This was about the time where we experienced our second "oops."  Dennis was having difficulty breathing, and we thought this was because of the fairly strenuous walk from the gondola station up to the hotel.  It didn't seem to be improving, however, and even the short walk to the hotel restaurant caused an issue.  By the morning, it was decidedly worse and he was experiencing a real shortness of breath.  We decided that this must be altitude related.  At breakfast, we explained the issue to Iris and she jumped on the phone with the hotel reception desk and procured a room for us in Lauterbrunnen (altitude 2,631 feet).  We were hopeful that this would help.

​

The hotel again supplied a golf-cart ride to the station and back down the mountain we went, using a combination of a train and a gondola.

​

Lauterbrunnen is a cute village, bigger than Murren, but still fairly small.  They were in the midst of a marathon so we needed to stay out of the way of the runners.  The race participants had started in Interlaken and ran the official 26 miles, increasing their elevation by 5,032 feet.  Holy cow!

​

The lower elevation helped a lot, but it wasn't an instant recovery.  Dennis managed to go for a few short walks through the village.  Iris and Joost even stopped by to see how we were doing!  We tried out some of the cafes and restaurants, and even managed to spend some time in the local laundromat to do a couple of loads of wash.  That was entertaining - we chatted with two other American couples who had come from other areas of the valley to use the Lauterbrunnen laundromat.

​

When we were doing our pre-tour research, seeing the view from the Schilthorn (way above Murren) was #1 on the list of "must do" activities.  It turned out that no one from our group got to experience this - the weather did not cooperate.  We learned that several tour members had gone up there, but the clouds/fog kept them from seeing much.