Switzerland 2026

Back by popular demand: the Caitlin Eiben travel blog. 

Adam and I are heading to Switzerland this time. My first trip to "real" Europe!

I'm going to use this site to update family and friends as to what adventures we are getting into that day. 

This trip is a few years in the making. We were fully booked last year, but canceled due to not wanting to leave Thor when he had a poor prognosis, which was 100% the right choice. 

I'm glad all my hard planning work is not going to waste. I literally had it scheduled down to the train rides, hikes, and food locations.

I had to alter the plans slightly when I adapted it to 2026, but mostly everything is the same. 

We are heading to the airport now for a red-eye flight, so more updates later! 

We made it through security and are living the fancy life in the lounge. 

I was blessed with a random middle seat for this 6 hour journey, and Adam is sitting a few rows back, so it should be a nice and boring flight. 

We made it safely and smoothly!

We are on our first train ride to Lucerne, where we will stop to get some food before taking our only First Class Panoramic train ride of our trip.

So far there's nothing exciting to see. This train route makes me feel like I'm going through Dormont on the T. 

We stopped in Lucerne first, locked our luggage up in a locker, then went to the Suite Rooftop Lounge. We had some charcuterie and cheese croquettes. 

Then we went to get some espresso martinis before getting on our panoramic train to Interlaken.

We got to Interlaken around 8pm, walked 4 minutes to our hotel, and settled in.

We are staying at the Carlton Europe, which is a hotel founded in 1898. 

Our key weighs about 5 pounds. 

We freshened up after a very long night and day of travel and then walked around the town. We stopped for a drink at Restaurant Des Alpes Interlaken then came back to our hotel for a glass of wine. 

Day 1

Our first full day in Switzerland.

We "slept in" aka woke up without an alarm set, got some hotel breakfast, and then set off on our first hike.

Fortunately, for my knee, we could hike up and take a tram back down. We got almost 3,000' of elevation in under 3 miles. 

At the top, the Panoramic Restaurant was waiting for us with a cold local beer. 

When we got back to the hotel, we went in their "swimming pool." Today is probably going to be our warmest, sunniest day, so we took advantage of it. 

We cleaned up and headed out for lunch at Aarmühule. Then got some ice cream and hung out by the water. 

We went back to the hotel and took a nap. We woke up and decided if we were staying in Interlaken, we needed to actually see one of the lakes up close. 

Adam suggested ubering, as the closest one was over 2 miles away. The Uber was 25 CHF. I suggested we walk, so we did.

We got to see some "suburban" neighborhoods, a cat, and then finally, one of the lakes. 

We got some delicious pizza and wine at a local restaurant and then hung out by the lake for a bit. 

We realized public transportation is a thing, so we took a bus back to our hotel.

We walked to the hotel bar at the fancy hotel across the street and hung out there until they closed. 

We had an amazing bartender who educated us on all the local ingredients in the cocktails he was making. 

Our pine drink was only available on the menu for 6 weeks out of the year, as that is when he could pick the pine from the local trees. The honey was also from a local town and the gun was made from Swiss glacier water.

We made friends with two people from Florida who transplanted there from NJ, and we ended the night taking a shot together with the bartender to cheers his friend who just found out he beat prostate cancer.

Back to our hotel we went and crashed until 9:30am. We didn't set alarms again and had no anticipation of sleeping that long, but I guess our bodies were asking for it. 

Day 2

We packed up our luggage and checked out. It was only a four minutes walk to the train station to catch our ride to Lauterbrunnen.

Here, we took a pit stop for a hike in the "Valley of Waterfalls." 

We strolled around for about six miles, enjoying the landscape and cows.

The Trümmelbach Falls was fairly touristy, but neat how they carved out a walkway and lift into the rocks and through the waterfall.

Neither one of us had a big breakfast, so we stopped at the first restaurant we saw on our way back and had a nice big burger with egg and bacon on it. 

From there, we picked up our luggage at the train station and headed to a bus stop. We have a quick bus ride, then getting on a cable car to take us to the carless town of Mürren, where we will be staying for three days. 

The cable car up to Mürren was a clostrophobic's nightmare. The screaming children were a bonus. 

We made it safely, though.

Our three minutes walk to the hotel was interrupted by a big boom from what we assume was an explosion to induce an avalanche.

When we go to our hotel we found our room key waiting for us in an envelope at the front desk. 

We headed up the stairs and to our room, which we found was kind of connected to a balcony. 

We have the option of opening our window and jumping out or walking all the way out into the hallway to the next door and going out the way normal people do. 

We obviously decided going out the window has been easier. 

Once we got settled, we decided to make use of the sun that we had left and take a walk around the town. It only took a few minutes because the town is super small. 

On the way back we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some wine. We decided to try a local soft drink called Rivella.

I do not recommend it. It is absolutely disgusting. 

We were chilling in our hotel room drinking our wine when we heard cowbells. 

We jumped out our window and saw cow strolling down the street. 

This has been the highlight of my trip thus far.

 

Adam is now standing across the room recording me as I am voice to texting this because I already wrote it all out and then didn't save it.

Anyway, I think I'm caught up...again.

We showered and are heading out for a snack.

Mürren is a quiet town, for sure...at least when the weather isn't ideal. Everything closes early. We went back to the lookout point, which definitely looked different once the clouds started rolling in.

We found a restaurant that was open until 10pm and got some soup and wine. We weren't super hungry after our big burger earlier. 

I got to say gesundheit to our waitress when she sneezed, so that was pretty neat. I bet she was pretty impressed by me.

Bedtime was early tonight, after we watched a few episodes of the Jersey Shore in German, of course. 

Day 3

Well, our nice weather has officially left us. We woke up this morning to clouds and fog with a little bit of rain. We had to open up our windows last night because our room got entirely too hot. They do not have air conditioning here. 

We went down to breakfast which was not anything impressive. The dining room is also full so we just grabbed a few things and went back to our room. We came down later for a latte, which we enjoyed while battling each other in Wordle.

We have a reservation at 2:00 p.m. at the Piz Gloria, a restaurant where a James Bond movie was filmed. 

We killed our time by taking a hike down to Grimmelwald.

There's nothing like starting your day off with a downhill hike when you have bad knees. 

We had somewhat of a view down into the valley until Midway through the hike when everything turned to fog. We turned our attention to what was right in front of us like all the pretty wild flowers, cobwebs, and snails.

Once we turned around we stopped at a little restaurant for a famous beer called the Schwarz Monk.

We headed back of the hill and went back to the lookout spot where we went last night. It was a stark contrast. 

We grabbed a beer at the grocery store and headed back to our hotel to get ready for our lunner.

Unfortunately, we expect pretty terrible views, but we made a reservation so we are stuck with what we got. 

We were correct in our assumptions that we would have terrible views at the 360° rotating restaurant, but you can't win 'em all. 

We took two cable cars up to almost 10,000' and had a charcuterie board. 

We were going to stop at Birg and do the Thrill Walk, which is a walkway around the side of the mountain, but since we were literally stuck in the clouds, we skipped it and headed back down to Mürren.

When we got back to the hotel, I took a quick nap and then we headed ALL the way across town (like 500m) and went to a bar at a restaurant in a fancier hotel.

There's literally no one here. We aren't sure where everyone goes because there were only a few people in town.

We had the best gin and tonics that I've ever had. 

We strolled back to the hotel, got some "takeout" food from our hotel restaurant and brought it back up to our room. I don't think this was a normal request people make. 

Tomorrow we are supposed to go paragliding, but it's supposed to rain all day, so we are going to try to reschedule for Thursday. 

Day 4

I woke up pretty early and messaged the paragliding company to see if our 8:15 flight time was still going to happen. It was already drizzling so I knew the answer was no. We had the option of them delaying it throughout the day and notifying us when we could fly or rescheduling for tomorrow, so rescheduled for tomorrow.

Since we know how to free day and Mürren was still stuck in the clouds, we decided to take the cable car and train to a town I originally took off our itinerary because I was worried we would be going to too many places in a short amount of time. 

It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get to Grimmelwald. Since we didn't have anything on the agenda specifically I chose a "short" hike on AllTrails. 

This short hike was 3 mi straight up the mountain. Fortunately, it happened to have a gondola to take us back down.

We passed a farm with goats. I stayed on the trail and zoomed my camera and taking photos of the ones closer to us. Before I knew it about five or six goats spotted me from across the farm and started trotting over towards me. They came to say hi, nibbling on my shoelaces and rain jacket. 

We started to walk away and one followed us. We kept walking back and forth past the farm in hopes that it would be redirected back home. That wasn't the case, so we started walking towards the farmhouse to see if anyone was home. We didn't want this little guy following us all the way up the mountain. 

We decided once we reached the house we would try once more to pass the barn to see if it would leave us.

When we got close the rest of its family was calling for it to come home and it finally ran down the hill.

This is my second run-in with goats following me around on vacation. 

I can't help it, I'm a good whisperer. 

We started our trek back up the mountain.

When we were about 3/4 of the way up the mountain we noticed that it had stopped. When we got to the top we found the workers doing some maintenance on a broken car. 

There was a hotel at the top so we killed some time by getting our first taste of fondue. Neither one of us has ever had it in our lives, so it was nice to have the first experience in Switzerland. 

I must say I'm getting tired of cheese, though. 

We walked around the town for a little bit and went in some shops. After seeing Swiss Army knives in literally every shop, I decided to get one. When in Rome...or Switzerland...

It was cold and rainy literally all day, but as soon as we got to Mürren, the sun started peeking out.

Time to shower and then go see if we can enjoy some views from on top of the mountain. 

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy, adventurous day with a Via Feratta and then paragliding in the afternoon.

Day 5 

Suddenly I was awake. 

Another rainy morning in Mürren.

What a bummer because today we are supposed to do the via farreta and paragliding.

We woke up and ate our breakfast of hard boiled eggs and bread. This hotel definitely did not have the best free breakfast, but free is still better than paying money.

We walked the very short walk to the sports complex where we were going to leave for a hike. 

There we were met by seven other Americans and one guy from London. 

We sign the waiver and got our harnesses and helmets and set off on our 1.7 mile hike down the mountain to Gimmelwald.

While the via Ferrata was not rated difficult in terms of physical strain, it was definitely mentally straining. 

At the most, we were 1,968 feet above the ground. It was also mildly drizzling, which turn into rain once we've got off of the exposed portion. 

Adam was shaking like a leaf. He had my Insta360 during this period and the footage is quite hilarious.

There were ladders and a zipline and a shaky bridge. 

We ended on an uphill portion, which I obviously dominated while everyone else was panting for air. 

I'm exaggerating all of this because I am talk to texting this blog while Adam is sitting across from me giving me annoyed eyeballs. 

He's not as annoyed as he was when I was taking pictures of goats knowing that they would come up to me because goats love me. 

I'm pretty sure he wanted to push me off the mountain at that point. 

Anyway, we took the cable car back up to Mürren.

I want to charge my insta 360 for the paragliding experience, so we went and grabbed our bag from the hotel and I got my external charger. 

From there we went to the grocery store picks up a snack and ate it while looking at a beautiful overlook that was not condensed with clouds. 

People watching was absolutely phenomenal, while an Asian girl took a hoagie and had a photoshoot with it. 

We have it over to the paragliding take off area and waited for our pilots. 

I'm sure about 10 minutes a group of guys came up and we were assigned to two of them. 

We headed up a steep Hill to where we would take off. 

They asked us who wanted to get with you and I said I wanted to go with a better pilot. 

I'm glad I said this because upon taking off Adam crashed and rolled down the hill.

That's kind of an exaggeration but also not really. 

I took off first and only had to take a few running steps and then we were in the air. 

Adam told me that he was right behind me, so he had to run a bit further. When they started running, the the side of their chute collapsed and they fell about 20' down the hill.

They had a hike back up and start over again while I was flying in the air with not a care in the world. 

The trip was longer than I expected it to be. We went up down and all around waving hi to the people below us. 

They told me that I couldn't take my insta360 with me even though I had a selfie stick with a locking wrist strap. I now realize that was just a ploy to get me to buy the pictures from their GoPro, which is pretty unfortunate because I would have gotten away better footage with my camera. 

We both had the chance to steer the chute.

My guy told me pulling left turns left, pulling right turns right, pull both and you die.

Towards the end we did a lot of acrobatics, which was a ton of fun.

We landed safely and headed back up the cable car to Mürren.

We grabbed our luggage and set back down the cable car to catch the bus to catch the train to catch the train to catch the train to get to our next destination.

The next train we took was incredibly crowded and hot and smelly. 

Once we got back to Interlaken, we got back on a different train and have a little bit of space. 

We sat next to some guys from Boston who were traveling after graduating from college. There were five of them and they voted between South Africa or Switzerland for their post college trip. Switzerland won... obviously.

We finally got to our destination only to find that we had to walk one kilometer to our hotel with our luggage. The last few hotels have only been a four minute walk. This was all uphill so it was just a third workout for the day. 

We got to our room, which was the latest room that we've had thus far. We cleaned up and headed down to dinner. And are currently on a stroll back down the one kilometer walk we just took to head into town. 

I found some cats on the way so I obviously had to stop you pet them. Adam was not happy, as he thought I was going to try to take them home, just like I tried to take the goat home. 

I know there haven't been any pictures in a while, because I need to sit down and take my time updating this instead of just talking into my phone while I'm doing other things. 

Let's see. We are on the train to our airport hotel, but I didn't update this for almost two days, so let's recap. 

After I pet the cats, we went to a restaurant bar to hang out and "watch the World Cup" pretending we cared. 

Adam tried to order a martini, which is apparently a foreign drink here. It caused quite the debacle. 

After hanging out for a bit and trying to let the little dog that was running around the bar, we walked the 1km back to our hotel.

Day 6

Today was still cloudy, but no rain in the forecast. 

Our plan was to hike to Oeschinensee Lake, which is a big tourist spot.

One thing about Switzerland is they definitely do their best to make all these magical places accessible to everyone, so there was an option of taking a cable car to cut off about an hour of the uphill hike, or do the hike. 

We chose the hike. 

It took around an hour to get the 2.4 miles to the top where the beginning of the lake was. 

Initially, we were disappointed, as it looked dried up. 

We snapped a few photos by the shore and then decided to head up the hill to get an aerial view.

The awe of the lake definitely improved as we got higher in elevation. 

We went about a mile uphill to a restaurant that unfortunately only took cash, so we started our trek back down. 

We had a run in with a cute fox on our way both up and down. 

He seems to be very familiar with tourists, even trying to get into a guys backpack for snacks.

We hiked back down, breaking out my trekking poles to try to save my knees as much as possible. 

Once we got back, we ate delicious burgers at Restaursnt Rendezvous. Then took a well deserved nap. We cleaned up and went the 1km back to town to window shop.

We stopped at a restaurant for a drink and enjoyed the weather, as it started to clear up.

We were sitting their chilling when we started to hear brass instruments in the background. 

The next thing you know, there was a marching band coming up the street. 

Very unexpected and enjoyable. 

They went back and forth a few times, providing us with some entertainment as we finished our drinks. 

We started our walk back to the hotel, finding a little daisy crown someone hung up on a flower pot.

We opted for an early bedtime because we walked to go back to the lake earlier tomorrow. It's a Saturday and also going to be the nicest weather we've had in days, so gotta beat the crowds!

Day 7 

Last full day!

We woke up earlier today and we were met with sunshine! Finally!

I felt like we were in Iceland for a while.

We packed our bags and went to the hotel breakfast as soon as it opened. We filled up on their delicious food to prep for our busy hiking day. 

Every time I say I'm done with cheese, I have another slice...

We stored our luggage at the hotel and headed back up the mountain, the same way as yesterday. We did agree on a cable car ride down, though. 

Once we got to the lake, we immediately headed further up the mountain, so we could get some reflection shots before the canoes headed out. 

On our way up, we heard cowbells. We looked back down at the beach and saw a herd of cows being led by the farmers. We took some pictures, assuming they were going a different direction from the lake. 

We took some photos and checked in for our flight at a bench. 

As we were about to hike down, we heard the cowbells again. 

They were coming up the mountain! 

We stayed at the bench and watched them march by. 

So cute. 

We went back down and headed to the place to rent rowboats. 

We rented one for an hour and explored the lake. 

The shoreline was starting to fill up with tourists. As we were rowing, we saw two other waterfalls, not very visible from the hike. 

Once we got off the boat, we decided to walk to shoreline to the waterfalls and take a dip in the lake. 

It was cold, but refreshing. 

We sat and had some snacks of pretzels, dried mango, and Swiss chocolate. 

It was sadly time to leave the lake. 

We found the trail to the cable car and headed in that direction, taking looks back every now and then to soak up every last bit. 

We grabbed our luggage from the hotel and did that 1km walk that we have become very familiar with back into town to the train station. 

We hopped on our first train out of four, or do we thought.

They're ended up being construction so we were rerouted on a tour bus for about two hours. The entire adventure was three trains and the bus, for a total four and a half hours. 

We made it, though! Our last hotel, the ibis Styles. It's a trendy, but cheap little joint right by the airport. We walked our 700m, cleaned up, and went out to a nice dinner.

I was searching for places to go and found this fancy little restaurant pretty close to our hotel. They have beef on a little club thing that they light on fire answer with various sauces and rice. It was amazing. Best meal I may have had in my life, but I also didn't eat much since breakfast. 

We went back to the hotel and crashed. 

Big travel day tomorrow!

Day 8

We woke up early. A little too early because we got to the airport three hours before our flight only to find that we couldn't check in for another half hour. So we are currently sitting on a bench outside the airport enjoying the last bit of sun until we are traveling for 14.5 hours. 

(These pictures are out of place, but I will fix it later)