Adventures with Abigail

I went to Switzerland in March 2025. This is my story

My boyfriend, Justin, and I landed in Zurich early in the morning, changed into our day outfits, and caught the next train south. The bathroom in the car we chose was broken, the next one was, too, but someone had broken into the next one so it was okay. We arrived in Montreux in the early afternoon. Traveling in the shoulder season is great because our hotel room was already ready for us to check into. We were very hungry by this point, so we just settled for the fancy cafe in the hotel. The food was really good, and we had a great seat by the window to see the lake. I had Foie Gras, and Justin had some mushroom stuff pasta.

We set out on a lovely stroll along the Flower Wharf path that runs along Lake Geneva towards Chillon Castle. We walked about half way before taking a bus the rest of the way. The first day after a redeye can be a little exhausting so we didn’t want to tire ourselves out before the afternoon was over.

The castle was really cool. We walked the entire castle, and it took about an hour and a half.

We took it easy for the rest of the day and went out for dinner that night. I was able to catch the sunset over the mountains/lake. We tried to have McDonalds, but it turns out that Switzerland does have the snack wrap, much to my dismay and disappointment. So we had pizza at an Italian place. It was a delicious margarita pizza.

The next morning we had hotel breakfast and then went to our panorama train, the Goldenpass Express. We took so many photos during the 3 hour train ride through the mountains. Most of them aren’t any good, though, due to the glare on the glass.

The Goldenpass Express took us to Interlakken, where we took a break from the trains and go lunch. We had burgers that were large and a little messy, and they were delicious.

We took the next train to Grindelwald. When we got there I was blown away.

After dropping our stuff off at the airbnb we had booked for the next two nights, we set out for the Tourism office to find out the best way to spend our full day in the area tomorrow. After making our plans we did some shopping along the main strip in Grindelwald and bought a cuckoo clock! We picked up dinner from the local convenience store, The Coop. It’s almost certainly pronounced Co-op (the Co and the op are different colors), but we just called it the coop most of the time. They were everywhere and had reasonably priced food. The big thing was bottles of water for under a buck (a buck here means a Swiss Franc).

The next morning we set off in the morning to go winter hiking. We were able to get lift tickets for the day for hiking only. We shared the groomed trails with tobogganers, but it was otherwise a quiet walk. We stopped after the first leg and had lunch (Schnitzel and fries and chocolate cake) in Kleine Scheidegg. We had a pretty good view of Eiger. We ended up walking three legs of the 4 legged trail before taking the train to the last stop. That was 7 miles total!

We got off the train in Wengen and took the gondola up to Mannlichen. There were loads of skiers all around, but it was fun to just walk around them clomping all slowly. We admired the famous side of Eiger and had a snack before continuing our journey back to town.

We took another gondola down to the trains station and then took the train back to Grindelwald main station. We cleaned up at the airbnb before our fancy dinner that evening. I had a delicous filet mignon dressed in the local style and Justin had traditional cordon bleu.

The next morning we took a early train over to Luzern. We got there around lunch time, but we were still able to check in early. After putting our stuff away in the room, we set out to explore the city. The front desk even gave us a map with good things to check out.

The map had a big loop we could follow, so we decided to do that. It started with a walk down the river, then crossed and followed the large wall they have running through the city. We ended up at The Lion Monument and then headed back to the river to walk across the famous Chapel Bridge. I took a video walking across the equally beautiful (and way less crowded) Chaff Bridge.

We took a break by the water to decide our next move. We decided to go to the art museum nearby. It was nice, but a little small. That was actually nice because I was art’ed out by the end of it. We took a local train one stop out of the main downtown to go to the National Transportation Museum. It was really cool. There was a giant car vending machine of all kinds of cars that was 6 cars tall. There was an automated presentation running in German, but I’m pretty sure it was going through the timeline of alternative energy vehicles.

That night we had sushi nearby the hotel. It was very good and the presentation was beautiful.

The next morning we took a train and a bus to get to Vaduz, Liechtenstein. We really liked Vaduz. The area we were staying in was very cute. We were again able to get into our airbnb early. Most places were closed today because it was a Monday, so we went to The Coop and got sandwiches. After lunch we went to the tourism office and got souvenirs. We learned of a trail that takes you up to the castle. The trail basically went straight up the cliff side. The back side of the castle looks much more castle-like than the front side.

After the intense walk we took a short break at the airbnb and then decided to go to the only other place open, the winery. It was actually called Cellars of the Prince of Liechtenstein. We discovered we were a little early for a wine tasting and tour, so we took a nice walk through the vineyard. This is when/where Justin proposed!

The wine tasting was interesting. I really just only like sweet wine. The tour started with a nice sparkling wine and ended with an Ice dessert wine. This was my first time having official ice wine. I had Ize wine in California, but its regulated similar to Champaign. We walked around after the tasting looking for some dinner, and we settled on another burger place. I did have a burger, but Justin had another pizza.

The next morning we headed up the Zurich and dropped our bags off at our last hotel for the trip. We were very early and our hotel operated as a cafe during the day. They were able to hold our bags for us, though, so that was good. We went back to Zurich main station and took a train up to Europe’s Largest Waterfalls, Rheinfalls.

We got lunch once we arrived in the area. We found a cafeteria type place were the locals eat and we had traditional Cordon Bleu with fries and veggies. With full bellies we visited the falls next. They were very spectacular to look at and experience. We started just above the falls and followed a path down around to the bottom of the lake where you can see the falls straight on. We got ice cream while sitting and just staring at the falls.

We trained back to Zurich after getting our fill of the falls. We went over to the University district to visit a few museums. We went to an anthropology museum that didn’t allow photography, and then we went to a Paleontology museum that did.

We walked around Zurich after getting tired of the stuffy museums and ended up taking a little hike up through the city to the view point. You could see exactly how far we walked from the university district.

Our Swiss pass ran out at 5am the day we left, so we had to purchase tickets for a specific train to the train that morning. That really showed exactly how worth it the flexibility of the swiss travel pass was. Our train was delayed 10 minutes, which ultimately was fine since we’d given ourselves enough time, but if it hadn’t been, then we’d have been late. There were other trains going to the airport from the station we were at that, but we couldn’t take them because we didn’t have a ticket for them. So yeah, pay a little more if you value flexibility in your travels.

Overall the trip was very fun and successful. We accomplished everything we set out to do. I recommend going to Switzerland if you can afford an increase price in food. Leave a comment if you want 🙂 Thanks for reading.