Hello! We will be travelling to Germany, Austria,and Switzerland for 3.5 weeks in July and August. We will have a car for the month as part of my husband's work. I understand the Swiss railways are beautiful and we plan to stay in the BO area. We are most likely staying in Murren, but Wengen and Lauterbrunnen also have a few apartment possibilities still available. I am most concerned about costly train/bus/cog wheel/other transportation in addition to parking our car in Lauterbrunnen for the 5 days we are vacationing. Our 3 children are 3,7,and 9 and I understand that with some passes the children are free and with others, just discounted. Our itinerary will include the Schlithorne (sp?) and possibly the Jungfraujoch train, which I understand are expensive. Otherwise, we would like to hike (with a backpack for my toddler) and see the Lauterbrunnen waterfalls, Gimmelwald, and other hikes. I have heard about the half-pass and the Swiss Pass and am aware of some regional passes. A 3 or 4 day pass is probably fine for us and we are happy staying in the BO area. I was just realizing Swiss Passes would be very costly and we probably would get our moneys worth out of them. Does anyone have any suggestions? We will need to go to and from our car in Lauterbrunnen as well as any other connections to tour the area. Thanks,
Mindy
Posted by
Woodinville, WA
97 posts
We traveled as a family in Switzerland in May. We stayed in Wilderswil: http://www.vrbo.com/373341. I don't know when you are going exactly, but they may have availability. The apartment was great, it was very easy access to the mountains, and they had parking at the apartment. We used trains only, but having a car would have given us more flexibility, in my opinion. We bought the Swiss 1/2-fare cards. Our younger kids (through 15) traveled free with the Swiss Family Card. The upper mountain lifts (like Schilthorn) was a 50% discount for them. The Swiss Pass is very expensive, especially since you will also have a car. We just looked at the passes and calculated the trips we thought we would take to compare. For us, it turned out that the Swiss Pass would have been better because the weather was not good in the mountains while we were there (we didn't even go to the Shilthorn because of the fog!). We ended up sightseeing near Brienz, into Bern and Thun, and the Swiss Pass would have given us free entry to the museums we went to as well. So, I would suggest you do the math first (check out http://www.sbb.ch/en/home.html for train schedules and costs) to see what makes sense. July and August should be lovely weather. We got a lot of great advice from people on this board! This was our experience, though. By the way, my kids loved the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum. Lauterbrunnen was beautiful, as was just about everything else in Switzerland. Good luck!