(Europe Sep 2015) Day 10: Visit Wengen.

Day 10 (12 Sep 2015): Visit Wengen. Stay at Wengen (Switzerland)

This day's schedule:

1030 Check out from our hotel at Murren

1051-1113 Took train + cable car from Murren to Lauterbrunnen

1137-1151 Took train from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen

1220 Arrival at hotel to deposit our luggage bags

1240-1330 Lunch at Wengen 

1500 (I think) Check in at the hotel

2030-2115 Dinner 

We started off this day with breakfast at the hotel's dining room with a great view.

The breakfast spread was pretty simple, cereals, breads, cheese, ham...

Our hotel's dining room.

Check out the views from the windows.

After breakfast, we checked-out of the hotel, and left the pretty town of Murren to head for the other town (Wengen) across the valley where Lauterbrunnen was situated at.

First, we had to take a train + cable car down to the valley of Lauterbrunnen (total journey takes about 20-25mins I think), then take a train from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen (about 20mins).

Taking the train, leaving Murren.  It's just a small mountain train, no toilets onboard.

 During the train ride from Murren, we were able to see our destination of the day (Wengen) on the opposite side.

That's Wengen.

Wengen.  

 After the short train ride from Murren, we arrived at Grutschalp to take a short cable car ride down to Lauterbrunnen.

Arriving back at Lauterbrunnen, where we were at just the previous day.

 There was a marathon event going on, and since the marathon trail goes through Lauterbrunnen as well as Wengen, therefore these 2 places were really crowded on this day! We could barely be able to squeeze ourselves into the train that goes up to Wengen.

Marathon event at Lauterbrunnen

Marathon event at Lauterbrunnen

Taking the train from Lauterbrunnen up to Wengen.

After about 20mins train ride, we finally arrived at Wengen, located at 1274m above sea level.

 Upon arriving at Wengen, there were LOADS of people everywhere with loud music played by a band. There were tourists, marathon runners and their supporters everywhere at Wengen.  

We were barely able to navigate through the crowded main streets to reach our hotel to deposit our luggage bags.

Since this was a much warmer day than the previous day (we were shivering and I even had to use my gloves at Murren the previous day), we were practically sweating by the time we arrived at the hotel.

Check out the crowd

Marathon runners running along the main street of Wengen

After about 30mins of walking and nearly getting lost by taking the back alleys (so as to avoid the marathon crowd on the main street), we were finally able to arrive at our hotel. Since it was still too early for check-in, so we just deposited our luggage bags and headed back out into the crowded street in search for some lunch.

Since we just wanted something simple (and hopefully not too expensive), so we decided upon this small shop that sells relatively inexpensive foods like calamari, burgers and such. 

Where we had our lunch

I had calamari

Husband had burgers and fries.

 Our lunch costs us CHF27.50 for the calamari + burger (can't remember if our drinks were included in that amount though).

By the time we finished our lunch, the marathon was over and the streets were nearly empty.  Where did all those people went?  It was surreal. lol.

Near empty streets after the marathon.

 And so, we took a leisurely stroll through Wengen after lunch, since we had some time left before the hotel's check-in time.

Wengen train station

Lockers at Wengen train station

There was a huge crowd with band playing at this area before we had our lunch.

Wengen train station

Add caption

There's a supermarket that's near the train station at Wengen. 

The supermarket at Wengen

Operating hours

 I love taking photos of food and products that are sold at supermarkets whenever I go to a foreign country.

After some light shopping at the supermarket, it's about time we headed back to our hotel.

This is the hotel where we stayed at Wengen. Hotel Belvedere.

Our room.

 The hotel has a lovely view of Wengen. 

The view of Wengen from our room's balcony

I actually liked our room (really loved the view), even though there was no air-conditioning (it was a warm autumn day and temperature was at around 25 degrees celcius and there wasn't any fan in the room which made the room quite stifling warm under the afternoon sun).

Since there's no mini-fridge in our room, so the sink in our toilet became our fridge.  The running water from the tap was REALLY COLD, and so we filled the wash basin with water, and then just threw our bottled drinks into the basin to keep them cool, which actually did worked for hours! I only had to refill the basin about twice (or thrice?) during our overnight stay here and the drinks remained cold throughout.

After resting in our room for a couple hours, it's time to head back out again in search for dinner.

Since it was our wedding anniversary, so we choose a restaurant with a nice ambience that also serves schnitzels (which was my favourite choice of food whenever I'm at Switzerland and Austria).  

This dinner (both of us ordered Schnitzels) costs around CHF 50 if I recalled correctly.

Napkins folded into the shape of a rose at this restaurant. :)

Schnitzel. Can't remember if it's chicken or pork or veal though.  The potatoes were nice too.

And this ends day 10 of the trip.

Many people who travels to this part of Switzerland often had the dilemma of deciding whether to go to Murren or Wengen, since both villages were car-free villages, and the travelling time to reach either town from Lauterbrunnen were almost similiar and both villages had great views.

I actually did quite a lot of research online going through other people's travel blogs + travel forums and yet I still wasn't able to make up my mind, since it seemed like half of the travellers prefer Wengen, and the other half prefers Murren. It was really difficult to choose just 1 out of those 2 places to visit.

Which was why I eventually decided to go to BOTH Murren and Wengen instead of just choosing to visit 1.

Both towns had their pros and cons. 

Here's just my personal thoughts of Murren and Wengen:

Murren: 

- A slight inconvenience to get to from Lauterbrunnen since you would have to take a cable car + train to reach Murren, even though the entire journey is just about 10mins longer than it would have taken the direct train ride from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen.  I didn't really mind this at all though, since the transfer time between cablecar and train was pretty fast.

- Accommodations at Murren are usually slightly cheaper than at Wengen, and there are fewer hotel selections too, since Murren is a smaller village than Wengen.

- Less dining options than Wengen.

- More peaceful village than Wengen, somehow, the pace felt slower here.  Might just be my imagination though. :)

Wengen:

- Just a short convenient direct train ride up to Wengen from Lauterbrunnen.

- More hotel choices at Wengen, but usually they are more expensive than Murren though.

- More shops and dining options at Wengen.

- Kinda felt more touristy than Murren though.

- Supermarket at Wengen is bigger than the one at Murren.

My overall thoughts:

Both villages were great! I love small quaint villages, especially when I don't really see large noisy tour groups around.  

But my personal favourite was Murren actually.  

Yes, it's a small town, and even though I didn't went para-gliding (like what my husband did) and I only spent the day strolling along the streets of Murren, I felt really happy and enjoyed the tranquillity and the quaintness of the village.  Wengen felt somewhat more commercialised to me than Murren.

Although I spent like 2 hours just sitting at our hotel room's balcony watching anime on my mobile phone (and frequently staring at the breathtaking views of the mountains and valley) while waiting for my paragliding husband to return, but I can say that the day which I spent at Murren was my favourite day of this entire trip, even though I technically didn't really do anything much on this day, other than strolling around the village and slacking in our room's balcony.. I really loved the view from the balcony. :)

Fresh air, nice weather, friendly locals, didn't encountered any noisy large tour groups, great view...this day couldn't have been better.

Go to previous entry: Day 9 Visit Murren

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