Visit the most beautiful Lake in Swiss 🇨🇭💖

Lake Oeschinen (‘Oeschinensee’) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is incredibly stunning and one of the most beautiful mountain lake in the Alps.

You can visit Oeschinensee even if you don’t intend to hike (Oeschinensee Panorama Hike).

There are lots of things to do:

- Explore the area

- Rent a rowboat

- Swimming

- Fishing

- Picnic

- Barbecue at the fire pits

- Toboggan ride

You should definitely spend at least half a day there!!

The entire journey from Interlaken West > Oeschinensee is ~1h 30mins. It’s pretty easy to follow the SBB app or Google Maps, from Interlaken you will take a train to Kandersteg Bahnhof station (1 change via Spiez). From Kandersteg train station, it’s about 15 mins walk to the gondola station (look for signs or ask the station staff).

⚠️ While there is a bus that runs from the train station to the gondola station, it doesn't seem very frequent.. so if you can catch the bus, great! Else, it might be faster if you just walk there.

💰Price for Adults: CHF32/ CHF16 (50% off with Swiss Travel Pass)

🕑 Operating hours: 0830 - 1800

If you are staying in Swiss for several days and visiting multiple mountains, I recommend buying the Swiss Travel Pass. This covers all buses and most train rides + 25% to 50% off most tickets up the mountains. You can get it from KLOOK and apply “CHERMOONNNN” for 5% off.

If you are planning to hike; plan and familiarise yourself with your route or keep an offline version of your route. This is important because there WAS NO INTERNET CONNECTION up the mountain. Not sure if it was our data plan.. but this was not usually the case. For most mountains we visited, even if we experienced slow internet, we at least still had connectivity. BUT for this particular mountain, it was a complete blackout ☠️.

Our original plan was to do the Oeschinensee Panorama Hike, but we had no internet so we didn't know what path name to follow or which route to take 🥲. I only remembered to go clockwise so we took the first left path and ended up at a viewpoint (lucky us 🥹) after a short walk!

We took lots of photos at the viewpoint and had our lunch on the benches! We were lucky that we managed to capture some fog-free photos. It did get really bad and drizzled a lil. 😶‍🌫️ We weren’t expecting a clear day but with the limited days in Interlaken, we chose to visit Oeshinensee on a cloudy day. We were trying to reserve better weather for other mountains. The weather report did say it would be sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon. Oh man, look at the difference in view! MORALE OF THE STORY: The weather predictions are pretty accurate 🫥

So far, the walk up to this point is easy, mostly downslope. From here, we walked down a steep slope towards the lake.

⚠️ Rmb to walk down in a zig-zag manner for an easier descent. It does look like there’s a straight path down but it is significantly steeper.

The water is really clear and COLD even in the summer! We walked around the lake and eventually made our way back to the gondola station. The journey back to the station was more tiring because it was uphill, but nothing too difficult. They also have a shuttle to bring visitors from the gondola station down to the lake/restaurant area if you don’t wanna walk, but you would have to queue for this (not sure if you need to pay).

We also took the mountain coaster/ togobban ride before we headed down the mountain! We wanted to go on the ride when we first arrived, but due to bad weather, it was closed. We gave up hope, but LUCKILY we checked before heading down 😄. Super fun and unique thing to do in Swiss!! You will start and end the ride at the gondola station at the top of the mountain.

💰Price per ride: CHF6 (More trips = cheaper)

🕑 Operating hours: 0900 - 1730

Operating hours vary throughout the year, so do check the official website when planning for your trip.

👚🥾Attire (Summer): Suggest to be in exercise/casual wear and bring a jacket/windbreaker. It can get chilly when you are stationary, but once you start walking around YOU WILL SWEAT. If you’re not doing the main hike, hiking shoes are not necessary but still good to have!

We would have spent more time chilling and exploring or attempting to find the panorama hiking trail if we weren’t visiting Blausee. Don't miss out on this place if you're in Interlaken! It's one of my favorite places in Switzerland. 💖

💭Read more about my Switzerland trip:

🔻Day trip from Interlaken (Oeschinensee & Blausee)🏞️

#travel #switzerland #interlaken #kandersteg #oeschinensee #lake #traveltips #TravelGuide #Lemon8SG