Holidays to Switzerland Travel Podcast Episode 65 Transcript

10 Top experiences to enjoy in Switzerland

You can see the full show notes and listen to this episode > here.

Announcer

Are you dreaming of visiting Switzerland? Planning a trip to Switzerland is very exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. How do you choose which are the many scenic cities, towns, and villages to visit? Which mountaintop excursions should you take? And what’s the best way to get around Switzerland? And of course, how much of the country can you realistically see within your time frame? If you’ve asked yourself any of these questions, this is the podcast for you. This is the Holidays to Switzerland Travel podcast. And in each episode, your host, Carolyn Schönafinger, chats with Swiss travel experts to answer your most commonly asked questions, provide practical tips and take you on a virtual visit to the most popular destinations, and of course, some hidden gems to help you plan your dream trip to Switzerland. You’ll hear plenty of conversations about Swiss cheese and chocolate, too. Are you ready to plan your trip to Switzerland? Well, let’s get started.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Gruezi, and welcome to episode 65.  Switzerland is a stunningly beautiful country with attractive towns and villages just waiting to be visited.  But often, it’s not so much a particular destination that remains firmly embedded in your memory long after you’ve returned home from your vacation, but a special experience that you enjoyed.

Maybe it’s a delicious meal you ate in a gorgeous location, or the rewarding views from a mountain summit after a long hike to the top.  Perhaps it’s the thrill of finally enjoying a ride on a train you’ve heard so much about, or hearing the hauntingly beautiful sounds of an Alphorn.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Nick Taylor who is a member of my Switzerland Travel Planning group on Facebook. Nick and his wife have been frequent visitors to Switzerland since 1991 and they have enjoyed many wonderful experiences in all parts of the country.

Although he admitted it was a tough choice, Nick has agreed to share his top 10 Swiss experiences with us.

Before we hear from Nick, as always, I’d like to say a huge thank you to the lovely folks from Switzerland Tourism, sponsors of the podcast.  Their website myswitzerland.com is packed with tips and inspiration to help with your Switzerland trip planning, so do go and take a look.

If you need to go on a tour, you need Switzerland.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Hello, Nick, thank you very much for coming onto the podcast. I’m really looking forward to hearing about some of the amazing experiences that you’ve had in Switzerland over the years. But before we hear about those, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you first came to fall in love with Switzerland?

Nick Taylor

Well, hello to you, Carolyn, and nice to actually speak to you in person. Right, okay. Well, I’m British, as people can probably tell from my accent, and I’ve lived in the UK my whole life with my wife and my children, who are both grown up now. We have two lovely grandchildren who live nearby, so we enjoy that. We’ve always enjoyed travelling, really. We’ve been from North South America to Australia and Japan, all places in between. But I guess, as you’d expect, most of the trips have been to Europe down the years, both summer holidays and for skiing holidays. And Switzerland certainly featured quite a few times in those trips. Yeah, so. 

Carolyn Schönafinger

I was going to say, I know from sort of some of the comments and the advice and so on that you’ve provided in the Switzerland Travel Planning Facebook group that you’ve seen, certainly visited a lot of times because you’ve done such a variety of things which. Which is great.

Nick Taylor

Yeah. I mean, we both love cities and culture, my wife and I, but we also like mountains, lakes, hiking. And I think anybody who’s kind of read many of my contributions to the Facebook group will probably have realised that I’m actually quite a train fanatic as well. And for me, there’s no better train system in the world, really, than the Swiss system. So I’m super keen on Swiss railways. Fortunately, my wife loves train travel as well, so that tends to sort of work out quite well. But I have to curb my enthusiasm a little bit from time to time. But Switzerland really ticks both our boxes quite well.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. And when did you first visit there?

Nick Taylor

Well, I mean, I’ve been visiting as an ordinary tourist, as you might say, since 1991. And since 2005 when I did a birthday, big birthday trip with my son, we spent a week just basically bombing around the railways of Switzerland. And it was quite exhausting for both of us, really. Since 2005, I think we’ve probably been just about every other year on average to Switzerland. We. We don’t. We. We have been skiing a couple of times to Switzerland, but we usually used to go to France or. Or North America or Austria, and we certainly haven’t been skiing that much for. For quite a while. So it’s been Mainly spring, summer and autumn holidays to Switzerland.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay, and how would you describe your travel style? Do you like to plan everything before you go or do you tend to do more of, okay, well, let’s just pick a base to stay and then, you know, plan everything on the fly kind of thing?

Nick Taylor

No, to be honest, we’re planners, but we’re not kind of obsessive planners. I’ll look at some of the itineraries that some people sort of set out Facebook group with with awe and envy, you might say. No, we, we. I, what I like to do is to sort of spend some time beforehand working out in my own head what a good itunity would be, where we want to go, how we want to travel, etc, and then to be honest, quite a few times I’ve, I’ve sort of handed the whole thing over to one of the specialist Swiss travel companies or train travel companies, you know, and talk through them, what I like to do, what train routes we’re going to take, even down to which hotels we’d maybe like to stay in, although maybe take their suggestions as well. So it’s a bit of a mixture really, of, as you say, sort of like planning it myself, getting somebody else to help with a lot of the ticket booking and that kind of thing. I, I suppose when, when the kids were younger, we did used to do more car trips. We’d sometimes drive down to Italy or through to Austria. We’d stop in Switzerland along the way and that was sometimes a little bit more, you know, take it as it comes, see where we get to type of thing. So done a bit of both. But yeah, now as we get older now we like to know where we’re going to stay the night.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, absolutely. There’s, there’s a bit of confidence in that, isn’t there? Knowing that you’ve got a bed waiting for, for you each night.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, absolutely.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Excellent. All right, well, let’s get into these top 10 experiences because I know there’s a wide range of activities and, and train rides and, and places there that, that you’ve included in the list that you, you’ve sent to me ahead of time. So let’s start with number 10. Now, I should say firstly too, that you did mention to me that it was super, super hard to narrow your list down to 10 and that you probably could have added an extra 10, but we don’t have time for that, unfortunately. But let’s start with, with number 10. Can you, can you tell us what that experience is and, and why you enjoyed that so much?

Nick Taylor

Okay, well, should just say that before we get into the list that as you say, I’ve tried to spread them around and I’ve tried not to include train trips in every one necessarily and also to spread them geographically around the country. But obviously trains and hiking features quite a lot in pretty much all the choices or most of them anyway. And also I think one other thing I should just say before we start because I want mention it every time. But for us, eating and drinking, whether it’s like coffee and cake or a rusty and a beer or wine and a fine meal in a restaurant features quite a lot. We do, we do enjoy doing that. So just about everywhere where we go we try and look for a nice coffee and cake or something like that at the very least, really. So anyway, having said that, I’ll start off. So I ranked them from the 10th down to the, the top one, number one at the end. And the first one is going to be a hike from Kandersteg to Leukerbad and then back again. So Kandersteg is a lovely small village. It’s on the old Lötschberg railway route which is now bypassed by the base tunnel.

Nick Taylor

But you can still get I think an hourly regional train that stops there. I think most people, when they think of Kandersteg, think of the lake, the dramatic lake at Oeschinensee and the Blausee. But this hike’s a little bit different. If you take a bus out of the village and go south for a little bit, you get to the Sunbuhl cable car which takes you up high and there you get to a hiking path which gradually climbs up through increasingly sort of rocky, slightly desolate scenery I suppose up to the Schwarrenbach Berg hostel which is one of those lovely kind of slightly grim looking stone mountain hotel restaurant refuges that they have on the passes in Switzerland. And then you continue up the path to the Dobensee lake and the Gemmi Pass which is up right, high at 2,269 metres. And when you’re up there you’ve got stunning views down into the Rhone valley below. Now the easy way down the 900 metre descent down to Leukerbad. I think in the past with pack horses and what on. People used to do it on a. On a twisty mountain path. But now you can get a cable car that takes you straight down where you get sort of fantastic views as you descend.

Nick Taylor

And Leukerbad is a spa village and lovely oldie worldy sort of skiing village. Very traditional, lovely place. You get from there you get back to Kandersteg by getting a bus again down another 7 or 800 metre descent down into the Rhone Valley at Susten and you can pick up a train, a mainline train there to Brig and get the train back from Brig to, to Kandersteg. So it’s, it’s just a, it’s a full day out and a good hike. But you done, you know, a lot of stuff. You feel really, really satisfied at the end of that.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. And is that hike really just for experienced hikers or, or is it okay for someone who, you know, hasn’t done much hiking before?

Nick Taylor

Well, it’s, I didn’t measure the length. It’s quite, it’s quite long and there is a gradual climb, but it’s very, very gradual spread over, you know, a number of miles or kilometres. So and it’s a good path and it’s quite popular. You know, you won’t find yourself kind of on your own unless I suppose you’re in the middle of winter in terrible weather. But no, it’s, it’s, it’s quite easy as long as you’ve got the stamina to do the distance and, and climb a few gradients. Yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. Okay. And as you said like it’s a full day, allow a full day for it. So at least by doing that you don’t have to rush on the hike. You can take your time and, and, and pace yourself and, and make sure you, you complete the whole, the whole hike. Yeah, good.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, you could, you could, you know, you can choose to spend a bit of time in Leukerbad if you want, which is a lovely village, nice place to stop for it. Again, a coffee or a meal maybe. But check the trains back because it’s quite a long train journey back.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, okay, great. So Kandersteg is in the Bernese Oberland and the next experience that you are going to tell us about is in Eastern Switzerland.

Nick Taylor

Well, oh actually I think maybe I’ll change the order from.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Or Northern Switzerland.

Nick Taylor

Oh well you could call it Northern Eastern, the, the Rheinfall. Is that the one you got on your list? Yeah. Good. Okay. Well, the Rheinfall, the Europe’s largest waterfall I believe. But obviously if visitors come expecting something like Niagara Falls, they’re going to be quite disappointed I guess really. But for us Europeans they’re pretty dramatic really. There’s viewing platforms on both sides of the, of the falls and you can also get a little boat which takes you either out to just in front of the water, the waterfall or you can actually get off the boat onto a little island in the middle of the falls which you know is when they’re in full straits in, in the spring. Best of all, I suppose, you know, it’s pretty, it’s pretty dramatic I have to say really. So you can reach either side of the falls where there’s railway stations from Zurich or directional from Schaffhausen which is, it’s really in a. Almost like a suburb of Schaffhausen really, isn’t it?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah.

Nick Taylor

And it’s just a few minutes walk to get to the falls. There’s cafes and viewing places and it’s, it’s just a lovely place really. And, and you know, near the head of the Rhine valley, it’s quite important to see I think all that water rushing down and imagine that, you know, some miles later it reaches the North Sea at Rotterdam. It’s quite, quite impressive really. But for someone who’s interested in railways, for me there’s another attraction there which is quite special and that’s a little facility called Smilestones. Slightly kind of wacky name I suppose, but it actually comprises a sort of massive model railway display which is housed in an old factory. It’s just a few minutes walk from the falls and it’s divided up into different scenes from different areas of Switzerland and they’ve modelled quite faithfully really all the buildings and the scenery and everything from the Bernese Oberland to the Zurich area, the falls themselves, etc. Etc. And you know, they do a night and day sort of thing with the lights down and there’s little buttons you can press to hear, make little scenes work and hear the sound of alpine horns and all that kind of thing.

Nick Taylor

You know, it’s, it’s really good. I mean it might sound a bit, bit nerdy. It’d be great for kids but against the best expectations. My wife actually enjoyed it as well. So. Okay, I thoroughly recommend that as a, you know, a couple of hours thing and then.

Carolyn Schönafinger

And again when you finish, can that, can that be reached by public transport if people are travelling around by train?

Nick Taylor

Yeah. As I say there’s, there’s, there’s railway stations on both banks of the, of the river which are connected to both to Schaffhausen a few minutes away and the Smilestones place is just a couple of minutes walk from.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay.

Nick Taylor

From one of the stations. Yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Right.

Nick Taylor

It’s in the little town Neuhausen.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, yeah.

Nick Taylor

Which is, it’s got again a few restaurants and cafes and things like that and, and you know, for me the experience sort of carries on, really. You can get the train back into, or bus back into Schaffhausen, which is a. I think, as you know, Carolyn, it’s a lovely city. Yeah, it’s beautiful, historic, great place to walk around, nice restaurants and bars and so forth.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. And the fortress too, is. Yeah, the views from up there are amazing.

Nick Taylor

Oh, the, the Munoz.

Carolyn Schönafinger

The Munot Fortress.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

And I think, if I remember rightly, you mentioned in the Facebook group that you had a quite a, you had a really enjoyable meal there. Do you remember, in, in Schaffhausen, that is. Do you remember the name of the particular restaurant, perhaps?

Nick Taylor

Yeah, I did. I checked up that it’s called Kastanienbaum. It’s just. It was a tiny place and we just sort of found it by accident, wandering down a nice sort of narrow historic street. And there were a few tables outside on the sunny side of the street and a really lovely young couple who were running it and they were doing a Moroccan week with all Moroccan recipes and things and Moroccan wines and stuff. And that was nice. And I mean, sometimes I think people think of Switzerland, Swiss food as being, you know, all Rösti and sausages and fondues and stuff. But yeah, there is, there is some nice, you know, varied kind of cuisine to be found in Switzerland as well these days. Certainly.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Great. All right, so let’s move on to the south, into Ticino for your eighth top experience. What have you got to tell us about that?

Nick Taylor

Well, I mean, I’ve actually only, well, I’ve been twice to Ticino, but only actually stayed there once and I’ll certainly be looking to go back again. I mean, it’s a lovely part of the country. It’s got this laid back Italian vibe. It’s. I believe it’s the sunniest and warmest part of this, of Switzerland, because it’s on the south side of the Alps, of course, the Italian side. The people mainly speak Italian there. So you know, it. It’s like, I don’t. This might sound a bit insulting to Italians, but it’s like, you know, it has the warmth and generosity of Italy, but the efficiency of Switzerland, really, which I quite like, really. So my sort of perfect experience would involve the town, lakeside town of Locarno and the Centovalli railway. The Centovalli is a valley, it means 100 valleys, but it’s a main valley which runs between Locarno and Domodossola over on the Italian side. And you can get the train, the narrow gauge train run by the FART, to say A little town like Carmeda, which is on the border with Italy. You can enjoy the journey, but then get off there and walk up into the hills through various very interesting old, very old stone built villages nestling on the hillsides, through forests and so on, and then make your way back down the valley to one of the stations, pick up the train and get the train back into Locarno itself.

Nick Taylor

And then one particular day out that my wife and I did was to do that. And then at the end of the day, we actually walked to Ascona, which is again, a beautiful sort of neighbouring town to Locarno on the lake, on Lake Maggiore with this stunning promenade, all lined with restaurants and cafes and had an evening meal there. And then at the end of the day we, we took the bus back to Locarno to the, to the hotel. And because we were staying more than three nights, we got a free Ticino card from the hotel, which was fantastic value. It was free travel on all the buses and the local trains and everything in the whole region. Absolutely brilliant.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, that’s great. Excellent. And so with, with that railway, does it, do you know if it operates year round?

Nick Taylor

Yeah, yeah, pretty certainly does. Yeah. Yeah. And as I say, you can, you can get a, they actually runs panoramic trains. I mean, it doesn’t get mentioned very much as a panoramic train ride, but they do run a panoramic train. It’s very, very scenic. Not nearly as well known as the, the classic panoramic trains, but well worth, well worth visiting if you’re down in that area.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. Okay, excellent. All right, so number seven, you have mentioned skiing in Zermatt and. Yeah, well, like probably one of the most famous ski resorts in Switzerland, if not the world.

Nick Taylor

The world, yeah, absolutely.

Carolyn Schönafinger

That would have been a pretty amazing experience.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, it was. I mean, I, I thought I should include at least one winter holiday, really, and because they, you know, they are fantastic and we, we love skiing. We did it for about 20 odd years with, with the, with the children and on our own before I suddenly suffered a couple of injuries and decided to slow down a bit. But yeah, I mean, if you’re going to ski in Switzerland, there’s lots of great resorts, but Zermatt, as you say, is, is probably up there at the top. Really. We, we have actually visited in, in summertime and had a hike around as well, which, which is a fantastic place place to, to do that. I mean, Zermatt is it, it’s very high for a start. So you pretty much guaranteed snow certainly in the winter and even all year round you can ski on the, ski on the glacier. I like it that the village is car free, so you have to leave your car down the valley, take the train up the final stage and then you can get around the village obviously on foot or by a little electric buses and taxis and things.

Nick Taylor

I have to say, you know, I mean it’s, it’s lovely, it’s charming, it’s quite busy in the season and it’s also quite eye wateringly expensive I think to suit to a lot of ordinary people. But it’s worth it. It’s an experience not to be missed, I think. I mean when we were there, which is quite a few years ago now, skiing the. Some of the more recent lift improvements and so on hadn’t actually been been done, so the skiers were a bit disjointed we found. But I think that’s better. Now there’s links across but you can, you can get say the Gornergrat, sorry Gornergrat train up in the morning, ski that sector and then sort of, well then you have to come down, but I think now you can go across to one of the other sectors and, and, and ski around there because you can go up to the ridiculously high Klein Matterhorn which is, I think it’s the highest lift system in Switzerland if I’m right saying. And from there you can actually, if you’ve got time, you can ski over into the Italian sector in Breuil Cervinia, which is a lovely resort in its own right.

Nick Taylor

And of course all the time you’ve got the, the Matterhorn in view if, if the weather’s good, which in the ski season, you know, you get sunny days mostly. So it’s, it’s just an all round stunning, absolutely stunning ski and frankly summer resort really.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, yeah. And very soon too you’ll be able to take the cable car all the way over to Cervinia because that, that last section from Klein Matterhorn is going to be open in, in spring 2023.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, I read about that. Yeah. Really exciting. Yeah, fantastic. I love the way that the Swiss just keep on improving, don’t they, constantly.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Absolutely. Transport, yes. Now it’s great. Okay, so let’s move on to possibly. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s your favourite part of Switzerland, but it’s certainly my favourite part of Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland and in particular the Jungfrau region. And you’ve got at number six going up from Lauterbrunnen to Murren on the cable car and then the train and then doing some hiking around Murren. What’s one of your favourite hikes that you’ve done there?

Nick Taylor

Well, I mean, it’s all lovely around Murren. I mean, one of the kind of easy ones, if you like, I think, is if you. If you’re going there for the first time, I would suggest, and particularly again, if you’ve got young children, you can get the. Well, now it’s the cable car up from Lauterbrunnen station to Grutschalp. In the first time we went, there was a funicular.

Carolyn Schönafinger

I remember that too. I remember the funicular days.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, yeah. And you got that up to Grutschalp and then you get the little train, the. The little Lauterbrunnen, sorry, Bergbahn Lauterbrunnen BLM train, which trundles along a sort of like a shelf, really, along the mountainside, doesn’t it, to the village itself. And you’ve got these fantastic views all the way across to the Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau. But there’s also a footpath which runs more or less alongside the train track. So you can get the train one way and walk the other, or walk both ways. And it’s pretty flat, just gentle gradients and a surface path. So that’s a really easy one with families. You could do it with a stroller or something if you. If you had one. But then from Murren itself there, obviously you can get lifts. And again, a funicular up to higher areas and it’s just lovely to walk around there. I think, again, you’ve got a. You’ve got a good pair of lungs and good pair of legs, really, to. It’s quite steep, isn’t it, up there? But the views are absolutely stunning. Again, across the. To the valley and the other side of the valley, the to the Wengen side. I mean, you can actually walk well, hike, you know, it’s a stiff hike up to Birg and even up to, up to the Schilthorn itself. I’ve only ever been up on the cable car. I have to say, I never actually managed the hike, but it is sort of quite doable as long as you check the weather and you’re fit and well equipped, I think, and allow plenty.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Of time, I think, because like you, I’ve only been up on the cable car and yeah, it is. It’s. It would be a very steep climb.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s. It’s kind of Serious hiking. But there’s lots of easier heights. I mean, even from. From Grutschalp itself, you can. The last time we were there, we. We. Instead of walking alongside the railway, we went. We took a path which took us a little bit higher up. A bit of climbing, but it just takes you on a higher level and you still sort of come down eventually to Murren itself, but fantastic views and it’s a bit quieter. You know, you don’t. You don’t sort of. You feel like you’re on your own and. I can’t remember the name of the place, but there’s a. There’s a children’s playground up there, isn’t there?

Carolyn Schönafinger

 At Allmendhubel.

Nick Taylor

Allmendhubel. That’s it.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah.

Nick Taylor

Thank you.

Carolyn Schönafinger

So you go up there on the. On the funicular.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, that’s right. Or you can hike, but you’re gonna go up the funicular, hike down or whatever. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, that’s. That’s really popular now, isn’t it? And that. That’s really good.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It is, yeah. And another. Another fairly easy hike or walk that you can do from. From Murren. So you could come up the way that you mentioned on the. The cable car to Grutschalp and then the take the train across to Murren. Another popular hike is to hike then down to Gimmelwald from Murren. And yeah, you could easily do a. Do a, you know, a loop and come back to Murren the same way if you wanted.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, that’s right. Because of course you can, you can walk down to to Gimmelwald, which I have to say is. It is quite. It’s quite a steep road, isn’t it?

Carolyn Schönafinger

It is a steep road. Yeah.

Nick Taylor

It’s quite hard on your knees, really, in your calves. But you can get the cable car down there or walk down, cable car up or walk down as we did last time, and get the cable car down to Stechelberg down in the valley and get the bus back to Lauterbrunnen or go and visit the Trummelbach Falls or something like that. Mean, there’s just so much to do around. Yeah, the. The Jungfrau Lauterbrunnen Valley, isn’t there.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It’s just there.

Nick Taylor

There is incredible.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It is, yep. It’s wonderful. Now, I’m really glad that you included this next experience on your list, because this is something that I did last year for the first time, and I’d seen photos for many years and always thought, yes, I must go and do that. So finally I Did it? But I’ll let you tell all our listeners what we’re talking about.

Nick Taylor

Well, I, yeah, I mean, my first visit was, was last summer as well, actually, as it happens. And again, I, I mean, I’d always wanted to visit the, the Appenzell region, that whole area of kind of very northeast Switzerland bordering onto Germany and, and Austria. Lovely, lovely area. You know, the whole thing. I mean, I already mentioned Schaffhausen and the Bodensee. Saint Gallen is a lovely city, Appenzell is a lovely village. But yeah, I, I’d seen the, the photographs of, of this mountain restaurant built into the, the cliffside at. I think it’s the Berg Gasthaus Escher Wildkirchli to give it its official title. Our innkeeper in Appenzell, where we were staying, described it as their Eiffel Tower, you know, the iconic tourist site. So I, I wanted to see it. So anyway, the, the best way I decided to get there was to get the, the little Appenzellerbahn train from the village to Wasseraun, which is a. Up, up a sort of reasonably remote valley. There’s nothing much there. There’s little restaurant, as always, and a cable car. You take the cable car, very short ride up to a place called Ebenalp, which is a sort of a low mountain, you might, you might say.

Nick Taylor

And then you can from there you walk down through caves and built into the caves inside of the, the cliff face there, there’s a chapel and various shrines and so on, and it’s, it’s quite an unusual place. And then you come out at this stunning, just a, a kind of almost like a normal guest house, you might say. But it’s built into the side of the cliff, isn’t it? And it’s just almost unbelievable. Really lovely place. Anyway, what, what we did then. I mean, it, it sort of gets better really, because you can walk down from there or hike down. It’s again, that is a, crikey, that’s a really, really tough hike down we discovered. Really almost wrecked our knees actually, to be honest. Down to Seealpsee Lake in the bottom of the valley, which again, is another. It’s often photographed and it’s quite, quite rightly, it’s scenically stunning. You can have a swim in the lake if you feel like it, and the weather’s nice. We, we just found ourselves. We were just sitting. We found a little chapel at the lakeside in the, in the forest. We were sitting there and suddenly this guy who turned out to be a local guy turned up with an alphorn.

Nick Taylor

And he started playing this alphorn. And then he would alternate the alphorn tunes with yodelling, like traditional yodelling songs. And if you’ve never heard that, it’s, like, really eerie but beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And. And you’re in this stunning scenery and the sound is echoing off the mountains, and it’s just. Which is what it was designed to do, of course, you know, so yodelling is their way of communicating, isn’t it, amongst the mountains? Absolutely stunning. And at the end of that whole lot, you can walk down, you know, a few kilometres back to Wasseraun station, get the train back to wherever you need to go to. That’s a beautiful part of the country.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, no, it’s. It’s a wonderful day. And we did similar. The same as you, actually. We. We then hiked down from. From the gasthof to. To the lake, and it’s definitely a. A decent hike. That was one day I was really wishing I had hiking poles. And I was actually surprised to see so many people hiking uphill, which apparently is the Swiss way of doing things. But it’s probably a whole lot easier on your knees if. If maybe not easier on your lungs, but definitely easier on your knees, I would say.

Nick Taylor

Well, I. Yeah, Funny enough, I think, when I posted something on the Facebook group about that, one of your other frequent contributors, Sereina Engert, left a message saying. I think her dad had always said in Switzerland, you you hike up the mountain and take the cable car down. I can see why now, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

We learnt our lesson too late, obviously.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. No, but. But Seealpsee, it really is beautiful. And there’s a couple of restaurants there. We had lunch there, and then we actually saw that chapel and sat by the chapel, and we were there on a Sunday and there was actually a service going on in the chapel, which was. Yeah. What a location to go to church. Amazing.

Nick Taylor

Absolutely. Yeah. Shame, you didn’t see the yodelling guy.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, well, we had actually seen that in Appenzell, the town. But I can imagine there by the lake, it would have been even more special.

Nick Taylor

Yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

So what’s number four on. On your list, Nick?

Nick Taylor

Okay, well, number four combines mountain, lake and a steam train. So again, you know, for me, it’s. It’s pretty much a perfect day out, really. So Brienz, little village of Brienz is a beautiful place. Lots of old timber buildings by the lake. It’s famous for wood carving. You can get there by train from either Lucerne or from Interlaken. And again, both those journeys are some of the most scenic rail journeys in Switzerland. I love that route over the Brunig Pass. I love the way in Brienz the the railway station is right by the lake, next to the steamer pier or the boat pier. But also across the road you’ve got the the bottom station for the Brienzer Rothorn bahn, which is an old, very old preserved historic railway which runs steam trains up to the top of the Brienzer Rothorn, which is, you know, a fairly high mountain. As you go up, there are fantastic views over the lake and over towards the. The Eiger and the Jungfrau and those mountains. And obviously when you get to the summit, there’s the usual restaurants and a little walk up to the summit and so forth and you can hang around up there a bit, get the train back down again and then immediately just, just sort of go straight across the road if you want, catch a boat and that will drop you off across the lake at the bottom of the.

Nick Taylor

It’s actually effectively the private funicular which takes you up to the Grand Hotel Giessbach and you can stop there. It’s. It’s a very fine sort of Belle Epoch Hotel. Have a coffee or cake or afternoon tea or whatever, and then have a look at the falls, the Giessbach Falls, which, you know, they’re. Again, they’re not, you know, they’re not like the Rheinfall or you know, those sort of massive things, but they’re very beautiful, very scenic. What we did when we were there was, was to actually then walk a little bit along the lake, up above the lake, through the, the forests. It takes you to Iseltwald, which of course has got the that view of the, the lake and the hotel on a peninsula which has become really, really something on Instagram. Yeah, something. Something to do with a TV series that’s filmed there.

Carolyn Schönafinger

I think it’s a Korean, A Korean movie or Korean TV show. Yeah, that’s right.

Nick Taylor

I’ve never, never actually seen it myself. But anyway, that there’s a lovely, very small village, really not an awful lot going on there, but you can, you can get the boat back to Interlaken from there and complete a just a superb round trip, really.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. So you’re seeing, you’re getting lots of variety there, aren’t you? Because you’re going, you’ve got the steam train ride, you’ve got the lake, you’ve got the falls if you stop at Giessbach, you’ve got the little village. So you’ve got a whole combination, which is great.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, absolutely.

Carolyn Schönafinger

And I think, I think one of the lovely things about when you go on the Brienz Rothorn bahn too, obviously it’s a steam train. You’ve got the open, open windows or the open sides, which is, which is quite different. But also when you get to the summit, it’s quite, well, it’s undeveloped really, I guess, obviously there’s a restaurant there, like you mentioned, but a lot of mountain summits that you go to in Switzerland, there’s lots and lots of infrastructure and activity to do, whereas up there it’s. Yeah, you, you just have to appreciate the scenery because it’s, it’s so beautiful.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, I mean, actually, I should say, I mean, I think one of the things that sometimes is overlooked on, on these mountains where you can get a train or a, you know, a rack cog wheel train or a cable car up to the top of something is you can often stop off halfway up and you can do that on the, on the Rothorn. On a station called Planalp. And you know, you can, you can walk around there. You can even walk. Well, perhaps you’d want to walk up rather than walk down after what we were saying before. But you know, you don’t have to just ride up to the top, ride back down again. You, you often, you can get off halfway and do some nice hikes and have a, again another cup of coffee or something like that. I just love the fact that in Switzerland, wherever you are, you’re never that far from everywhere. A mountain restaurant.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, absolutely. There’s always a delicious slice of cake waiting.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, absolutely.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay, so we’re going to talk about another train right now, and this is one that I would say many of our listeners will have heard of. It’s the Bernina Express, one of the premium panoramic trains. Have you, or when you did your trip on it, did you do the whole, the whole distance of the journey?

Nick Taylor

We’ve actually done several trips on it, so.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve done the whole, we’ve done the whole lot, but we’ve done part of it. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna mention that, actually. I mean, the, I suppose the, the whole route starts in Chur, capital of the Graubunden Canton. Lovely city in itself. Really tiny down in the southeast of the country, but not as touristy as it really is the Bernese Oberland. And you take the train from there down to Pontresina or St. Moritz and then you can carry on all the way down to Tirano in just over the Italian border. And a lovely, I mean the whole, to do the whole thing down Tirano is, is a beautiful trip and because again you go from the sort of German speaking or Romansch speaking, even part of Switzerland down to the Italian speaking and you can stop in Tirano and take a stroll into the old part of the town and have a lovely find a lovely trattoria, you know, sit under some vines and have a nice pizza or something like that and a glass of wine or two and then just take the train back. But one really good thing that we did once was to take the train to a remote station called Ospizio Bernina and it’s beside the Lago Bianco or White Lake, which much of the, it’s very high and it’s quite sort of like desolate rocky scenery.

Nick Taylor

But for much of the year it’s, it is, it is white and you can hike again. It’s not like a massively difficult hike. Just needs to be kind of reasonably fit and make sure the weather’s okay. And you can hike to the next station down at Alp Grüm, which is really the, the last station in the, the German speaking part before, before the line really came dramatically drops down the valley into the Italian section. And Alp Grüm is again, it’s one of these like, you know, slightly grim stone built kind of guest houses, but it’s got a fantastic view of. I think it’s the Palu Glacier and it’s just absolutely stunning location. Very high but very sunny. And again there’s, there’s a couple of restaurants and one of there with you can, you can enjoy and then you just get on the train and get back to go back to wherever you, you’re staying. Pontresina is a lovely place to stay around there. I, I find nice village a little bit, a little bit less expensive and quieter than St. Moritz.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, well that, that’s one part of Switzerland that I’m planning to visit this year. And yeah, I’m definitely going to consider that that hike that you’ve just talked about down to Alp Grüm because that’s, that sounds quite spectacular.

Nick Taylor

It is, it’s a lovely hike. Yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. And I think one of the good things about the, the Bernina Express too. I mean you mentioned that you’ve, you’ve done various sections, you know, numerous times. You’ve got the end at, from here where you’ve got the, the Landwasser viaduct and then at the other end going down into Italy you’ve got all those circular, well they’re viaducts as well. So you’ve got something at each, at each end of the journey.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, absolutely. The, yeah, it’s the, the Brusio spiral I think is the one you think of there. Yeah, well that, yeah, the, the northern part of it for from Chur down to Pontresina is actually, it shares that part of the route with the Glacier Express. Of course, that’s the, the end of the Glacier Express route. It’s actually UNESCO World Heritage designated route and it is, it’s the railway that’s designated as World Heritage Site because of its viaducts and spiral tunnels and you mentioned that. Spectacular. Iconic. I think it’s a truly is iconic Landwasser viaduct which bursts out of the, the trains burst out of the, the cliffside down the. Of the mountain and it’s. But it’s a lovely area that as well. And it’s again there’s a walk you can do between Prada and Bergun which follows the railway and you can watch the trains disappearing, sort of like coming in one direction, disappearing into a tunnel and then they emerge higher up say going in the opposite direction. And then a few minutes later they emerge from another tunnel going back the same direction again, you know, and it’s like you think, wow, this is just how on earth do they do that? Yeah, absolutely fascinating.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, wonderful. That’s a great experience to have. Okay, so moving on to your second top experience, Lucerne and an excursion up to the Mount Rigi. How do you recommend that people enjoy their day out?

Nick Taylor

Well, Lucerne is, is my favourite Swiss city. I mean I generally like cities. I mean if we, when we travel to Europe we often do like city breaks and so forth. To me, Bern, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, they’re all, they’re all lovely places for a stopover. But I don’t really see them as kind of destinations in their own right for me really. But Lucerne is, it’s a go to place for, for us, lovely city on the lakeside. It’s got the covered wooden bridges, very historic etc. Etc. What I love to do is to take one of the, ideally one of the old historic steam powered puddle boats on the lake where you can actually see the puddle wheel going round and you can see the, you know, the steam engine working. It’s all like polished brass and wood panelling and everything. Very, very kind of almost like a Murder on the Orient Express type stuff. And you take the boat across the lake to perhaps to a town called Vitznau, small town. And from there you can take the Rigi bahn, which again is a cogwheel or rack railway up Mount Rigi to the top.

Nick Taylor

Now Rigi isn’t, is a little bit different to some of the other mountains like Pilatus or, or Titlis or Schilthorn because it’s not quite as high, but it’s still very high and you’ve got a fantastic view from up there. But it’s kind of more spread out at the top so you can visit again the numerous hotels and restaurants and so forth, but you can hike, you can actually do quite again, not particularly difficult hikes around the top of Rigi. And it’s, we actually, one, one year we actually stayed in a hotel at the top of Rigi or near the top and we woke up to bright sunshine in the morning and then within 10 minutes we were, we were in a blizzard. I think this was in June or something. So you know, it was like. And then it played again in another 10 or 15 minutes and, and we were able to continue our journey. It’s just absolutely stunning really. And you can get, for a change you can get a cable car down to another lakeside town called Weggis, which is that all these towns are all really, really attractive. I know you’re, you’re very keen on Brunnen, aren’t you? I think further along the lake.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, yeah. And so for it you go back down to Weggis say and then take the boat back to, to Lucerne. But one of the things you can do if you’ve got time to add in my perfect day would be to stop off on the boat at the Swiss National Transport Museum which is just outside Lucerne, which is again just, it’s a world class museum dealing with trains, boats, aircraft, cars. So you know, there’s something for, for anybody who’s into those kind of toys basically. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

And you could really spend just a whole day there at, at the museum. So don’t, don’t cut, don’t cut your, yeah, don’t cut your trip to Lucerne short. Allow time for, for your Mount Rigi excursion and plenty of time at the transport museum.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, that would probably be better to split them. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay. So I knew when I asked you, you for your top 10 list, I knew one place was going to appear pretty high up. So it’s not surprising that your beloved Wengen is at the top of the list. And the cable car ride from Wengen to Männlichen, which you’re going to tell us about in a minute, I did that for the very first time last year. I’ve stayed in Lauterbrunnen many, many times and, and never done the, the Wengen to Männlichen cable car. I did it this year and wow. I have to say that was, is probably one of my top experiences in Switzerland too. So can you tell everyone a little bit about this excursion and, and what you love about it?

Nick Taylor

Okay. Well, as you say, I mean it. The Männlichen cable car starts in, in the village of Wengen and goes up very, very steep up the valley side. Really. It’s obviously to those who perhaps aren’t that familiar with the geography. I mean, Wengen sits on a sort of shelf mountain really. So you’ve got Lauterbrunnen below and then Männlichen, the sort of mountain. The ridge is an equal distance up above the village of Wengen. So the cable car whisks you up. Now, of course, the cable car’s actually got an open deck on top. I don’t know if you did that.

Carolyn Schönafinger

My husband did. I wasn’t brave enough.

Nick Taylor

 Yeah, we didn’t do that one. But I’d like to do it sometime, I think. But anyway, you get fantastic views. You go up and then again when you get to the top top you’ve got the traditional sort of restaurant because it, you have to bear in mind, I mean this infrastructure is probably primarily there for skiers really because it is. Wengen is a ski, very good ski resort. And so at the top there you’ve got a meeting of gondolas that come up from the Grindelwald Vald direction and a lot of ski runs that start there. So there’s a big restaurant, there’s a, there’s a, a very good kids play area up at the top there you can take a walk shortish. But again it’s a, you know, it’s a climb up to the. I think it’s called the Royal Walk where there’s a, an even better panorama over Lake Brienz and Thun and the Interlaken area. But my favourite, absolutely favourite walk in whole Switzerland I think really is to hike called the Panorama Hike or Panorama weg from the top of Männlichen towards Kleine Scheidegg. And if you do it in that direction all the time, you’ve got the north face of the Eiger standing right in front of you and the view down to your left is right all the way down to Grindelwald.

Nick Taylor

And it’s just, it’s, it’s got to be the best panorama I think in Switzerland really. And you’re Just sort of just strolling along on this pretty easy path really. As you get towards Kleine Scheidegg again, there’s a couple of mountain restaurants you can stop off at or you can go down into Kleine Scheidegg itself, which of course is really a sort of railway junction with a couple of hotels. And it used to be the place where everybody had to change trains from Wengen or Grindelwald to go up the Jungfrau bahn up to the Jungfrau or Top of Europe as they now call it. Of course it’s now been slightly bypassed by the new Eiger Express sort of big cable car that comes straight up from Grindelwald. But it’s still, it’s still a busy place and there’s a few restaurants there. You can get a nice, again a nice roasty sausage, egg, beer, cheese, you know, nice hearty mountain traditional lunch. And then from there you’ve got the choice really. You can either get the train back down into Wengen if you’re not feeling that active, or it’s a really good walk. It’s a longish walk.

Nick Taylor

You need about half a day for it or at least two and a half, three hours I suppose. And you can do the path. It’s a stony, you know, quite sort of easy path down following the railway to Wengen, but it is very, very steep in places. And again it’s hard, very hard on your legs to walk down parts of that path. Or you can take a slightly longer, more, but more gentle path which kind of loops around away from the railway a bit, takes you back to Wengen again. There’s a. There’s a cafe you go past just outside Wengen called Mary’s Cafe. And it’s. The thing is quite a sort of spread out village really, isn’t it? There’s, there’s sort of little clusters, little hamlets away from it and you pass through those past these lovely houses with the, you know, timber houses with the, the geraniums overhanging the balconies and all that kind of thing. And again you can stop at Mary’s Cafe or one of the other mountain cafes and have a. Enjoy the view over towards Lauterbrunnen and Mürren and make your way back down to the village, which is just lovely and the way I would end the day.

Nick Taylor

My perfect experience in Wengen really is to get back to the hotel where I’ve booked. I’ve been careful to book a south facing or west facing mountain view room with a balcony. You sit on the balcony of your room, you’ve got a bottle of red wine that maybe you bought from the Coop in the village beforehand. Crack open the bottle and sit there and you’ve got watch the sun set over the Schilthorn across the Lauterbrunnen Valley. And it’s just absolutely perfect. It’s just totally perfect.

Carolyn Schönafinger

The ideal day out. So tell us, will you be doing that in 2023?

Nick Taylor

Well, I think, I think you might start. Sadly probably not. 2023. No. Again, you know, we like, we do like to do other things and visit other places as well, I have to say. And I think with. It’s also expensive Switzerland I have to say. And so, and we like to nowadays now we’re getting on a bit more. We, we like to do it in comfort so have decent hotels and you know, be able to spend a bit on meals and things like that. So we, yeah, we, we generally sort of say well, we won’t go every year, tempting though it is. So we’re, we’re looking at probably Italy this year I think. Okay, 2024. It’s definitely on 2024.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Wonderful. Yeah, thank you very much, Nick for sharing all those great experiences with us. I’m sure that you’ve given our listeners plenty of ideas. I think it’s great that in your top 10 we’re not seeing, you know, things that are on the top of every, every, you know, must see Switzerland list. You’ve got a great, a great mix there of, of some activities in the more popular destinations but also some in the lesser known destinations and, and it’s always great to, to include. Yeah. Somewhere a bit, a bit less well known I think, in, in your itinerary.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, I agree. You should, you should have seen the list of places that I couldn’t include.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, well, maybe we’ll have to have you back and we’ll, we’ll do the, the next top 10. Thanks again. And I’ll include in the show notes links to or the names of all those places that, that we’ve talked about today and, and links to the website so that people that are listening and want to know more about one of the experiences we’ve chatted about can, can click through and, and find more info.

Nick Taylor

Yeah, absolutely great stuff.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay, thanks a lot, Nick.

Nick Taylor

Cheers Bye bye.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Well, there’s a fantastic variety of experiences that made it into Nick’s top 10.   

Whether it’s hiking or skiing, visiting lakes or waterfalls, enjoying a scenic train ride, visiting a playground, museum or miniature village, or heading up to a mountain summit by cable car, there really is something for everyone amongst Nick’s favourite experiences.

Which experiences are you going to include in your Swiss vacation? 

If you’d like to learn more about any of the places or experiences that Nick has shared with us today, head on over to the show notes for this episode where you’ll find more information and links to relevant websites.

You can find the show notes at holidaystoswitzerland.com/episode65

Thank you for joining me today and for your ongoing support of the podcast.  I truly appreciate you choosing to make this podcast part of your Switzerland trip planning toolkit.  It’s a great honour to be able to provide practical tips and inspiration to travellers from all over the world. 

If you have a spare moment, I’d be extremely grateful if you’d leave a 5 star rating or review on your podcast app.  That way, we can reach more folks, just like you, who are planning a trip to Switzerland.

Until next time, tschuss.

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