We took a paddle steamer boat trip on Lake Thun from Interlaken. Here’s what we got up to…
The weather in and around the Lauterbrunnen valley on the first day of our trip here 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.
Interlaken sits between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz and is a great base from which to get on one of the many boat trips around the lake Thun.
There’s a range of different passenger boats, including old-fashioned paddle steamers which to-and-fro connecting the numerous towns that are dotted around the lakes.
The weather here, at a slightly lower altitude and out of the more mountainous valley area, was better. It was dry, though a bit cloudy, but warmer and a better option than being in the mountains where the conditions weren’t great.
We got on one of the Lake Thun paddle steamers, which was an incredible boat with plenty of space to sit or stand and admire the glorious surrounding scenery.
The highlight of the boat trip on Lake Thun was its huge exposed steam engine right in the middle, that you can stand and watch as it drives the paddles. It was really fascinating.
We decided to get off at some random places at which the boat stopped.
The boat trips on Lake Thun run like buses, with ‘stops’ that include timetables so you can pretty much spend the day travelling around the lake from one stop to the next, enjoying a drink or lunch on the boat, visiting the lake-side towns before ending up back where you started (as long as you pay attention to the timetables).
We had a great, relaxing day although the children were starting to get a bit bored towards the end of it and we were really keen for the weather to clear up so we could get up in to the mountains, which is what we’d come for!