Switzerland trip, day 7, part 2

So there we are, stuck on one of the highest mountains in Europe, with only a few bites of food and a few sips of water left. And we started walking to get to the next town, which happened to be about 20 miles away. Yes, folks, 20 MILES. Fortunately, it was a beautiful walk down that mountain, with the sun setting behind the Alps. Claire did an amazing job of staying jovial. James was a tremendous help with that--whenever she would start to complain, he would start doing a little dance, walking backwards, or just acting silly, and she would snap out of her bad mood. A few hours passed, and we found ourselves getting extremely close to the next town. There were even signs pointing to the railway station. We were going to make it!! We huffed and puffed our way down the last bit of mountain, across the little valley, and found the station. Well, guess what. To add to the absurdity of the day, this station was also closed. So now, we had new options--this particular town (Grindelwald) is big enough to have a bus station and hotels and taxis. So we head for the bus station. And guess what? The last bus had just pulled into the station for the night. Of course. So now we're left with 2 options--walk the 3 1/2 hours to Interlaken, which none of us will be able to do, or find a taxi somehow. We notice a sign to a hotel, and figure the receptionist can call us a taxi. So we start walking. Again. And soon, we realize that we have to walk up a super-steep hill to get to the hotel. Think of the steepness of an escalator, without the steps. It was actually a relief to get to use different muscles, but I really didn't need to do almost a mile of that. Once at the top of this hill, we notice the most glorious site I have ever seen--there's another train station up here. And people are walking to it. And lights are on there. And there's a train sitting on the tracks. We didn't know where that train was going, but somehow we all knew we needed to get on it. I had visions of the last time we saw a train sitting at the station, so I ran ahead to try to get it to wait. Fortunately, there was no need--the train wasn't scheduled to leave for another 20 min, but it was going to Interlaken!! We were going to make it! We collapsed on the train and rode silently back to town. Once we got to Interlaken, though, we needed to take another train across the town to get closer to our hotel. (It's only a couple mile walk, but we were on our last legs by this point.) Well, Jason and I didn't have train tickets for that part of our journey, but there were no people around, the train was empty, and it's only a 3-minute ride. Who's going to notice? Sure enough, as soon as the train started moving, the ticket lady came through wanting to see our tickets. Jason and James performed an amazing Oscar-worthy "dumb American" play, which lasted right up to the time we pulled into the station we needed. I think the ticket lady could tell we needed to be cut a break, and she just walked away, letting us off without penalty. This definitely helped lift our spirits and gave us another jolt of adrenaline to give us the energy we needed to walk the few blocks to the hotel. We ran into our mothers, Grandma B, and Sue on our way back, and they were extremely relieved to see us. Evidently, they weren't expecting us to walk the entire way down the mountain and were shocked to hear of our expedition. Our feet were also in a state of shock--I will spare you the details, but James could barely wear shoes the rest of the trip, and I now have only 9, soon to be 8, toenails. All in all, this was my favorite day of the trip. In no way would I have ever signed up to participate in an adventure like this, but now that I have, I really feel like I can accomplish anything!