Posts by
Troy Haines

We love family trips to the Alps.  There is so much to see and do, and it is an adventure the kids will never forget.  The Hollenbaugh family brought their daughters on a custom self-guided Best of the Bernese Oberland tour, adding Zermatt and Chamonix this summer.  At the end of their trip, they sent us a couple photos along...

The Hardergrat ridge, above Interlaken, is beginning to get some well-deserved buzz.  Dan Patitucci's evocative photos of running along the ridge are putting in on the hard-core trail runner bucket list.  But that's a big and challenging route, outside the scope of what most of us can do.  But the ridge itself is very accessible.  A funicular train leads up...

The Göschenertal is not all that well known, even within Switzerland.  But it's a fabulous valley in a very central location, just outside Andermatt, nestled amid the Oberalp, Furka and Gotthard passes.  It's very close to a lot of interesting rail journeys - the Glacier Express stops in Andermatt, and this would be a great journey to combine with either...

The Niesen is a very striking, almost perfectly pyramidal peak just south of Lake Thun, in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland.  It's not big on the tourist track, but that doesn't mean it's not worth a trip.  If you do want to visit, the ride on the 11,502 foot (3506m) long funicular railway known as Niesenbahn can be a lot of fun. ...

My kids really want to go back to Switzerland.  I know this because at least once a month, they'll say something like "Dad, are we going to go back to Switzerland sometime soon?" My kids are 6 and 10 now, and for 8 of the last 10 summers we have brought them to the Alps with us, sometimes for "short"...

The first time I went to Grindelwald, I didn't know what to expect.  It was 1991, I had just started working in Basel for a summer, and I went to Interlaken because I'd vaguely heard about it.  I got to Interlaken and, looking at the still somewhat distant mountains, I thought "This is nice, but I want to be there!" ...