It was Saturday the 21st of December and sadly our day before we had to depart beautiful Mürren. None of us were that keen to leave but more adventure awaited on our trip. We were treated to one last amazing sunrise over the mountains.
Zinnia had been up during the night feeling unwell with Anto’s virus. We knew she wasn’t feeling good as she wasn’t even keen to go out for a last play in the snow. The other kids however were trying to work out how much more snow playing time they were going to get before we had to leave.
How to sled your luggage and rubbish…..
While doing our last minute packing up we had discovered Soren’s Garmin watch was missing, and he hadn’t seen it for a couple of days but had failed to mention this. This really cut into his sledding and snow time as we had to spend quite a bit of time searching the chalet for it. This was to no avail and we thought we’d try the sports centre when they opened as he last remembered having it there when we went swimming a few days earlier.
In the meantime Zinnia was feeling a bit better and she and Astrid built a snowman on the deck for a bit. Soren and I decided to sled all our rubbish and recycling down to the bins. We figured it was multi-tasking, getting the last few sleds in and making it quicker to move the recycling and rubbish in the snow!
Kim and Alan were staying on in Mürren over Christmas, but were moving to a hotel for the next week. They went off to check into their hotel and move their bags. Luckily it was downhill from our current chalet.
Once we finished our packing up, we got the downhill run with our bags, which was significantly easier than the dragging them up when we arrived. The snow was also nicely compacted now so they pretty much slid down! Some of the bags got to ride down on the sleds. This was much more fun than our usual bag moving 🙂
We then had to return the sleds and luckily Soren’s watch was at the sports centre in the lost property. So it didn’t get added to Soren’s list of lost items for the trip……
With all the bags now at the train station, we had to say our goodbyes to Mürren. It was a beautiful day and we were wishing we were heading out for more sledding and enjoying the snow. Kim and Alan had decided to come down into Lauterbrunnen with, to make the most of the nice weather and do some exploring.
Bye-bye Alps…..
We caught the train to Grütschalp via Winteregg. We’d hiked this trail a couple of days earlier, before the big snow dump and it looked quite different now, with significantly more snow.
We could see all the way across to Wengen and there was definitely much more snow on the ground than when we first arrived. As we piled into the cable car, with all our luggage, the descent gave us amazing views of Wengen, with all the snow and the beautiful Lauterbrunnen Valley.
The Trümmelbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen are beautiful and we’d done a snow hike there in 2016. Sadly, we didn’t get time to head back there on this trip. Kim and Alan were taking some time do some exploring of Lauterbrunnen before heading off to Wengen – where they found an excellent gluhwein festival that we would have been awesome to visit, if only we had an additional day.
We bid farewell, with plans to meet up briefly in Poland, later in our respective trips. It was onto the next phase of the trip for us, off to meet up with the Christmas Markets cruisers in Basel, before we celebrated Christmas together in Innsbruck, Austria.
We’d arrived in Lauterbrunnen a bit earlier than expected. We had a very tight change of trains in Interlaken and had made here in time for an earlier train. The Swiss, being Swiss, informed us we couldn’t use our tickets on an earlier train despite it being pretty empty. It was however only a few Euro for this first leg so we decided to make our life easier and just buy new tickets for the leg through to Interlaken. The station attendant had acknowledged the stupidity of the situation and Swiss train fare rules.
Zinnia still wasn’t feeling well, so we were glad we weren’t sitting in the cold train station in Lauterbrunnen. As we descended altitude through to Interlaken, the snow got more sparse but the views through the valley of the huge mountains were still amazing.
Beautiful scenery and sad Zinnia’s
Being on the earlier train, we arrived into Interlaken with 30 minutes rather than 5 minutes. Zinnia definitely wasn’t feeling well by now, and we made her a coat bed on the train station benches.
Luckily our train through to Basel arrived 10 minutes early so we got on and found some awesome couch seats with plenty of room to spread out. As we head out of the Alps the views were just as spectacular through the villages and towns.
Poor old Zinnia definitely wasn’t feeling well. Luckily our train was pretty empty and she had plenty of space to nap for the couple of hour trip through to Bern and then Basel.
Anto and I enjoyed the views and a glass of wine as the mountains rolled past. The kids made the most of the deserted cabin and had plenty of seats to spread themselves around.
Basel reunions…..
We arrived into Basel ahead of schedule (Swiss trains!) at 3pm. Di and Lorraine met us at the train station and helped us with the bags. We’d left Di (Granny) and Max after Paris, when they’d head to Belgium, followed by the Netherlands to do a little sightseeing before a Christmas markets cruise. Lorraine (Grandma) left Australia in time to join the same river cruise. They’d all left their ship that morning and we were all staying in Basel for 2 nights before departing to Austria on the 23rd of December for a big family Christmas.
Max and Di were staying at the Movenpick Hotel, which was conveniently located next to the train station. Lorraine was staying with us in an Airbnb. We had booked our accommodation just over the border in St Louis, France as it was half the price of anything in Switzerland.
Our Airbnb was not all the far away (despite being in a different country) but it did involve some buses and a kilometre of walking with bags. With a sick Zinnia and tired kids, we thought we’d put Anto and Lorraine and all the luggage in an uber to take bags across border to St Louis.
I took the kids up to Di and Max’s hotel room at the Movenpick, which had great views over the train station. As we caught up on last 2 weeks adventures since we’d last seen each other in Paris, Zinnia started feeling rather unwell and then proceeded to puke on their bathroom floor. The formally lovely and clean smelling hotel room was no longer!
The poor munchkin was definitely not feeling good and fell asleep on my lap. I was glad I had sent Anto and Lorraine ahead with the bags, although I’m not sure Di and Max were feeling quite as fortunate.
By 5pm it was dark and Anto and Lorraine had returned, via the tram, now sans luggage. We’d given up any hope of sightseeing for the day and it was decided we’d grab some dinner and then plan an early night and hoped everyone feeling a bit better the next day.
Swiss dinner and markets….
Everywhere in Switzerland is expensive, and with everyone tired or not feeling well we just found a burger place that had options and tried not to convert to Aussie dollars…….
After burgers and fries were consumed we bid farewell to Di and Max and the rest of us planned to catch the tram back to the border. We did have a little wander through the cathedral Christmas market on the way to the tram stop. The markets were pretty crowded, as you’d expect a couple of days before Christmas.
We saw plenty of food and souvenir items that the kids were keen to return for the next day, when everyone was hopefully feeling a bit better.
It was 6 degrees out, which felt comparatively warm compared to our below minus 10 we’d had in the Bernese Alps the last couple of days. However, it did start to rain on us so it was onto the number 11 tram which took us to the border of Switzerland and France. We had about an 800m walk to our apartment, which wasn’t too bad without luggage, even with a rapidly fading 6 year old. As you cross the border the signs all change from German to French. We also spied plenty of patisseries on our French side of the border so we had a plan to check those out the next day, along with plenty of sightseeing in Basel. Fingers were crossed for everyone feeling much better after an early night and plenty of rest.
Up next….
Our day to explore Basel turned on some pretty terrible weather. This became one of the more memorable days of our trip for the kids and for all the wrong reasons.
