Four days of empty itinerary - what to do??

I hadn’t heard of Krinau before, so I looked it up. Looks to be in the canton of St. Gallen, next to Wattwil. If this is the right location I will just caution you that some of the smaller, more remote locations have less frequent bus service.

I picked a random bus stop there and can see that today (Sunday) there is a bus only once every two hours. Monday is a bit better with one an hour during the peak times, but every two hours otherwise.

If you are staying close enough to Wattwil to walk to the train station you will be fine, otherwise you will certainly have to schedule your departure time to catch that infrequent but. This location looks to be very much in the countryside with not much around, if that is what you are looking for, great! Otherwise you might feel a bit isolated there.

Plan A is too much travel time and not enough active time seeing and doing. Plan B strikes me as the same with too many one night stays. While the scenic trains offer terrific scenery, I think young kids would get bored. Better to have shorter day-trip outings from a base.

I suggest you make it easy on yourselves and spend the 4 nights in Luzern. It is quite beautiful and there is a lot to do. Mountains where you can ride to the top, cruise on the lake, a fabulous transportation museum.

Alternately, if you skip Krinau, go to Pontresina for 3 or 4 nights then end in Luzern for the balance of nights before departure.

@maureen

Here’s the Airbnb in that random area https://abnb.me/e/7sMKqQsxFHb

But she says it’s a couple minute easy walk to the bus/train spot. So hopefully that’d be fine!

Maybe I should cancel that and stay somewhere else. Although we do love the idea of being surrounded with beautiful nature! Your feedback is helpful. I definitely don’t want to be too GO GO GO haha but it’s also hard to decide which things to see or not see! 🤔

If you’re ok with the fact that you might have slightly less convenient public transport to Krinau, it does look like a lovely little Airbnb and definitely not typical Switzerland pricing! I’m sure the kids would enjoy the creek.

I think doing something on Lake Luzern beforehand would be great. You can do a scenic train ride from Murren (Interlaken) to Luzern without having to go into the hassle of the eastern routes with little kids. From Luzern you can also do day trips to places like Bern or Appenzell (Ebenalp, Seealpsee, etc) if you’d like.

But she says it’s a couple minute easy walk to the bus/train spot

My guess by looking at the link you provided is that it is a couple minutes to the bus, not the train, and this is where you might run into problems. I only emphasise this because you mention you chose this as your final location to be close to Zurich for your departure.

I have often hiked in locations near me here in Thun with this kind of bus schedule. You really have to plan things well. There is no bus over lunch, for example, so there is usually a two hour break in service at that time.

The place looks like a wonderful retreat type location and you will certainly get a Swiss experience by being in such an old farmhouse, and any other people in the area will probably be Swiss, not other tourists, which is the case in Mürren.

If you do not need to be early in Zurich for your flight out, this could still work well. For a comparison our local bus runs every 10 minutes to take us to the train station. A schedule of one - two hours is a very big difference.