aug 15, 2022
interlaken, switzerland hiking day
by anne-marie leduc
the town of interlaken in switzerland is one of the most beautiful places i’ve ever seen. the emerald-colored waters of Lake Thun and Lake Brienz are unbelievable. My partner and i love going for hikes and since we moved to europe, we have a lot of new exciting places to go. so we rented a car and drove to there to escape the summer heat of Paris. we had the perfect weekend get away that surpassed our expectations. here below some recommendations i want to share.
Tips before going:
The most important thing to do before going to switzerland is to check with your mobile company if your monthly plan cover switzerland. trust me, if you don’t want to have any surprises like we did, i highly recommend to double check.
How to get there:
we decided to rent a car from Paris to interlaken which took about 8 hours in total. You can also take the train, which was roughly the same travel time and cost as a rental car, but we opted for the car so could have more freedom to go anywhere anytime. plus the fact that we had to bring our camping stuff and tom also brought his bike. if you do so, make sure to check if you need a car pass when you enter switzerland by road. apparently we forgot to pay a 40 CHF swiss highway pass, but we didn’t get caught so…
Where we stayed:
since we were pretty last minute to organise our weekend get away, we did not have much choices of places to stay. hotels were very expensive and they did not look super nice. To save some money, we decided to book a camping site in front of brienz lake. we chose strandbad-iseltwald for their amazing location and the fact that they have a bistro and a bar on the campsite. Everything was perfect except for our spot to put our tent. i don’t know if it is an european thing to sleep right beside your neighbour’s tent, but as a canadian who is used to camping in North american national parks i was shocked. There was no privacy at all. if you don’t mind this, then this camping is perfect. the location is to good to be true and Their aperol spritz (my favorite summer drink) were very good.
our hiking route:
we did a lot of research beforehand as we wanted to make the most of our time in Switzerland with a challenging, but safe hike with amazing views. I think we nailed it! trust me, The “Schynige Platte to First” trail is what you are looking for. It’s a long hike (we did it in 6 hours) so you must start early. we took the 8am Schynige Platte mountain train. It was a bit scary as we climbed steep cliffs, but the views kept getting better as we climbed higher, higher and higher. By 9am we were at top of the mountain and the start of the trail. along the way, we stopped at two small restaurants in mountain huts. As we neared the end of the trail, it got quite crowded, but the gondola took us down swiftly to the town of Grindelwald below.