We are traveling in late July/early August with our toddler for my 40th birthday. She’ll be 3 by the time of the trip.
We went on a longer trip last year during the end of June to visit family staying in Italy and made our way up through the alps, staying in Wengen. We had a wonderful time hiking. We wanted to go back to the area this year since it will likely be towards the end of my ability to wear her in the baby carrier up and down mountain trails when she gets tired, which she really loves and it’s a special time for me as well.
We will have 11 days after our flight gets in to Zurich. We enjoyed the hikes and playground better on the murren side of the valley, so we plan to spend at least a few days staying there.
My question is more of asking for your opinion than an entirely objective answer. We are conflicted about whether to spend the entire time in Switzerland or split it and spend the last portion of the trip in Paris. We haven’t purchased our return flight yet so we would fly out of Paris if we were to do that. Paris seemed like the most convenient large city to get to via fast train, hence our choice. We spent a week in London last November and had a great time taking our daughter to the playgrounds and museums.
I did the whole backpacking thing when I was much younger and I have no desire to spend our trip going from place to place every 2 days. We are just trying to figure out whether it would more fun to stay in the mountains the whole time or whether moving to the city for half once we start to get bored with the mountains would be better.
So, these are the general plan options we are considering (based off of days, not nights):
Day 1: arrive in Zurich in the morning and make our way via train to lauterbrunnen area
Day 2-6: murren; or murren and Wengen
Day 7: fast train to Paris, stopping in Dijon on the way to explore and eat
Day 8-11: Paris
Day 12: flight home
Or
Same through day 6 and then
Day 7: move to zermatt, annecy, or eastern Switzerland then fly out of nearest international airport (Geneva, Milan, or Zurich, depending where we go)
Or
Different city/location on day 7?
One benefit towards staying in the mountains the entire time would be the ability to pack much lighter since we would be doing similar activities in a similar climate the entire trip.
One concern we have about Paris is the heat being oppressive that time of year, but it still seems like a much better option than going south from the alps, like Milan, in July/August if we want to add on a large city.
Again, we enjoy utilizing museums, public parks, and playgrounds and we do enjoy city atmospheres just like we enjoy rural mountain ones.
Obviously this is all going to just be a matter of preference/opinion, but what would yours be? Is there anything we haven’t considered?