DAY 52-54: INTERLAKEN

WE blew the budget in Interlaken. And we couldn't be happier.

That's because once-in-a-lifetime opportunities are priceless.

And believe me, Interlaken is the gateway to many.

Everything seems on a grand scale here. The lakes - Brienz and Thun - are a magnificent turquoise.

You want mountains? You're surrounded. Take your pick of world-famous names including Eiger (3970m), Monch (4099m), Schilthorn or Jungfrau (meaning "virgin snow peak" - the second-highest at 4158m after Finsteraarhorn at 4274m).

You want to play James Bond for a day? The revolving restaurant at Schilthorn was immortalised by 007 James Bond. It has a 360-degree panorama and the longest cableway in the Alpine region.

With the help of the Swiss alpine railway and cablecar system, we had two glorious days on the mountains that had us begging for more.

Day 1 from Interlaken Ost (East) station took us to the green "Heidi" valley around Lauterbrunnen before the quintessential Swiss Alps village of Murren (1634m) for drinks at the Bellevue Hotel and a leisurely walk around town.

Next came the thrill of dropping almost 767 metres in five minutes on the Luftseilbahn Stechelberg-Mürren-Schilthorn (LSMS) cableway to Stechelberg (867m), followed by the engrossing sight of 10 glacier waterfalls meeting in one spot to produce 20,000 litres per second of water at Trummelbach Falls (all illuminated and made accessible with the help of a tunnel lift through the limestone and lots of stairs).

Day 2 from Interlarken Ost was the piece de resistence: Jungfraujoch - at 3454m, the highest-altitude rail station in Europe, at the top end of the Jungfrau railway (joch means "pass"). 

Seven kilometres of the 9.3km line are in a tunnel that was hewn in the rock of the Eiger and Monch mountains.

The railway's construction over 16 years from 1896 to the official opening on August 1, 1912,  was truly one of the world's wonders of railway technology - the vision of A. Adolf Guyer-Zeller in an 1893 pencil sketch. He died in 1899 before seeing it completed but his sons continued on with his legacy.

The cogwheel railway climbs the 1400 metres height difference from Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch - Top of Europe in 50 minutes.

While there, we took advantage of the free "tours" including a 45-minute (make that an hour uphill and about 30 minutes downhill for the return trip) snow walk to Mönchsjoch Hut, a stroll through the sculptures inside the Ice Palace, and the Sphinx Terrace snow fun as well as pictorial and audio-visual displays. 

The rail trip itself is a photographers' heaven, with windows able to be pushed down, allowing for uninterrupted shots of the charming villages such as Wengen along the way.The mountains are so close, they seem close enough to touch the summits.

Even more big-view moments awaited in the afternoon while relaxing at Kleine Scheidegg (2061m) and Grindelwald (1034m).

We have never really been "snow dogs" but we had a howling good time in the Bernese Alps, even in summer.

Lesson of the day: Travel improves geography knowledge out of sight.

DAY 49-51: THE BLACK FOREST, GERMANY

CUCKOO clocks, cake, Rhine rieslings, storybook villages and a gazillion spruce trees ... The Black Forest is the natural choice for tourists seeking a taste of traditional German life with lashings of pizzaz.

And the best, quickest and easiest way to see the diverse communities that lie up hill and over dale in this south-west area of Germany is by car. 

So we ditched the train in Basel, in the very south of the region on the Swiss side, and picked up our hire car for three days.

You'll never see as much of the area as you would like in three days but it's a good start. And trust me, while the autobahn can be fun and the fastest from point A to B, the slow-and-easy "backroads" will allow you to savour this experience more and to stop wherever you fancy.

We stayed in three very different locations: Freiburg im Breisgau (or more commonly known as Freiburg) right opposite the 11th century Munster (cathedral) in Hotel Oberkirch on Munsteplatz in Old Town; at Hotel Rebenhof, right in the middle of the vineyards of Neuweier near the spa town of Baden-Baden in the north; and possibly the most picturesque of the Black Forest villages (and that's saying something!) at Schiltach's Zur Alten Brucke a little further south-west.

Freiburg is the unofficial capital of the Black Forest and its other claim to fame is that it reportedly gets more sun than any other German city.

Its cobblestoned Old Town squares, market stalls and narrow alleyways contrast with the designer-wear boutiques and department stores in and around the main city streets.

We escaped the hustle and bustle for a while and headed up to forested Schlossberg (park on a 456m hill) with its lookouts, leafy walks and beer garden complete with city panorama.

If in Freiburg, the old city gates and the Munster also are worth a look and you must do what the locals do and eat traditional fare at one of a myriad al-freso cafes and wurst vans.

In Neuweier, we somehow managed to score "the penthouse" in Hotel Rebenhof. So no matter whether we were having wine and nibbles on our balcony with a 360-degree view, falling asleep while gazing out the panorama windows, or having dinner or breakfast on the restaurant terrace, we were always surrounded by those majestic hillsides bursting with healthy green grapevines.

Schiltach is the village I always imagined I would find in the Black Forest with its colourful and quirky buildings, promenades along a stream running through the town, and a cobblestoned Old Town that leads you up and down alleyways with hardly a soul around on a Sunday afternoon.

The B317 (near Frieberg) and B500 (especially the northern stretch of the elevated Schwarzwald Hochstrasse near Baden-Baden) are world-renowned motoring routes in the region that will serve up all the epic scenery, forestry and mountain drives you could ever want.

Use them in conjunction with other main and not-so-major roads (such as the B33) to criss-cross the region and meander through villages on lakes, in valleys and on mountain tops. In about 600km over three days, we discovered these gems:

* One of our favourite stops was the world-renowned health resort and cuckoo clock capital of Triberg (home of the world's biggest cuckoo clock at Uhren Park), where we joined the throngs on a Saturday afternoon to walk the steep path to Germany's highest waterfalls. 

The waters of the Gutach plunge to the valley 160m below in seven cascades that can be viewed at various vantage points up the path and over bridges. The spectacle would be particularly exciting at Christmas with snow all around and the falls illuminated by 750,000 lights.

Originally the Black Forest was covered in forests but over a period of hundreds of years, much of the area's better sites were cleared for farming and the wood cultivated. But because of the extreme site conditions of the Triberg Falls/Gutach area, it remains more natural and diverse including Obervogt-Huber Pine (spruce), beech, pine, sycamore, ash and elm trees.

* We ate our first Black Forest black forest cake for Sunday brunch (as you do) at Seebrugg with an engrossing view of Titisee Lake from the Hubertus Hotel terrace.

* Mummelsee around lunchtime on Sundays attracts marketgoers, souvenir hunters, drinkers and diners, motorbike riders, families on the lake, and hikers. 

We fell into the latter category, taking the 45-minute hike along a forestry track on Hornisgrinde (1164m above sea level, the highest in the Northern Black Forest) before climbing up the bitumen road to the lookout tower (Hornisgrindeturm) and around the circuit as far as the Bismarck Turm (a memorial tower to those who lost their lives in the Second World War with the sinking of the Bismarck).

At the halfway point of our 101 nights in Europe, these have been our favourite three days and the Black Forest has won our hearts as the best region so far.

Lesson of the day: Every day is busy on these picturesque and winding roads but just be aware of the crazy kamikaze motorcyclists and Sunday drivers especially.