Background
For our first big summer trip of 2026, our family headed to Switzerland! We were inspired by pictures of alpine peaks, gorgeous train routes, and other travel bloggers raving about the country’s epic playgrounds. We loved spending a few days in the Jungfrau region using Wengen as our home base to explore misty mountains, gondola rides, and massive waterfalls. We also fell in love with the picturesque town of Lucerne, and even got to experience the local sports culture firsthand by catching a world hockey festival in Zurich! We love European travel because it always offers incredibly family-friendly towns, easy navigating with trains, and so much history and beauty. Traveling internationally with kids can be daunting, but with a little preparation, research, and tips from other travelers, we had an incredibly successful trip!
This post covers our days in the Jungfrau region.
For more on our Switzerland Adventure, see our posts here
After an amazing couple of days exploring Lucerne, we packed up our bags and headed deep into the Swiss Alps. We chose Wengen as our home base for the next 4 days
Train to Wengen
We left Lucerne early in the morning by train and spent several hours winding through pretty landscapes, passing through Interlaken, down into the Lauterbrunnen, and finally catching the steep train up to Wengen.
Our kids absolutely love train rides, and it is the perfect time for them to read and relax. Ellie kept busy with a new dot-to-dot activity book we brought along!
Apartment home base
Wengen is all about that cozy apartment life. We booked a beautiful local house via Interhome Apartment (which we found after searching on Booking.com). It was about a 10-minute walk from the Wengen train station. Having our own kitchen to cook in, separate bedrooms, and plenty of space to spread out made it the perfect family sanctuary after long days on the trails.
An Early-Season Reality Check: Wengen is incredibly cute, but we ran into an interesting twist. Back home in the US, May was scorching hot, but in Switzerland, it was still very much early spring. A major theme of our stay was navigating early-season closures. The famous marble mazes in town weren’t set up yet, the local outdoor swimming pools hadn’t opened for the season, and several higher-altitude hiking trails were still closed due to snow! If you travel in the late spring, always check the local lift and trail status reports before you head out.
Our 4-Day Jungfrau Itinerary
Day 1: Arriving in Wengen & Trümmelbach Falls
We arrived in Wengen in the early afternoon, unpacked our bags, and set out to explore the village. We grabbed some lunch, played a game on the giant life-size outdoor chess boards in the town center, and stopped by the local Coop grocery store to stock up on snacks.
For our late afternoon adventure, we took the cogwheel train back down the mountain to the Lauterbrunnen stop and hopped on a local transit bus to Trümmelbach Falls. While some bloggers recommend squeezing this into a massive day trip, making it our sole afternoon activity was perfect. These are subterranean cave waterfalls with ten waterfalls hidden inside the mountain itself. It is incredibly loud, powerful, and absolutely spectacular to walk through. The sheer force of the water misting past you is something the kids will never forget!
We took the bus and train back up to our apartment, whipped up an easy dinner in our kitchen, watched a hockey match on TV, and had a great, chill evening.
Day 2: Männlichen Cow Playground, Lieselotte Trail, & Grindelwald
This was one of the absolute best days of the entire trip! We purchased a 3-Day Jungfrau Travel Pass for all the gondolas and mountain trains.
Money Saving Tip: Because we already had the Swiss Half Fare Card, we got a discount on our 3-Day Jungfrau Pass. The kids were free with the family card.
Morning: Cow Playground
We started the morning by taking the quick cable car straight up from Wengen to Männlichen. We hung out at the outdoor tables at the restaurant and ate a scenic breakfast while the kids hit the legendary Alpine Cow Playground. The adults played on this playground too! It features a massive, multi-story wooden cow with a slide coming out of it, balancing ropes, swings, a mini bowling lane, and the most breathtaking mountain views backdrop you could ever imagine.
Lieselotte Trail
After playing, we picked up a free hiking map from the mountain restaurant and kicked off the Lieselotte Trail down to the Holenstein mid-station. This 3.5 km hike took us about 3 hours because it is packed with 13 interactive stations. The map has little punch-boxes, and the kids had to hunt for the hidden stamp locations at each stop. We got turned around once or twice and had to backtrack, but we found almost all of them! Along the way, the kids got to do a mountain long-jump, try blowing a real Swiss alphorn, play at a water mechanics table, and even practice “ax chopping” wooden logs. It’s an incredibly easy downhill walk with stunning views of the gondolas gliding overhead and plenty of fresh alpine water fountains to refill your bottles. At the very end near Holenstein, there is a fun little elevated tree-walk path to finish the trail.
Grindelwald and Pfingstegg
From Holenstein, we took the gondola down into the valley town of Grindelwald and grabbed some pizza for lunch (pricey, but standard for Switzerland!). Afterward, we headed over to Pfingstegg.
Honest Blog Review: I wish I had researched this stop a bit better. Pfingstegg was not included in our Jungfrau Pass, so paying out-of-pocket for the separate cable car up plus the individual tokens for the activities made it quite pricey. Once at the top, the toboggan slide and the “Fly Line” (a mild, hanging canopy coaster) were the only things to do. Ellie actually felt the Fly Line was a bit too geared toward younger kids compared to the massive ziplines we did at Pilatus. If you’ve already done Pilatus near Lucerne, you can easily skip Pfingstegg!
Glaciers!
We still had some energy, so we hopped back on the main gondola line and rode all the way up to the Eigergletscher (Eiger Glacier) stop. Many people continue up towards the top of Europe stop but it was pricey and we didn’t prioritize this. I’ve read good reviews though! We were able to get a small glimpse at this stop and it was fun seeing the massive, jagged glaciers up close. We then took the train back down through Kleine Scheidegg and returned to Wengen. I do wish we had a bit more time to hang out at Kleine Scheidegg. There was a really cool mountain restaurant called Berghaus Grindelwaldblick and it looked awesome to just sit and watch the paragliders float by, but it was a quick transit stop for us. It was a packed, perfect mix of activities!
Day 3: Interlaken Boat Cruise, Gisselbach Falls, and Pool play
Boat Itinerary
On our third day, we decided to do a boat cruise on Lake Brienz. We originally thought about doing this on our arrival day, but skipping the hassle of luggage storage and doing it as a dedicated day trip was a much better call.
After a wonderfully slow, relaxing vacation start to the morning, we made our way to the Interlaken boat dock. We popped into a local grocery store to grab fresh cheese, meats, and snacks, and hopped onto the lake boat. The boat schedules can be a bit infrequent, so definitely check the timetables ahead of time! We cruised past Iseltwald, which is incredibly famous and partially famous because of the K-drama Crash landing on you. The pier where the main lead plays a piano song for his brother. Highly recommend the show. We decided not to stop but waved to the pier from the boat. Seriously though, socials are full of people making the pilgrimage to the pier. There’s specifically a gate to pay to take pictures on it.
We hopped off the boat at the Giessbach Falls stop, took the historic funicular railway up the mountain, and hiked up toward the massive waterfalls. The trail takes you up, up, up until you are actually crossing right behind the waterfalls. Feeling the mist while looking out at the lake below makes for the absolute coolest photos on the planet.
After stopping for some ice cream, we took the boat back toward Interlaken. We wanted to cool off, so we tracked down a fantastic local swimming area called the beach in Bonigan Schwimbad. It was just one boat stop past Interlaken, but we found it easier to just hop on a quick transit bus. It was a total gem. You pay a very small entry fee, they have clean locker rooms, and we spent a perfect two hours splashing around and jumping on the lake trampolines.
We headed back up to our Wengen apartment, cooked a fun family dinner, played cards, and relaxed.
Day 4: Mürren's Flower Trail & The Detective Hike
For our final full day in the Alps, we took the train down to Lauterbrunnen and hopped a bus toward the cliffside town of Mürren.
Morning: Flower Playground
Usually, a scenic mountain cableway and train Lauterbrunnen to Murren through Grustschalp, but part of the rail line was down for a massive refurbishment project, so we utilized the seamless bus detour.
Once in Mürren, we took the funicular up to the Allmendhubel Flower Playground. Note that this funicular wasn’t free but it was inexpensive. It was really cute and featured a cool flower tunnel maze and a water play table, but it definitely leaned a bit younger than the giant Cow Playground at Männlichen. My expectations might have been a little too high based on online photos, but it’s still lightyears better than any playground in the US! We had a fantastic, relaxing family meal right at the panoramic restaurant at the top which offered great family-style platters.
Afternoon: Detective Trail Walk
After lunch, we tackled the Mürren Detective Trail (Detektiv-Trail). I was hoping it would be like the stamp-hunting success of the Lieselotte trail, but it was a bit different with more focus on solving trivia questions via a mobile app as you hike. The hike itself was beautiful, though! We caught a train to the end of the town near Grütschalp, which is a gorgeous, quiet little spot. This was where the trail started. There isn’t much to do there besides start hikes, but we grabbed some cold drinks at a local cafe and started our easy, multi-hour walk back. The trail was beautiful, lined with lazy alpine cows and tiny mountain cheese shops, with a fun bonus playground stop at the Winteregg station. At the end of the hike, you can turn in your app answers for a little prize (honestly, don’t prioritize the prize but the walk itself is gorgeous!).
Final Alps Thoughts
The Jungfrau region is an absolute dream. When I think Switzerland, I think chocolate, trains, and mountains and this area had all that and more. All of those gondolas, cogwheel trains, and mountain passes definitely add up cost-wise if you just jump on everything carelessly. We also really focused on doing home-cooked meals to cut down on costs. If we come back in the future when the kids are a bit older, we’d love to prioritize some of the bigger high-adrenaline adventures like the ziplines and glider activities over at Grindelwald First, or the massive ropes course area down in Interlaken. But for a first summer alpine trip, the mix of hiking, playgrounds, and cozy apartment nights was absolutely perfect.
More Switzerland
For more on our Switzerland Adventure, see our posts here
