Grindelwald & First — Hannah & Christopher

Heading to Grindelwald

After we sadly parted ways with Hotel Villa Honegg, we began our journey to our next destination, Grindelwald.

Grindelwald is a cute little town that is surrounded by stunning natural landscapes and plenty of little wooden houses. The town has more of a reputation as a ski town during the winter but it still gets some traffic in the summer for people who enjoy hiking. As the town was in a secluded area, it took us almost half a day and a few train transfers to get there. Even though it was such a long journey, it was enjoyable. The Swiss landscape always has something amazing to see, one of the most memorable locations we passed was Lake Brienz. The water was a bright turquoise colour (just like Lake Louise) and as Chris calls it – Lake Fanta. Along the shore of Lake Brienz, we saw plenty of people relaxing, sun tanning and swimming in the lake.

On our last train to Grindelwald, there was some technical difficulties with the train and we were forced to disembark. After the train emptied, we were told that we had to take a shuttle bus for the remainder of trip. We waited for almost an hour and finally the first bus came but of course, everyone rushed to get on the bus because the intense heat was clearly getting to people. Unable to fit on that bus, we waited awhile longer and fortunately the train conductor told us that another train was on its way and we could take that the rest of the way to Grindelwald.

By the time we arrived in Grindelwald, it started to rain quite heavily. Unfortunately we also had to walk about 15 minutes uphill to get to our hotel. It was quite a trek to get there in the rain and dragging all our luggage. When we got to our hotel, which was basically a large old Swiss house renovated some time ago into a hotel, we realized there was no elevator to our room and Chris had to drag our heavy luggage up multiple flights of stairs. Once we got to the room, we were surprised to see that the balcony had an unobstructed view of the Swiss Alps!

After a long long day of misadventures, the best thing that happened to us was finding a restaurant called Barry’s which had the best cheese fondue we tried on the entire trip. In addition to some amazing decor, they had a musician singing and playing the Swiss Alp horn to set the mood. It was an extremely memorable experience.

After the delicious meal, we noticed the rain had finally stopped. Because of the condensation, the clouds were low and it created turned the town into a beautiful mystical place. I was disappointed at first I didn’t get to see the blue sky and green grass but this was so much better.

Adventure day

Since we planned to stay at Grindelwald for a few days, the “first” thing we wanted to go to First (HAHA) to hike and do all the outdoor activities there. The temperature around June is still considered their rainy season so the weather is always unpredictable but mornings were always sunny during our stay. We had a yummy complimentary breakfast and started our gondola ride up to First.

The vistas on First were just stunning. The air was much fresher and the alps were endlessly magnificent. As we started our way to Bachalpsee (Lake Bachsee) we noticed the hike there and back to the gondola would take somewhere around 4 hours. We were up for the hike, but since everything closes so early in Switzerland, we would have spent the majority of the day hiking and wouldn’t be able to see many other sights that First had to offer. After completing abit of the hike, we made the hard decision to not see Lake Bachsee and head back to the gondola so we could visit other parts of the mountain.

Next we decided to visit the Cliffwalk by Tissot, a scary and thrilling platform that loops around portions of the mountain. As expected, plenty of awesome photo opportunities were possible despite the large number of tourists.

Our pass for the mountain included access to the First Fleiger Zipline. Most zip lines we’ve seen are usually horizontal, this one was downhill and bypassed the need to use a gondola to descend to the next part of the mountain. After waiting in line 40 minutes, mostly dreading the decision to get on a mountainside zipline, we were suddenly strapped in and descending the mountain at a surprisingly easy going speed. The video below says it all.

While you would think the zipline would be the most dangerous excursion we did, the mountain carts were actually much more dangerous. Easy to control but parts of the mountain side path had some fairly sharp turns and tumbling over an edge could lead to serious injury or going face first into a cow. Despite some harrowing moments, it was a thrilling self guided tour down the mountain to the final gondola to get us back on ground level.

With some time left in the day before everything closed, we headed back to Grindelwald and decided to take the cable car up Pfingstegg. This mountaintop excursion centre was older and not as tourist heavy as we experienced on First, but it was nice to get away from the crowds and relax on the mountain to take in the view and end our long day.

Since there were very few tourists, we almost had a downhill toboggan to ourselves and went down multiple times without having to worry about slowing down for other riders. After relaxing on some lawn chairs with some friendly cats, it was time to head back to the hotel and call it a day.