20 days in Switzerland trip report – Part 1

We had a wonderful 3 weeks in Switzerland from late June to mid July.. We bought a 15 day Swiss Travel Pass Flex and thought it was well worth the money and convenience.

Day 1 – We arrived in Zurich at 8:00. I had bought a Swiss Coupon Pass and needed to pick it up at the Swiss Travel Center at the airport, so we found the Travel Center and picked up our Coupon Book. Unfortunately I didn’t look at the coupon book closely enough to see that it was all in German until we were in our hotel in Zurich. So after checking at the rail information and tourist information center in Zurich, I went back to the airport and traded my book for an English one, which was much easier for me to understand! We used 5 coupons out of the book, which made it worth getting, but you need to be willing to sometimes go out of your way to use the coupons. We bought a Zurich Card thinking we would be traveling around the city and checking out some museums, but as we were pretty tired from jet lag, it would have been more cost effective to just buy a day pass that would get us from the airport to the city and around town. We did go on a boat ride for 5 SF which was nice and that was where we found out we needed to time stamp our Zurich Card. it was a very hot day and I joined the hundreds of people jumping in the Limmat River and floating downriver!

Day 2 – We took the train to Meiringen. We arrived on a very hot afternoon and spent it in the interesting and cool Aare Gorge.

Day 3 – We took the train to Thun,toured Thun castle, took a boat ride on Lake Thun to Spiez, toured Spiez Castle, took a boat ride to Interlaken, train to Interlaken East and a boat ride on Lake Brienz. All included in Swiss Travel Pass!

Day 4 – Toured Ballenberg,(free with STP) an interesting outdoor museum. This was the one time my SBB app had us in the wrong location. There are two entrances to Ballenberg and it thought we were at the other entrance, so it gave us the wrong time to catch the bus. Which would have been okay had we been waiting at the bus stop, but I was in the WC when the bus came, so we missed the last bus to the train station. After a moment of panic, I went into the gift shop and the cashier was able to direct us to another bus stop about 1/4 mile away, which after a 15 minute wait got us to the train station!

Day 5 – We left early for Murren as this day looked like the best day to go to Schilthorn. After checking into our hotel, we took the cable car to Schlithorn and had amazing views of Jungfrau, Eiger, and Monch. Also took a short hike and looked at the 007 exhibits. Stopped at Birg on the way down and did the Birg Thrill walk, it is included in the cable car ride, which was all free with our STP! Later in the afternoon we took the funicular up to Almendhubel to go on the wildflower walk. There weren’t too many wildflowers, but the ice cream sundae at the restaurant there was amazing!

Day 6 – I went on a 4 mile hike to the Sprutz Waterfall, it was beautiful and fun to walk behind the waterfall. We then took the cable car down to Stechelberg and walked down the Lauterbrunnen Valley, so many waterfalls! We followed the signs to Trummelbach waterfall and took the elevator up and walked down. The power of the water flowing inside the mountain was amazing. To be continued………