After spending a week in Grindelwald, we're (my 14yo daughter & me, 61yo dad) traveling to Rome. On the Rome2Rio site, there's a train route mapped out, 3 transfers, aprox 9 hours, leaves Grindelwald at 6:47am & arrives in Rome 2:49pm. Total cost for both of us 410.00USD. Grindelwald>Interlaken>Spiez>Milan>Rome. I think 205.00/PP is reasonable, & I like the idea of arriving in Rome mid-day, as well as not having to wake up super early.
I really don't know yet if we'll have some sort of rail/travel pass while in Grindelwald. I'm suspecting we will. If we did, would it behoove us to use the pass at least until Spiez, & just purchase Spiez>Rome tix? We'll also need transport when arriving in Zurich at the beginning of the week to get to Grindelwald. Any Swiss travel pass info anyone could relay to me would be much appreciated - this is a long 6 week trip, Grindelwald is week 2 of 6. I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest options, but more bang for the buck, taking cost, time, usefulness, ease & quality of travel into consideration.
I guess this is a 2 part question:
1. Is train the best way to get to Rome?
&
2. Would we be better off getting Swiss rail passes, & using those to travel from Zurich to Grindelwald, Grindelwald to Spiez (before departing for Rome, as well as day trips for the week we'll be in Grindelwald.
ETA - I just looked up Swiss Travel Pass. Six day pass would cost us 474.00USD for both so - If I used that for the 1st 6 days of the trip, & then on day 7 (travel day to Rome) I purchased the Rome2Rio trip for 410.00, total for the 2 of us, with all travel being covered, would be 875.00 total for our week. We'd have our transportation from Zurich to Grindelwald covered, all our day trips and our transport from Grindelwald to Rome covered & paid for going with this idea. Seems like a good deal, any opinions - agreeable or contrary would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance.