After much research, we decided to base our home base in the Jungfrau region in Lauterbrunnen. It ended up being the most well connected to all the little villages we wanted to go to, had enough going on in the town center where we were able to eat out or get groceries, and still wasn’t too crowded as we stayed in an Airbnb away from town center. Many blogposts said they liked staying in Grindelwald which had more going on and is also well connected, but we found it too busy for us, and our kids are too young to do a lot of the adventure activities at Grindelwald First anyway. 

Lauterbrunnen was the inspiration for Rivendell, and is known as the valley of 72 waterfalls. Our Airbnb had a view of the most famous of the falls, Staubbach Falls, which we were able to hike up to and hike behind. Since we were visiting late in the season the water wasn’t flowing as much, so getting to the top of the hike was a little anticlimactic, but we still loved the views of the falls from everywhere in Lauterbrunnen.

Walks through town and up to Staubbach Falls

There is a small Coop for groceries at the train station, although it’s smaller than the Coop in Wengen and Murren. It had everything we needed for breakfasts and easy lunch sandwiches. Our Airbnb was an easy 15 min walk from town center; there was also a bus that dropped us off in front of the apartment complex. We loved having our own outdoor space and stream to play in and dine on, and we were only a 4 min walk from an al fresco dining restaurant with a large outdoor play space. We were only a 10 min walk to the main Lauterbrunnen playground, via walking along the main river. We split the difference for jet lag and put the kids to bed around 10, and woke around 9:30 – this worked well for us since it got dark around 9 so we were able to spend post-nap time around Lauterbrunnen playing on the playgrounds, while our mornings included an outing to a neighboring village or a hike. Baby has been sleeping through the night for a while now, but had a pretty easy transition to the time change probably because she’s still a potato and naps all the time anyway. 

Time spent in our backyard, during naps, for dinners, etc. Such an amazing view.

Sharing our terrace with our friends who came to visit for a day! Of course we had to have fondue.

One of the afternoons we got a sitter and biked the valley. We rented from Imoden bikes in town and they were very reasonable. The valley isn’t too big so we were able to do a loop in around 2 hours, with lots of stops – you could also rent bikes for the whole day and bike up to a neighboring village. We have frequently used a sitter on vacation because we have an event we need to go to (ie a wedding or dinner etc), but this time since we had 3 kids and were “vacationing” for almost 2 weeks we thought it might be nice to get an extra set of hands at least to alleviate the parenting pressure. We ended up having such nice family days that we weren’t dying for a sitter after all, but decided to utilize one anyway for activities that we couldn’t do with kids. Originally we were hoping to paraglide but we didn’t try that hard to book (plus the day ended up being rainy), so we did our bike ride without kids instead. The company did have bike trailers but it might’ve been dicey with the baby – we might have been able to fit her car seat in a trailer, but it was uncertain – so we just had a very stress free bike ride through the valley ourselves.  

Walks through town

Our bike ride through the valley, stopping at the cheese vending machines for a snack, of course

Overall, basing ourselves in one location for many days was definitely the call to making us feel at home and giving us room to chill when needed. I will really miss this place, we made so many lovely memories here! 

Walking to local restaurant with playground, trampolines, and push carts.