Three Kids and a Dog: Switzerland 2024

Almost a year ago, we found out our niece was getting married in Italy this summer. We decided not to bring the kids (if we could make that work) and instead spend a few days prior to the wedding in Tuscany traveling Europe ourselves. We chose Switzerland - mostly because it was fairly close to Tuscany and I had already been to a large part of Italy before and done all those things that I had no desire to redo - like visiting The Vatican, going to The Coliseum or just taking pictures in front of the many fountains or strolling through museums. Let's be real. They're not all that exciting the first time and the weather is typically so hot if you go in the summer so there was no way I was going to do that again!

Anyway, on to Switzerland. We landed in Zurich on Monday along with all the T Swift fans. She happened to be playing there on Monday and Tuesday night but we weren't going to see her. After driving about 1.5 hours to the town of Bern (where we hoped to see a lot of Bernese Mountain Dogs but never did), we checked into the Hotel Schweizerhof. Our room was beautiful and we were right in the center of town. But we were exhausted too and promptly took a four hour nap before emerging from our room at 5pm, freshly showered and hungry. First a little walking tour of the town and then a little tapas meal before taking in the sunset over the Rose Garden and then walking down to the Bear Caves (where the Bears roamed on the banks of the Aare River). We rounded out the night with a little gelato (which was not that good - we should have waited until Italy) before heading back to our hotel.

Our Hotel Schweizerhof

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel. It was a lot of eggs but they did make these really sweet little waffles that were very good. Then it was off for our 3-hour private walking tour of Bern. And wow did we see a lot. We learned Bern means Bear which makes sense that the Bernese Mountain Dogs look like little bears when they are puppies and big bears when they get older. She explained that you could drink from all the fountains around Bern and that it was the glacier water flowing through there. We saw the inner workings of the famous clock tower and visited one of the homes of Albert Einstein who not only lived in Switzerland for some time but apparently in Bern. After our tour, we had a quick lunch at the "Casino" (not a real casino as we know it, just a nice restaurant) and then went back to the hotel to check the train schedule before hopping on a train to Luzern which was a lake town about an hour away. We booked a 1-hour boat tour around Luzern (which was simply breathtaking), shopped for souvenirs and had dinner before making our way back by train. And, when we got off the train one of the Euros SemiFinal matches was on. There were makeshift bars in the street with everyone watching the game on a big screen. It was a cool sight to see and would never happen over soccer in the U.S.

Day three in Switzerland had us rising early for another full day private tour of Zermatt where the Matterhorn is located. Our tour guide and us, boarded another train and then bus and then train again to reach the Matterhorn. Recent flooding had wiped away part of the track reaching Zermatt so the city had to figure out different ways to get tourists up there. It was cool, in the 60s maybe, and a welcome change from the heat of the summer (although we weren't experiencing the kind of heat Rome was). We dined at the top of a peak and had the traditional cheese fondue before exploring the picturesque ski village of Zermatt. I'm sure it's just beautiful during Christmas. May need to come back to ski it although the terrain of Switzerland certainly looked challenging as our tour guide told us only about 1/3 of Switzerland is actually livable. It was a long day of exploring and we got home about 9pm - just in time to see another Euro Semi Final match.

Visiting Switzerland was beautiful and it was interesting to hear about the fact that so many languages are spoken there including German and French as well a different dialects of each. It was the perfect prelude to our Tuscany family wedding. Stay tuned for that wonderful wedding weekend!