We decided to make Thursday a rest day (especially as it rained all afternoon!), although some essential housekeeping tasks (e.g. laundry) were fitted in.

Friday we left Lauterbrunnen and headed over some rather exciting mountain roads to Lucerne – stopping at the Camping International Lido campsite situated on the lake just to the east of the city centre.

The campsite was next door to the Swiss Transport museum, which I had been to 30 years previously but could not resist another visit.

It’s one of the best museums I have been to with a huge collection of transport related exhibits, all very well displayed. There were vintage trains and wagons, a steam powered funicular and it’s ultra modern replacement:

The automobile section included an Aston Martin electric racing car and a big collection of Red Bull F1 cars:

The Aviation and Space section was packed with full size aircraft and helecopters but I liked this full sized model of the yet to be launched Exomars Rover (mainly because the real thing was built in Stevenage!):

I also got lost in a mirror maze – I asked these four blokes for help but they were no use! My favourite exhibit was this ‘Tourism Flipper’. The description says: “The path of the ball in this giant pinball machine illustrates what holidaymakers encounter when they visit Switzerland”:

For our last excursion in the region we took the cable up to Piz Gloria, perched on the top of Mount Schilthorn (elev. 2970m). It was famously chosen as the villain’s lair in the 1969 James Bond film ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and it really fits the bill. The views, again, are quite spectacular, you could even see all the way down to Lake Thun, next to Interlaken.

Needless to say, there is a big James Bond exhibition here, but it very well done with lots of inside information on the making of the film. The only drawback on the visit were the slight delays caused by yet another huge ongoing engineering project – replacing the entire cable car system.

On our way back we walked through the delightful village of Murren, built on a mountain ridge above Lauterbrunnen.

In an attempt to make the most of our 3 day travel passes, we also took a train into Interlaken and then the funicular railway up to Harder Kulm with it’s excellent views over the town and it’s two adjacent lakes, Thunersee and Brienzersee.

We’re on top of the world! – well, not quite, but Jungfraujoch is billed locally as ‘Top of Europe’ and at 3454 metres elevation it’s pretty high and the air is noticably thinner.

To get here we took the train and the route itself is an engineering marvel. Construction started in 1896 with a long tunnel being built inside the Eiger and Monch mountains. The 9.3 km route finally opened in 1912.

We were lucky to have reasonable visibility from the top, with views of the Aletsch glacier (the largest in the Alps) as well as across to the surrounding peaks and down to the valleys below.

If you look closely at the picture below you can spot one of the maddest people in the world, jumping off the mountain with a paraglider!

You could get outside and hike across the snow if you wanted or visit an ice cave containing some unusual ice sculptures.

We took a slightly different route back which involved riding the area’s newest cable car, the Eiger Express down to Grindlewald. Each of the 44 gondolas are huge with seats for 22 people.