Switzerland with a 5-Year-Old – Just Mürren & Bellinzona?

You can easily do a day trip to Luzern from Bellinzona if you have 4 days there. It’s a direct high speed train through the Gotthard tunnel and only takes around 90 minutes.

There are great alpine playgrounds at Allmendhubel, Winteregg, Gimmelwald, Mannlichen & Bort for your time in Mürren.

Personally I think you’ll wish you had more time in Murren and less in Bellinzona.

Hopefully, you’ve already reserved for Murren because there are very few accommodations left for August. The tourist office website, www.murren.swiss may have some holiday apartments & hotels not listed elsewhere.

You could take the train directly from Zurich’s airport and be in Lucerne in one hour, if you can adjust your plans.

The train ride between Lucerne and Lauterbrunnen over the Brunig pass is spectacular. Aside from exploring Lucerne’s Altstadt, other pluses are the mountain train journeys to the summits of Mt. Rigi and Mt. Pilatus and boat rides on the lake.

Lucerne is 3 train hours from Murren whereas Bellinzona is 4.5 hours.

In Bellinzona (a very pretty fortress town) you might enjoy the three castle tour outlined here. You may not want to “hike” per se, but there is a shuttle.

I’ve stayed in Bellinzona twice and really enjoyed it. The castles are interesting and the Saturday market was terrific! I don’t know if I would recommend 4 days there. Luzern shouldn’t be missed. The Golden Round Trip is wonderful and easy to navigate with a 5 year old. There is a large operating model railway at the Transportation Museum as well as locomotives that can be climbed, Formula 1 Sauber rave cars as well as assorted boats and planes.

I agree with Kenco that you might want to consider the short train ride from Zurich to Luzern if you could rearrange your schedule. I would not spend a night in Zurich but immediately head to Luzern.

Thanks for everyone's input! We opted to revamp our schedule a little and add Lucern back on to our itinerary.

I think that's a good move