Day 2 – Monday 23rd July 2018
We all woke up nice and early for our first whole day in Interlaken – I think we were all a bit excited to go out exploring. After having some breakfast in the apartment and packing our lunches for the day (Switzerland is expensive, we wanted to cut down costs where we could!), we headed to the bus stop a short walk away.
The 105 bus took us to Wilderswil, about a 15 minute journey away. We could have walked, but public transport is free for tourists in Interlaken (yes you do have to pay tourist tax to technically it isn’t free but we were going to make the most of it!) so we could save our legs for the rest of the day. We then jumped onto a cog train that would take us all the way up to the top of Schynige Platte. The journey takes about an hour and it quite slow as the cog train is climbing up a mountain, but time passes quickly because there are so many spectacular views around every twist and turn. There are so many photo opportunities, I would advise to just take as many as you can and you can go through and delete them later.
There is a lot to do up there, we opted to walk the main circular route along the top, as we had been told this was a great way to see Interlaken and the surrounding area from above. The walk was a bit more gruelling than I think we were expecting, but we did it and it was definitely worth the effort. Along the way we found some great picture spots with mountains, valleys, lakes and Swiss chalets as the focus. About halfway through the walk we found a nice place to sit and eat our packed lunch, it was probably one of the best views I’ve ever had a meal in front of it was honestly beautiful (I feel like I’m going to be saying this a lot in this series, words can’t describe how amazing this place is).
There are also other things to do up here including a Panoramic restaurant; performances from Alphorn players; a botanical alpine garden and a really cool picture frame that you can stand in and have a great backdrop.
Once we had finished the walk and had a well-earned hot chocolate in the Panorama Restaurant and Hotel, we decided to make our way back down the mountain using the cog train again. I don’t know why but it felt like I was seeing all the same views for the first time again, they took my breath away just the same as last time.
Later on in the day we had booked a walking tour of Interlaken given by a local. This was a free tour but most people give the guides a tip, so it is a really budget friendly activity to do as you get to see the area through the eyes of someone who lives there and who are obviously in love with their town. To be honest, I don’t think I would pay much for this tour if it wasn’t free because, although it was interesting to some extent, there is only so much of the place you can see in a couple of hours and half of that was spent hiking up a hill to get a view of the town which, in my opinion, wasn’t that great. But besides from this, the tour guide was engaging and fun, and I learnt a lot more than I thought I would.
We were exhausted after a long day of walking so decided to cook a quick dinner of pasta and sausages and relaxed for the rest of the evening in the apartment planning out the rest of the week according to the forecast of the weather up the mountains. It looks as though we’re going to have a pretty busy week ahead of us…
Happy travelling!
Zoe and David x
Written by Zoe
Not-So-Trendy Travellers 