The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: May fourth, seeing Sherlock's Switzerland on the 110th anniversary of his death.

"The torrent, swollen by melting snow.. plunges into an immense chasm...the sweep of water roaring down turns a man giddy with its constant whirl and clamor." That's how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland. In his story, "The Final Problem," Doyle had his fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes plunge over these falls on May 4th, 1891, locked in the death-embrace of his fiendish arch-enemy Professor Moriarty.

Reichenbach Falls, which can now be reached by a funicular and easy footpath, remains as Doyle saw it, a wild, enchanting place lost in "spray rolling up like the smoke from a burning house."

Despite the fact that Doyle resurrected Holmes in later stories, the nearby town of Meiringen, near the eastern end of Lake Brienz, has become a mecca for Holmes devotees. It's a quaint amalgam of old Swiss, high Victorian and 20th-century kitsch. The old Anglican church in its center is now the Sherlock Holmes Museum, complete with an exact replica of Holmes' Baker Street apartment. The Sherlock Holmes hotel is new and bland, but the nearby Park Hotel du Sauvage served as the model for the Englisher Hof, where Holmes spent his last night.

Of course, there's no end of souvenirs portraying Holmes' hawk-like visage. But Meiringen's real claim to international fame came at the hands of a local pastry chef named Gasparini. In the year 1600, he concocted that airy, cream-covered, sugar and egg white confection the world eventually came to call meringue, in honor of his home town.

FMI For information contact Swiss Tourism Center 608 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10029 or call 212-757-5944 or www.myswitzerland.com

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