Hello 2021! 🎉 Since 2020 was a bit of a weird year and it was pretty much impossible for us to have travelled anywhere, I figure I would share my 2019 Christmas trip (also the last trip I went on 😢) with you all instead!
Towards the end of 2019/ start of 2020, we decided to finally do something that we had always talked about doing – skiing! ⛷ I had never skied before in my life (actually… I think I went skiing with my family once when I was (9??) 😂 had very vague memories of the event but basically had not skied ever since haha.) The bf used to ski a bit when he went to uni in California but hadn’t hit the slopes since then as well.
When October 2019 rolled around, we started researching ski resorts in Asia and Europe – from Japan to Korea to Europe until we found Wengen – a charming car-free ski village tugged away in the jaw-dropping Jungfrau Region of Switzerland. We fell in love with how gorgeous the village looked in photos online and booked our flight tickets, hotel, ski passes and ski lessons pretty much straight away 💙
I’ll be sharing our in-depth itinerary here in case any of you are planning to go on your first ski trip in the Swiss Alps (post-COVID) so read on if you’re interested! 😊
How we got there
We took a direct flight from Hong Kong to Zurich and landed on Christmas Day! From Zurich airport, we took a train to Bern, and then a train from Bern to Interlaken Ost, another train from Interlaken Ost to Lauterbrunnen, and finally a train from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen! 🚞
The entire journey from Zurich to Wengen took around 3 hours. We also got some INSANE views along the way!
Where we stayed
We had originally planned to stay in Wengen for 5 nights and then Zurich for two more nights, but were SO in love with Wengen that we ended up staying there for an extra night (even forfeiting the deposit we paid for our Zurich hotel) because we just could not bear to tear ourselves away from the stunning village.
We stayed at a charming boutique chalet-style hotel called the Hotel Alpenruhe that I found on booking.com and I cannot stop raving about how amazing this hotel was to this day. The staff at the hotel was so warm and friendly and treated us like old friends, prices were more than reasonable compared to other hotels in the Wengen area, and the views from the hotel were simply out of this world (it was the highest located hotel in the Wengen area!)
When we arrived Wengen, we gave the hotel a call (using the free phone at the Wengen station) so they could come pick us up with a buggy to take us up to the hotel (it would be a 5-7 min walk up a slope otherwise). Our host Andreas invited us for a welcome drink (champagne!) and basically spent the night of Christmas Day chatting with us over drinks in their cozy lobby lounge 🏠
The hotel was newly renovated and its design was tasteful, simple and elegant. We loved that most furniture pieces in the hotel – from the chairs to wardrobes to floor lamps to posters on the wall were sourced from unique Swiss/ European design shops.
Breakfast at Hotel Alpenruhe
Our room was incredibly spacious and we had a shared balcony with the other rooms on the same floor. I dare say our balcony offered the BEST views in the whole of Wengen. It felt like a dream when I walked out onto our balcony, embraced by snow-capped mountains while people strolled by with ski equipment in their hands – a total winter wonderland! 😍
Our balcony views!
Walking around Wengen
We spent the first day walking around Wengen after we arrived and OMG it was more beautiful than I could ever have imagined 😱💙 The weather was glorious and we spent the day exploring the picturesque village.
Skiing – Equipment rental, day passes, lessons
Equipment rental
Since we were complete ski amateurs and did not bring any equipment with us (apart from our ski clothes and gloves), we rented everything from a ski rental shop called Central Sport located in the heart of Wengen, right by the Wengen – Männlichen cable car station. Our meeting point for our ski lessons also happened to be in front of the Wengen – Männlichen cable car station (our ski lessons mainly took place in Männlichen) so Central Sport turned out to be the most convenient spot for us. We would head to Central Sport every morning before we started our ski lessons, and when we were done skiing for the day we would store our ski equipment at the shop so we didn’t have to take them with us all the way back to our hotel.
We headed to Central Sport on the first day we arrived Wengen to sort out and rent any ski equipment we would need for the next few days and the staff there was professional and very helpful. They measured us and made sure we had the right size for everything from ski boots to skis to helmets and also gave me tips on how to walk with ski boots on after learning it was my first time skiing! Overall, we felt they were friendly and welcoming and would definitely recommend this shop to anyone who needs ski equipment in the Wengen area.
Day passes
We booked our ski passes a couple of months before our trip on the jungfrau.ch website so we could take advantage of the early bird discounts! I definitely recommend booking as early as you can since a lot of ski resorts do early bird discounts 👏
Ski lessons
We knew we wanted to take ski lessons since it had been ages since we both last skied and we ended up booking our lessons through a ski school called Swiss Ski and Snowboard School in Wengen prior to our trip. Booking early is so crucial if you are planning to take ski lessons in peak seasons (like Christmas) since ski schools tend to get extremely busy!
We ended up doing a 3-hour private lesson every day for two consecutive days. I originally was looking to do group lessons (since they seemed to be much cheaper) but after chatting with friends who are more experienced skiers, they recommended that the bf and I get private lessons instead since 1) we could learn a lot quicker and 2) it’s much better value to book private lessons rather than group lessons for two (generally, the more people you add to a private class, the cheaper it gets when you divide it between all the attendees! Ski schools tend to charge the most for a single-person private lesson and only add a small fee if an extra person joins 😃 ).
We would have our ski lesson from 9-12 in the morning, and then practice what we learned that morning by ourselves in the afternoon. We found that this ski lesson schedule worked super well for us and we were able to make the most out of our ski lessons while not breaking the bank by doing ski lessons all day every day! 💙
Food and Restaurants
Wengen is a small and cozy village, but as far as ski resorts go their food choices were not too bad! Here are some places we visited:
Pasta & More (delicious pasta, desserts and the best beer! 🍺 We went there two days in a row haha 😋)
Restaurant Taverne Bernerhof (Swiss restaurant which serves HUGE portions)
Restaurant Eiger (another Swiss restaurant! Get the rosti – a Swiss hash brown dish)
Santos Fine Food (fast food joint that serves cheap and tasty hot dogs)
Bäckerei Vincenz (the only bakery in Wengen I think and they do fresh berliners (a German/ Swiss donut 🍩) every day – they’re THE BEST! 😍)
Eiger / Santos Fine Food / Berliner!
Day Trip to Grindelwald
After skiing in Wengen for 3 days, we did a little day trip to Grindelwald, another village in the Jungfrau Region and it was lovely. Grindelwald is about half an hour by train away from Wengen which makes it a perfect day trip destination.
And that is it! Hope this guide was helpful for any of you who are planning your next Swiss getaway (I know I am haha 😍) and feel free to let me know if you have any questions! 💕 Hopefully we will all get to travel again this year! 💫
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