Central location for exploring Swiss

I'm planning a two week stay in Switzerland next september with my two grandchildren.
I'd love to explore as much as possible of the country, but I assume that lots of rail travelling with 8 and 6 year old girls wouldn't be a great idea.
So I'm looking for a central location which is also attractive to little children and allows me to make trips around the country.

Dear Bernice,

If you want to stay within one resort, it will be hard to explore the entire country: this would require long train journeys, which you'll probably want to avoid because of your granchildren. There are some good, centrally located resorts though that allow you to move around larger areas of Switzerland. Some examples are:

- Bern, Thun or Spiez in the Bernese Oberland. Bern offers direct connections to many other resorts. Thun is located beautifully at the shore of a lake. It has a romantic town centre and bathing spots which might be nice for your grandchildren. Direct access to boats may be an advantage as well. Spiez is also situated along lake Thun and offers direct connections to Bern, Interlaken (and the Jungfrau region) and Brig (on the southern side of the Alps);
- Visp and Brig in Wallis, both giving access to fashionable resorts such as Montreux and Geneva in the west, the beautiful snow-peaked valleys of Zermatt and Saas-Fee to the south and popular tourist spots such as Fiesch and Andermatt eastwards;
- Chur in Graubünden, serving as a base for trips to the Walensee, tourist resort Arosa, the sunny high-altitude valley of the Engadine (by the way, the train ride from Chur to the Engadine is an attraction in itself!) and many other beautiful places.

Many resorts in Switzerland pay special attention to children. Genuine tourist resorts often offer a special children's programme. Have a beautiful stay with your grandchildren!

Bernice, of course I don't know anything about your grandchildren, but I can tell you this: we took our children with us to the Swiss Alps when they were three and five years old. For the first time that is, since then we went lots of times. They always absolutely loved it. Hiking, the gondolas, trips by train or cog-railway. They also loved making their own pictures (they had small cameras of their own) so that they could make their own photo books as a reminder. I agree with moderator Annika, there is much attention for children in Switzerland and the options she has given seem great. I hope you will enjoy your stay!