gaz had to curb his and what do we have insurance for, if not to allow us to write off rear passenger doors without worrying (too much) about the consequences. 

We were all relieved though, when we finally rolled up at our Campsite and, after a thorough induction into the local sights by Tom from Halifax, we took possession of our, fairly palatial (two loos!) caravan.