July 1st: St Beatus Caves and Trummelbach Falls

 It was raining and gloomy as we had breakfast, but the kids were happy, since that meant having the day off from cycling and hiking. Our plan was to drive to St Beatus caves, which Boen had visited in 2024, but had no memory of! One of my friends Pengtoh always said that there’s no point bringing kids anywhere, because they forget everything by the time their adults anyway. My take is that even travel that you don’t remember changes you, and changing who you are is the whole point of travel.

Driving down the Rosenlaui road towards Interlaken and St Beatus, I was reminded at how low the speed limits were in Switzerland. Stephan once told me that the German joke is that Switzerland makes its trains slow so that the country looks bigger. That same joke would apply to Swiss roads as well.

Arriving at the St Beatus caves, we had no issues parking. This should have been an ominous warning, but instead we congratulated ourselves and parked, paying the parking fee without complaint (no matter what, it was cheaper than taking the train from Meiringen for 5 people!).

Just the approach to the caves is a sight worth seeing, with many TripAdvisor commentators comparing it to Rivendell in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Ring movies. They’re not far off, as the waterfalls coming out of the caves are neatly presented as part of the approach, diverging and converging, with stairs and ramps to take you up slowly.

At the entrance, we were shocked to find a sign that said: “Because of excessive water, the caves are closed!” Well, we were already here, so we went to take a peek. It turned out that as a result of the caves being closed, there was no entrance fee and we were allowed into the caves all the way until there was a locked gate preventing further egress for safety reasons. So not only did we get to see a part of the caves for free, we also got to see for ourselves why they didn’t consider further entry safe.

Having gotten our parking lot money’s worth, we then decided to go hike down to the lake (Thunersee), since the rain up till now was minimal. The hike down was forested and then we had to walk all the stairs to lake level, where the ferries ran. By the time we got down to the lake level, however, it started raining heavily! We sheltered inside the ferry terminal with a couple of students who were traveling around Europe on a shoe-string. Most European train, transit, and museum systems have some sort of youth discount, and these two guys were making the most of it. Of course, one side effect of being young is that you often prioritize getting a good deal on transportation over actually having a good time, so they described nightmare scenarios like spending a night in Paris in 40C weather in a youth hostel without even a fan. There are times when I think about how most of my youth was spent working on school or working for money because I had so little money, and I didn’t have time or money to travel until I’d aged out of those special discount programs. These two guys reminded me that maybe it was a good thing that my relative poverty had steered me towards bicycle touring where you were by nature prevented from those “It’s Tuesday so we must be in Paris” travel schedules.

The rain eased up a bit so we hiked back over to the car. It was still early, so when I asked if folks wanted lunch before going to Trummelbach falls they said no. So it was we drove over to Trummelbach falls. Unfortunately, a lot of people were thinking like I did, which was that a rainy day meant the waterfall would be even bigger! As a result, the line for tickets was long. I wondered why they had so few people manning the ticket counters and then realized that the bottleneck for the falls was the elevator that takes you up to where the main attractions were. Since those handle about 60 people at a time, there’s no point having a ticket flow rate that’s faster!

The rain jackets might have kept us dry, but what I didn’t anticipate was that the rain and lack of movement while standing in line made us cold! So by the time we got out of the ticket line and into the elevator line, Bowen, Boen, and even Mark was shivering. Naturally, going up the mountain in the elevator doesn’t warm you up, and once inside the mountain and viewing waterfalls the cold got worse! By the time we had finished viewing 5 waterfalls the kids and Mark had chattering teeth and were telling us they weren’t going to view the last few waterfalls outside and would just take the elevator down and exit.

Xiaoqin and I viewed the last few elevators outside, and it turned out that just by walking around outside and descending stairs you warmed up naturally. Nevertheless, when we were done everyone was hungry and we were ready to find a supermarket with a charging station nearby. Off the car’s navigation system I picked the Agrola Charging Station which was near an ALDI. Getting there, I let the family out and then plugged the car in but then could not figure out for the life of me how to charge! After failing to download the app I gave up and switched to one of the Ionity charging stations nearby. This was the first and only time I’d failed to charge the car at a station, and of course it had to happen when it was raining heavily.

We had lunch while the car charged, and since it was only 2pm, we decided to drop by Meiringen for a coffee shop. Meiringen normally charges for parking but we found an EV charging spot which doubled as a parking spot for very little money (it was a slow charger and the car would draw even less power because it was already at 80% charge!). The coffee shop was a bust, however, so we gave up and drove up the Grosse Scheidegg back to Rosenlaui.

We were subdued at dinner, fully absorbed in making the best of our last dinner at Rosenlaui. The forecast for tomorrow was sunny, and it was a short traverse to Lauterbrunnen. After dinner, Mark wanted to see the glaciers of Rosenlaui again, so we walked down the road to the bridge. We were nonplussed when there was only one glacier to be seen, but then I realized that the other glacier was covered up by the clouds. It  had stopped raining but it was still cloudy!

On the way back to the hotel, Mark showed us the power generator for the hotel, which generates power from the stream next to the hotel running down from Rosenlaui gorge. There was a clever mechanism where there’s a drainage into a reservoir that effectively maintains the same flow rate no matter how high the stream was, which then drives the dynamo with water from the reservoir. Mark had figured it all out while exploring the area on foot and looking through the window in the generator building.

June 30: Engleshorn Hutte

 A Rosenlaui breakfast buffet is always a delight. You get proper coffee (for whatever reason, Europeans don’t really know how to make coffee the way I like it), fresh baked breads of all sorts, a selection of yogurt (today included Hazelnut yogurt, which I would get 3 bowls of), and then there’s a good selection of meats, cheeses, and fruits to top it off. We ate as though we wouldn’t get lunch.

I got out Xiaoqin’s bike, all prepped for riding, and Mark and her went up the Grosse Scheidegg road. Bowen, Boen and I then walked over to the Rosenlaui Schlutz entrance, but rather than entering the Schlutz, which wasn’t open yet, we walked up the trail that would exit. The trail turned out to be ideally sited for a hot day. The initial section runs next to the Rosenlaui gorge waterfalls, so you got natural cooling from the icy cold water. Even after we split off from the gorge waterfall, we were almost entirely in shadow for the climb, which eventually gave us a great view of the Rosenlaui glacier, which we were told is no longer close enough to touch even if we went for the Dossenhutte (2663m).

We encountered a few hikers, even at this early hour, and as we rose in elevation we saw the Wildgarst, Scwarzhorn, and Tschingel peaks across the valley. In one spot, we could even peek down and through the trees saw Hotel Rosenlaui, looking like a doll’s house from so far away. When we finally got to the Englehornhutte, it was only 10:15am and no one was there, even though we’d just seen some hikers go the other way. Well, the hut was open anyway, so we ordered a couple of quick snacks and a drink before refilling our water bottles from the water fountain and heading on the way.

On the descent, we followed the signs to Kalterbrunnen, passing a dirt parking lot way up there where I recognized the logo for the Englehornhut. “Wow,” said Boen, “They have to hike half an hour to get to their car!” Such is life in the mountains.

At Kalterbrunnen once again Andreas was not there, but they had a hazelnut cake so Boen, Bowen, and I decided to eat there. Bowen couldn’t have the hazelnut cake, so he ordered the Quiche. It was warm enough that I ordered a non alcoholic beer and Boen ordered a Rivella, which had become the default drink for the kids for the rest of the trip.

After that stop, we walked out and headed on the official hiking trail to Rosenlaui, which took us along Rosenlaui creek and then into a shaded section just before bursting out into Rosenlaui valley for the grand view of the two glaciers and the valley. From there it was a short walk to Hotel Rosenlaui, where the kids immediately retreated into their room to play video games (electronic devices are banned in public areas of the hotel), and I proceeded to process photos before heading down for ice cream and to wait for Xiaoqin and Mark, who had successfully started climbing the Grosse Scheidegg from Meiringen.

Mark was the first to arrive, and when he told me about the ride up I immediately knew that they’d taken the mountain bike path up instead of the car road. The mountain bike path is a lot steeper, but has the benefit that it doesn’t have car traffic and no chance of running into the post bus until it joins the Grosse Scheidegg road just before the Reichenbach Falls upper trailhead.

Then he dropped the bombshell: “You know the waterfall you can walk behind, the Giessbach Fall?” he said as I nodded. For me, it was always one of the highlights of the classic Rosenlaui loop. “There’s a fancy hotel just below it, The Grandhotel Giessbach. I’ve stayed there before with my sisters!” “Oh, that means you’ve walked behind that waterfall before?!” “We must have, since we probably didn’t spend all our time in the room. But I honestly don’t remember.” Xiaoqin showed up and ordered an ice cream as well, and we chatted about the ride. I told them that Isetwald had become a major tourist attraction because of a Korean drama, which was why it’s now so crowded over there.

After that, I asked if anyone else wanted to see Rosenlaui Gorge, since it was still open and we get a discount for being hotel guests. I’d done it plenty of time but it never got old. Mark and Bowen both volunteered so we went and paid the gorge a visit. There are two gorges in this area, the Aare gorge and the Rosenlaui gorge, but by far the better one was the Rosenlaui one. It’s wilder, more natural, and always had plenty of water. It’s a bit of a duplicated hike since we’re coming down the trail we did in the morning, but it was still worth it.

Tuesdays are traditional Swiss music days at Rosenlaui. There’s a dinner reception at 6:30pm, where you get appetizers, and then at 7:00pm, you adjourn to the dining hall. There, the Swiss band performs music. One song, then the soup, then another song, the salad, and so forth. The kids were not impressed, and could barely keep themselves from laughing. There was a moment of excitement when one of the singers fainted during the song and had to be revived and sat down. “Wow,” said I in a moment of naivete, “He over-strained himself singing and fainted?” “More like he drank himself into a stupor,” declared Mark. “Those guys have been drinking non stop since the reception!”

It had started raining as predicted, so we didn’t go for an after dinner walk. In fact, it was raining so much that we were going to do a rain plan for the next day, using the car to do touristy things and giving everyone a break.

Review: Kindle Scribe Colorsoft

 For as long as the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft has been available for purchase, I'd wanted one. While I did enjoy my Kindle Scribe a lot, I wanted color for comic books. I didn't use it as a note taker very much, as it was a little too bulky to carry around casually, so the device mostly stayed at home. Of course, at $630, it was a steep ask, but I knew that it would eventually go on sale.

During this year's Prime days in July, it finally got discounted to $480. You get another $96 off if you traded in your old Kindle, which I promptly did. Having learned my lesson about storage, I knew I didn't need the 64GB model and just went for the 32GB basic model. The Cobak Case had a separate compartment for the pen which ensured I wouldn't lose it, which happened to all the kindle scribes in our family's possession, so I bought that instead of the official case.

I've used it to read multiple comics, and to be honest, it's still a little disappointing. The colors are muted, looking more like old-school newsprint rather than a bright display. Now, if you're outdoors this is still way better than any tablet, but for anything other than that, the muted display occasionally even makes reading text in colored dialog boxes difficult.

Having said all that, it's still a big improvement over no color at all, compared to the old kindle scribe. The screensaver page looks fantastic, and certain books have colored fonts for their chapter titles, and every time I look at it it looks great.

The battery life is not so good. If you're reading standard text, it'll last about half as long as the Kindle Scribe. That's plenty. But if you're downloading and reading comics? I've drained the battery in as little as 3 days of 3 hour per day of reading. Now I do have the brightness turned up, but it's clearly not a device that will go a month without charging like my older Kindle Scribe.

I used it to take notes recently, and the handwriting recognition isn't great. Expect to have to clean up the text if you use the handwriting recognition feature to deliver your own handwriting. Obviously, my handwriting has deteriorated over the years, so if I actually practice writing by hand a bit I expect I'll get better results. I'm not an artist, so I can't comment on how much it is to draw or color or anything like it.

Now, anything that will get you to read more is always a good thing. But this is the first Kindle I've bought where the value proposition was no longer a slam dunk (especially at the undiscounted price). Overall, for me I think it's still a good device. I'm not sure it makes sense for a lower volume reader. Obviously, the price will go down. I'd say at around $400 you should definitely consider it!

June 29th: Nessental "Terrace" Hotel to Hotel Rosenlaui

 Breakfast at the Nessental was good, though not to the standards set by the hotel’s rosti. The kids were very excited, since they loved Hotel Rosenlaui as much as I did. Finishing the descent to Innerkirchen without the customary headwind, we climbed the 4 switchbacks of Kirchet pass before turning left immediately after the now permanently closed Restaurant Lammi.

Xiaoqin and Bowen passed us in the car soon after the intersection on the way to Rosenlaui. The climb up Grosse Scheidegg without a load is straightforward, though to my surprise this time we didn’t hear the postbus bugle before the bus appeared around the corner, forcing a sudden stop and then the requisite walking to the next flat section before resuming the climb.

It was early in the morning, and we stopped at the Kaltenbrunnen restaurant to see if Andreas was there but he wasn’t, so we climbed into Rosenlaui to see Bowen and Xiaoqin walking along the main road to take pictures and greet us. Xiaoqin asked what our plan was and I said the best thing to do was to get to the hotel, change into walking clothes, and go for a hike!

It took us next to no time to get to the hotel, where we met Jacob, the new owner/manager of Rosenlaui, who showed us where to park the huge tandem. He also told us how dry it had been: “The lawn turned brown last week! I’d never seen that before!”  I had paired my phone to the car ages ago, so we just walked over to the car, unlocked it, unloaded mine and Boen’s luggage and hiking shoes, parked those in the Rosenlaui left luggage lobby, and changed into hiking clothing. When Bowen and Xiaoqin showed up at the lobby minutes later, so did Andreas! We hugged, chatted, and I asked him if Hornseeli would be good today. “It’s always a good day for Hornseeli, I think.” said Andreas.

With that reassurance, we filled up water bottles, used the bathrooms, grabbed the bus passes, and waited at the bus stop. The bus took us to Schwarzalp, where we would transfer to the Grosse Scheidegg bus (no more than a 5 minute transition), and get off at the top of Grosse Scheidegg. We ate at the balcony of the Berghotel Grosse Scheidegg, since while Grosse Scheidegg was at 1962m, Hornseeli was even higher at 2147m.

Suitably fortified, we set forth first on the Romantikweg, which leads from the top of Grosse Scheidegg towards First along a ridge, granting us panoramic views of the Grindelwald valley. The weather was warm but at 2000m it was a very comfortable temperature. At the fork, we turned right away from First, and followed the hiking trail down. Now we started getting a view of the wall across the valley: Wetterhorn, Engelhorn, Dossen, and Mittelhorn.

The kids went ahead, complaining as usual about how slow adults are because adults want to take photos. But of course, that also meant they missed the Hornseeli turnoff. When we got to the exit I wondered aloud if the kids had missed it. I then texted them and it turned out that they had missed it. We gave them permission to follow the trail all the way back down to Rosenlaui, but they elected to turn around and run back up the hill. We got to watch them make a great impression of Sir Lancelot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The trail up to Hornseeli was challenging, with a lot of climbing in very steep situation. However, due to how dry it was it wasn’t muddy at all, even though the grass around us was still lush and green to our California trained eyes. When we got to the top, however, it was definitely a shock to me—the lake looked so small compared to previous years, because it had shrunk so much! The others didn’t mind, since they had no comparison, and in fact, Boen managed to catch and release a tadpole!

From the lake, it was downhill all the way to Rosenlaui. There were a couple of choices, and Boen opted for the shorter easier hike while the rest of us went on the longer one. It turned out not to make much difference in scenery, but then the skies clouded up and we started feeling raindrops. The rain jackets were all in my backpack, so we gave Boen’s rain jacket to Bowen, had him wear his rain jacket, and then he went off down the hill in search of Boen. When going downhill, no adult can beat a kid or teenager. Better joints and lighter weight makes the speed difference too much to overcome, especially at the end of a long day.

Regardless, we all managed to make it to Rosenlaui before it started pouring. Mark had already made it back to the hotel, but he was in the room and had assumed that he had no cell connection. In practice, cell towers had recently been upgraded so while data coverage was intermittent, if you put your phone near the window or let it sit still over time it would still get messages.

We eventually got all the luggage in the room, got everyone showered and ready for dinner, and caught up with Mark. “The adventure route was a bit too much adventure for me!” he declared. When we compared his tracks to my tracks from 2016 later on, it would turn out that I had mis-routed him or he had somehow missed a turn and ended up on a much less rideable path. Nevertheless, we confirmed several things: one was that the cable car was happy to take bikes and was a very viable alternative to 90 minutes of riding up a 90% grade. Second was that it was a scenic route, but I should have just given him my route from 2016 instead of drawing a new one on RidewithGPS. Mark also noted that now that he was here he realized that he’d previously stayed at Rosenlaui before with his sisters! He had also figured out how to take the bus from Meiringen to Rosenlaui, because he wanted to save his legs for the next day’s ride.

Dinner was fantastic at Rosenlaui as usual, but with the new “no devices” rule, we couldn’t take any pictures of dinner. We made plans for the next day over dinner. Mark was still up for the classic Rosenlaui loop tomorrow, and since Xiaoqin hadn’t done it before she should go with him. I would take the kids up the Englehornhutte hike the next day, which should be plenty to occupy us.

June 28th: Hospental to Nessental "Terrace" Hotel

 By a miracle, Boen, Mark and I all managed to get up, eat breakfast, pack up the car, get the bikes out, and get rolling by 6:17am. It was still cool enough to wear a jacket and descend the gallery from Andermatt to Goschenen, but by the time we got to Goschenen I need to take off my jacket.

The climb starts from Wassen at 800m, and immediately hits an 8% grade, which we were grateful to be climbing in 75F weather rather than 80F. It was overcast at the start but the sky quickly cleared. However, the surrounding mountains were high enough that we were in shadows all the way until about 5km from the summit, at which point the heat danger was minimal.

The thing about Sustens is that unlike many other passes in Europe, there are next to no services on the road. In fact, once past the village of Meien, there’s not even a water fountain to be seen until you get to Sustenbruggli, where the house before the restaurant is owned by a mountain club and has a freely accessible tap outside for you to refill your water bottles.

Boen and I got a steady climbing pace, and with two of us I could have Boen open up food packages and feed me while climbing. We also both consumed significantly less water than Mark. When we got to Sustenbruggli, the amount of water we had left was so much  that we eschewed the stop while Mark stopped to refill and ended up also buying a snack. Because of the lack of need to stop for water, the coolness of the morning, and the deliberate resting we did the day before, my Strava entries said that this was the fastest climb of Sustens for many segments that I’d ever done—it’s also a testament to how strong Boen is that we were beating previous times when I was riding the single bike!

At the summit tunnel entrance, Boen and I stopped for a photo, waited a few minutes and realized we couldn’t see Mark anywhere, so we elected to wait at the other end of the tunnel. On the other side, we rode to the summit sign for a photo. A woman stopped and took a picture of us and said: “Are you riding the alps on that tandem?” I told her yes. “I was just hear last week riding my bicycle but never thought that it would be possible to do it with kids. I had her send herself e-mail from my phone so I could send her a link to my blog with trip reports of all the trips my two kids have been on on a bicycle.” Mark rode up just in time to make it into the picture.

We then descended the Sustens highway. The Sustens highway is one of the most spectacular descents from the summit down to Meiringen. There are multiple straightaways for maximal speed, but the corners are frequent enough to give you changes in perspective. On a wet year, the roaring waters going over the tunnels give the descent a feeling like a driving video game, except of course bicycling is way more fun than any video game.

With Mark’s agreement, we decided this time to eschew trying to take photos but instead to enjoy the descent maximally in a flow state. The dangerous part for us would be missing the hotel by having too much fun and riding past it! Indeed, the descent was as much fun as we expected. The corners were exciting, and the road was actually very recently paved. In addition, because we had started so early and was descending at 9:00am, the expected headwind did not arise and therefore we were not slowed down!  We easily set a Strava PR for the top part of the descent but since we didn’t descend to Innerkirchen there were no other segments that we covered.

Arriving at the Nessental Terrace hotel, we realized that it wasn’t even 10:00am. We obviously couldn’t check in, and besides the car wasn’t here yet! Nevertheless, the owner made us feel welcome, told us where to park the bikes, and we ordered coffee. He then bragged about how good his Rosti was, and we asked him when the kitchen was going to open. “11:00am!”

Xiaoqin and Bowen arrived 15 minutes before the kitchen opened, and when they opened we ordered the Rosti as recommended. The Rosti was amazing. I could believe him that when he says the Rosti is the best in the world, he might actually be right! When lunch was over, our rooms were ready and we moved in. I realized that since the hour was so early, we could drive to Hotel Engstlenalp and hike part of the famed Jobst high country adventure path that he started his tours with every year. I had already hyped up the ride to Mark, but knew that it would not be feasible with the tandem even if the cable car could take it, since the section where you had to carry the bike over the electrified cattle fence would not work.

The drive up the Gental was amazing, passing a group of cyclists on a one lane highway, and seeing waterfalls and beautiful pastoral farmland. I pointed out to Mark where there was cow-poop on the road that would make the road slippery. By the time we got to the Engstlenalp Hotel parking lot, paid the parking fee, and got out the hiking sticks for the hike it was 12:40am.

Rather than opt to go the reverse of the Jobst route, which is optimized more for downhill cycling than for hiking, we decided to go around the Engstlensee, which I mistakenly thought that I had never seen, despite having ridden that adventure route thrice, once in the wrong direction. The hike around the lake was pretty, though rather crowded. It being a Sunday, folks were picnicking around the shoreline, some swimming, some merely dipping their feet in the water.

Since I hadn’t even planned on doing this hike, I had no route in mind, and pretty soon we ran out of trail and ended up at a cable car station that told us the cable car went up to Jochpass. Now this was truly territory I’d never seen, so we took the cable car to the top. Jochpass was a really happening place, with cable cars running up both from Engelberg/Obwalden, Jochstock, and Engstlensee. The ski area had dining, hotel, and plenty of places to sit and look at the scenery, which we proceeded to do.

We looked at the map, and realized that we really only had one route back to the hotel if we didn’t want to take the cable car back down, so off we went. Boen was unhappy that we’d tricked him into taking a hike in addition to climbing Sustens pass, but the entire thing was only 4.85km.

The hike back was very pretty, and necessitated many stops for photographs, starting high on a ridgeline and then climbing some more so we would have views of the Tannensee and Melchsee, across the Canton border! Mark would later say that he had to go do the Jobst high adventure path having seen the scenery on this hike.

By the time we started heading down towards the hotel the skies had clouded up and we’d started feeling drops of rain on us. This sped us up quite a bit, but when we’d caught up to Mark and the kids it had already started raining. There was a little bit of drama where we found the bus stop where you would take the bus down if you were on a hike, but then when we went back to the car we’d lost Xiaoqin, so we turned around and looked for her. By then it had really started pouring and the parking lot was noticeably much emptier than when we had arrived.

Once everyone was in the car the pressure was off. With the rain, it was unlikely that there would be any traffic up the mountain, and we knew the last postbus had already left ahead of us, so we could take our time and stop for pictures here and there.

We got back to the Nessental Terrace hotel at around 5:00pm and here in Gadmental it was still sunny and had been the entire time! The bad news was that this meant the room was incredibly hot. In fact, so much so that Xiaoqin sent me off to spend the night with Mark rather than having so many people crowded into one room.

We had dinner at the Nessental Terrace, since nobody felt like driving somewhere else to get food. The after dinner walk was a walk along the Nessental backroad to the Triftblick B&B. It was nothing special despite being “top rated” on Google maps. We made plans for the next day. Boen and I would beeline it for Hotel Rosenlaui, but Mark would take advantage of his Swiss Half-tax card to ride to Meiringen, hop on the train to Sarnen, and then ride to Stockalp where he would again use his half-tax cut to take the cablecar to Tannalp, and then come back down the Gental. The hotel would serve breakfast at 7:30am, but that was plenty early enough for him to catch the 9:30am train.

June 27th: Hospental to Airolo

 We didn’t have to be in a hurry, but we’d been getting increasingly efficient over the course of the tour, so today, we left the house at 8:00am, riding up the cobblestone street onto the St. Gotthard highway. The weather was clear, and even at this early hour there was a lot of traffic, it being a Saturday, so by the time we got to the intersection with the old road, we decided to take the cobblestone path just to avoid dealing with traffic.

We went up the old road slowly—rushing a cobblestone road just gives you even more of a butt massage than going up it slowly, and we knew we hard a hard ride the next day. The cobblestone road has better scenery, taking you directly past a lower lake (Lago di Rodont) before getting to the summit lake where the St Gotthard museum was. It being early enough, we had plenty of time to visit the St Gotthard museum, which I would never visit any other time, since on a typical tour I’m in a hurry to get somewhere else before the day heated up. But today, we knew that we just had a descent to the train station and a train ride so we could take our time and watch the very well done film about the history of the St. Gotthard pass and all the various tunnels that had been drilled and built up beneath the pass.

The exhibits would then be exposed to us with all the context such that even if all the displays were in German we could still understand what they were for, and which tunnel they were for!

When we were done with the museum, we headed back down the pass. Before setting off, I gave Mark critical instructions: “Ignore all bike path signs. The only sign you want to pay attention to is the one that says “Police.” That’s where the exit is. Don’t stop just roll the entire descent.”

With that, we proceeded to take the St Gotthard at full tandem speed. This road is effectively a car highway, so at bicycle speeds if you’re wearing a jacket, you can tuck and then ride the entire thing at terminal velocity. We easily hit 40mph and were passed only by a few cars on the descent, a testament both to how well engineered the road is and how polite swiss drivers were. At no point did we feel unsafe despite the speed, and the whole thing only took 15 minutes or so. Boen proclaimed it the beset descent of the entire trip.

At the bottom, we found the exit that said “Police”, and proceeded to exit, find a place to slow down and stop, and then took off our jackets, since it was warm! When Mark caught up, we proceeded to follow the directions towards downtown Airolo and then the directions to the train station. Along the way, having learned from yesterday, we decided to stop to buy lunch at the huge coop in town before descending all the way to the train station. We bought sandwiches and rolled down to the train station.

The train ride from Airolo back to Andermatt wasn’t as scenic, since it went through one of the Gotthard tunnels that we had just went to a museum about. Once in Goschenen, we switched again to a cog railway to take us up to Andermatt. Once in Andermatt we would just ride it since switching trains was more of a hassle than actually riding back to Hospental.

In Andermatt, Mark decided that he would just ride down to Goschenen again to get to experience the tunnel bike path (since tomorrow we would be in a hurry and so would take the car road). Boen and I rode home and ate lunch. When we were done with lunch I realized that we had nothing left for dinner, so after taking a shower, drove back to Andermatt to shop. To my surprise the place was packed! It turned out that there was a car event that closed the Oberalp highway, which meant that the supermarket was jam packed! Fortunately, I did my shopping and could leave before things got too crazy.

In the meantime, Xiaoqin had been riding the Sustenspass. She successfully rode to Gadmen, and then to her surprise was nearly rejected from taking the bus with her bike by the post-bus driver! There was no one else using the bike racks, the bus was not full, but the driver insisted that you needed a reservation to ride the bus with your bike! It boggled my mind that a bus driver would rather abandon a woman with a bike rather than let her on without a reservation. Finally, some other passengers (presumably Swiss) interceded on her behalf and she was allowed to board on the condition that she get off at the top of the pass! At the top she probably could have ignored the instruction, but the bus was so stuffy (the windows could not be opened) that when the time came she was glad to get off so she could be on a bicycle instead of being on the bus!

When she got to Goschenen she pinged me on signal, and I drove the car over to pick her up. Her story shocked me (I’d always thought of Switzerland as being bike friendly), but all ended well. We finished out last round of laundry (we wouldn’t have laundry until we got to Lauterbrunnen), packed as much as we could, and planned to get up early tomorrow so we could avoid the heat on Sustens, which I remembered as usually being one of the hotter passes on previous tours.