3 DAY SWITZERLAND ITINERARY; The ultimate vacation guide for Interlaken, Grindelwald & Lauterbrunnen

Hey guys, welcome back to our channel. If you can tell from the amazing view behind me, we are in Grindelwald. In this video, we're going to show you everything to do in this region using Grindelwald as a base in three days. So we know so many of you are coming to Switzerland for the first time this summer and are traveling all across this amazing country. So you might not be spending a full week in this region, which totally makes sense. If you're only spending a few days here, this video is for you. We're going to show you everything you can do from this region in three days. It's going to be a packed itinerary, but we want you to make the most of every second here. So if that sounds interesting to you, stay tuned for the rest of the video. Before we get into that, I just want to direct you to our website, thetravelingswiss.com. We have tons of resources there for you, including a free train pass selector tool, because I know selecting a train pass can be tough. And we have pre-made itineraries. You can book consultations and we have lots of free resources as well. So we're going to start with day one and it's going to be in Grindelwald. We're going to be a day where we have tons of adventure activities to do. So let's not waste a second. Let's go. For this day in Grindelwald, I recommend starting early and walking in the village until the Grindelwald Fierce Gondola Station. Head all the way up to the top with the gondola. And after about 25 minutes, you'll arrive at the top. You could experience first the Tiso Cliff Walk right in the morning. And we recommend you do this because it can get really busy and crowded as the day goes on. This is a cliff walk that has a paved kind of railed pathway along the cliffs. And you can see beautiful views. But we recommend doing this early because it is quite narrow. And when it's busy with people, you can't really get as nice photos. So do this right when you get there. After experiencing the cliff walk, we recommend hiking to the Backalpsee Lake. This is a beginner friendly hike that takes about an hour and 15 minutes in each direction. So budget that into your time because you'll need to get there and back. This is a beautiful lake that looks like an infinity pool with views on the mountains. Depending on how you want to spend your day, you can pack a picnic and enjoy a little meal there. Or you can head right back to the gondola station for some thrilling activities. After all, the Grindelwald Fierce is called the top of adventure. So the first thing you can do is take the zip line down to the intermediary station. But if there's a really long line here, and there certainly can be, we recommend skipping it because if you take the gondola right down yourself, then you can go on the Fierce Flyer, which actually makes you go up and down the same line as a zip line. Typically has less lines and we actually think it's just as thrilling. There are mountain carts here too, which are great fun. But again, try to get here earlier in the morning because you can have really busy lines. If the mountain carts are a little bit too crowded, we recommend actually heading to the mountain scooter. For whatever reason, these tend to have the least lines. Maybe they're slightly more intense than the mountain carts, but you can take these all the way back down to the Grindelwald village. It's a really nice ride. You go back down through the trees, you'll pass farms. We actually even passed cows walking through these hills, which the views were just amazing. Of course, if you're not interested in those activities, you can take the gondola all the way back down to Grindelwald. You don't need to do any of these activities to get down, but we definitely recommend them because that's why you're there. So after you've experienced the Grindelwald Fierce, we actually recommend heading to another gondola station just a few minutes away from the Fierce Gondola Station when you're back in the village. This is the Finkscheg. The Finkscheg is a little bit lesser known of a mountain, but it's great fun and you'll have one of the best views of the whole valley here. You can actually experience one of the mountain coasters and it's really one of the only kind of two in the whole region and definitely the closest to Interlaken at Grindelwald. So you can experience the mountain coaster and there's also a fly line zip line type thing here. So maybe if you missed it at Grindelwald Fierce, you could still do it in Finkscheg. And in the evenings, if it's a Friday, you can actually keep the night going and head to Grindelwald Canyon as it's open late in the evening. And really special on Fridays, they light up the whole canyon and it's a really beautiful magical thing to experience. For dinner, because of course we want to give you dinner recommendations as well, we love the fondue gondolas at the Belvedere Hotel. The Belvedere Hotel is one of our favorites in Grindelwald, but even if you're not staying there, they have little old gondolas that were actual real gondolas from the Mendelssohn and different things around that you could book out and have a little private dinner in a gondola for two outside with a beautiful view of the valley. And we thought it was absolutely delicious. Day two, we're going to take advantage of being near some of Switzerland's most beautiful lakes and we're going to explore Lake Brienz by boat. We're even going to see some amazing waterfalls and more. For our day on the lakes, the way you'll start the morning is heading to Interlaken Oost via train. You'll grab a boat from the Interlaken Oost station and the boat dock is just next to the train station. It's super easy to transfer. In the summer months, we recommend grabbing the 11.07 a.m. boat as it's a turn of the century style historic boat with a steam engine and it's very, very nice to see. This boat will go by Isselwald. It's one of the stops. You can stop here and look around. We actually just skip it and like to admire it from the lake because it can get really busy, but it is a beautiful place to pass. You'll stay on the boat on the way to Brienz. Another stop is the Giesbach waterfalls where you can take a short funicular and actually walk to the waterfalls. You can even walk behind one and have some nice views on Lake Brienz. Again, you can see these waterfalls directly from the boat if you don't want to go see them, but it is another stop you can make depending on what you're interested in that day. Then we recommend continuing by boat to Brienz. We highly recommend walking along the lake and going to see the Brunngasse street, often named one of the most beautiful streets in all of Switzerland and we agree it is absolutely gorgeous and worth checking out if you are in Brienz. Then if you are in Brienz for the afternoon, we have two different choices for you. First, and maybe my favorite, is the Brienzer Rotorn cobbled train. This is an old red steam engine train and I really mean one of those old school trains that goes choo-choo. It takes about an hour to go up and you will have amazing views on Lake Brienz the entire way up and when you get there as well. If you're going to do this, we recommend reserving seats in advance as the train is crowded and it only leaves once an hour and it's an old steam train that's not particularly large so if you want to get on the departure time that you're looking for, you can reserve it the day before. That's what we did. At the top, you will have amazing views. You can actually see all the way to Lake Lucerne and of course Lake Brienz. Another option, which is also very fun and interesting if you want to experience more Swiss culture, is to take the 151 bus to Ballenberg. This is a Swiss open-air museum that has gathered hundreds of different traditional farms, houses, chalets, and buildings from all over Switzerland and it's kind of created a mini Switzerland inside of this open-air museum that you can experience all the different architecture and history and different eras of Switzerland. In front of one of the entrances of Ballenberg is another really wonderful museum and way to experience Swiss culture and this is the Traufer World Experience. This is the famous company in Switzerland that creates the little toy wooden cows that you will see in all the tourist shops and all the Swiss children have. I know that my daughter has dozens of them and absolutely loves them. The experience is very, very fun if you have children. There's lots of activities where they can make them, color them, paint them, and it's a very, very well done little museum. So if you're interested in either of these activities, whichever one you've done, from there you'll head back to Interlaken with the train from Brienz. To end your evening, we recommend going to the Harder Kulm in Interlaken for dinner with the funicular and having a dinner on top with an amazing view. This restaurant has traditional Swiss dishes including fondue and we always love having it there. If you're traveling to Switzerland in the summer and you still want to have a fondue, the Harder Kulm is actually a great spot because it could be a little bit cooler at night because you can go up in the evening into the altitude more, still enjoy that fondue, but not in the blazing heat of the sun. Day three in the region, we are going to go to the Valley of the Waterfalls, which is Lauterbrunnen Valley. This amazing valley is so gorgeous. You can see 72 waterfalls there, so see how many you can see. We're going to head there via the Männlichen. From Grindelwald, you can take the gondola from Grindelwald terminal to the Männlichen. At Männlichen, we recommend the Royal Walk. It's about a 20-minute hike with amazing views on the whole valley. You'll see the villages of Grindelwald, Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, Murren, and of course the mountains that make up the Swiss skyline, so the Jungfrau, the Mönch, and the Eiger. It's really one of the best views in the region. After you've done the little Royal Walk, you can head back down to the gondola station, and this time you'll take it down to Wengen, so you can go up from Grindelwald and down to Wengen. This gondola, you can actually ride it outside on the top, which is a very unique experience, so it's a little bit of another tourist attraction, just the gondola going back down. Once you're in Wengen, you can take some time to walk in the village. There's another really nice viewpoint here. If you walk to the church just a couple hundred meters from the station, you can see a beautiful view on the Lauterbrunnen Valley. Then, make sure to get the train back down to Lauterbrunnen. Check the SPB app because it only runs twice an hour. Once you're in Lauterbrunnen, you can see the beautiful village, walk along the valleys on the pedestrian path, and see how many of the valley's 72 waterfalls you can spot until you head to the Trummelbach Falls. This is a place that has 10 interior glacial waterfalls. You can actually go inside of a mountain via a funicular and see all of these waterfalls that are inside and outside of the mountain. You can feel the cool air from the glacial water and it's just a really interesting place to learn about the waterfalls, glaciers, and just see them for yourself. So, after you've seen these falls, what we recommend doing is continuing by foot or you can actually hop on a bus to the Stesselberg gondola station and that's the gondola that you could take up to Murren. What we recommend doing is stopping in Gimbelwald. This is a very cute little village that is known for its self-service fridges that run on an honor system. So, you'll see these throughout the Alps but Gimbelwald actually pioneered it with its honesty shop and the premise here is that it's just an honor system. You go in and you pick your goods, you leave the money, and there's no one there to monitor it and it runs very, very well. It's a nice thing to see and you can pick up some nice little products from different farmers in the region. Then, what you can do is either hike up or what we did is take the gondola up to Murren. Murren is a very lovely pedestrian-only village. If you're here and you're interested and you really want to pack the day, you can go from Murren up to Schilthorn where they have the 007 bond world and see all of that. That might make the day a little bit too crazy. If you want a little bit more of a relaxing day, what you can do is go back down to Lauterbrunnen with the Grutschop train which is on the other side of Murren from the gondola station. From Lauterbrunnen, it's easy to get back to Grindelwald. What you can do is take the train up to Wengen and go via the Männlichen which is the way we got there if you're doing it earlier in the day or take the So, thank you guys so much for watching this video. We hope you weren't too tired after those pack three days. If you want to check out itineraries like this one, head to thetravellingswiss.com. We have tons of options for you there and I hope that you'll find that helpful. We also have free resources as well. Again, thank you guys so much for watching this video. If there's anything else you want to see in this region or beyond in Switzerland, just let us know. We're happy to make videos and content for you guys. Again, safe travels. I hope you enjoy watching these videos and maybe we'll see you in Switzerland. Bye guys. Hey guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. If you want to see more videos like this, please make sure to like and subscribe. We'll see you soon.