We chose Lauterbrunnen as our base for our family holiday to Switzerland, spending a week exploring the beautiful mountains of the ‘Bernese Oberland’ region before heading down to Italy the next week for a slightly more relaxing stay near Lake Garda. Here’s details of our Switzerland holiday itinerary…
There is so much to see and do in Switzerland; it’s one of our favourite places we’ve ever been to and the whole family loved it. Here’s a run down of what we got up to…
Day 1: Interlaken & boat trip on Lake Thun
The weather in and around the Lauterbrunnen valley on the first day wasn’t great. We woke up to heavy cloud shrouding the surrounding mountains and rain showers, making it less than ideal to head up in to the mountains as we’d originally planned. So instead we got in the car and drove down out of the valley to the huge nearby ‘Lake Thun’ and one of Switzerland’s best-known towns, Interlaken.
Day 2: Grindlewald and Mannelichen
On day two we awoke to glorious sunshine and blue skies (take a look at our review of our holiday chalet to see the view we had from our balcony eating breakfast on days like this!)
We decided to drive the few miles along the road to the village of Grindlewald to take the lift from Grindlewald Grund up to Mannelichen and hike back down. The beauty of this region is just incredible.
Day 3: Murren, Allmendhubel and Gimmelwald
The next day the weather was good again so we headed in to Lauterbrunnen centre, parked the car by the railway station and got on the ‘Grutschalp’ lift, which takes you up to a train which runs from there to Winteregg and then on to the small, car-less village of Murren – with access to Gimmelwald, the Schilthorn and Allmendhubel.
Day 4: Grindlewald First
We headed back to Grindlewald and tried a different lift from our first day, going up to ‘Grindlewald First’, where there’s a range of different mountain activities and walks. We tried the brilliantly fun ‘mountain cart’.
Day 5: The Jungfraujoch
This was a big day out and the highlight of the whole holiday. There’s a lot that’s worth knowing about before you go up here to be sure you make the most of it.
Day 6: Trummelbach Falls
The final day of our week in Lauterbrunnen was very rainy so we headed to Trummelbach Falls, which is at the end of the Lauterbrunnen valley. It’s an enormous waterfall of melting glacier ice which cascades down inside the cliff face, through caves and crevices.
Conclusion
This was the first week of our two week summer holiday – the second week we headed from Switzerland down to Italy for a bit more relaxation. We had a truly amazing time here and we’ll remember it for a lifetime. It’s impossible to forget the magnificent scenery and surroundings of a place like the Bernese Oberland region and there was loads for the whole family to do.
We did quite a bit of walking, which isn’t always popular with the children and there were quite a few battles and a fair amount of moaning and groaning but they all agreed at the end that the effort was worthwhile to see such stunning and memorable places.
Here are a few more photos we took from around the region, which we hope will encourage you to visit…
Remember, if you have any questions you’d like advice on about your own Switzerland holiday itinerary, just leave a comment below and we’re happy to answer them!