There is a tension when traveling with children. Wanting to let them experience new things that can expand their understanding, but respecting that routine is important to their growing bodies and minds. We pushed those limits a bit much the first week and this week we are resetting. A little push is necessary because many times they don’t realize what they’re about to experience, but we as the parents need to be responsible not only to our wants but there needs. A tough line when there are so many amazing things to do and so little time to do it. The fact that it doesn’t get dark until 9:30-10PM makes it even harder to get the kids to bed at a reasonable time since there are hours of daylight left.
We hit this a bit today as we planned a trip to Grindelwald to do a mountain top playground, Alpine Slide, Tree Swing, Gorge walk and dinner. Our day started later than expected packing for the weather, making lunches, coaxing the girls into their clothes for the day and rushing to catch the train we ended up missing. There go another 30 minutes. This happened one other time catching the connection from Interlaken to Grindelwald. Swiss transport is only as good as your understanding of it and sometimes the connections were just a little to short and all you can do is wait. That being said I picked this up much quicker than the French system. Sorry, any reason to bash the French train system is a good one…
After walking through this small mountain town with the most ridiculous mountain backdrop you’ve ever season we got to the cable care which would take us to our first destination. This is an area on the side of a mountain with an Alpine slide (toboggan) and a Fly Swing (One person chair lift). We slowly meandored up the hill stopping a various swings, jump houses, and slack lines on our way to the alpine slide. I’ve never done these, they look epic, but potentially scary.
“Am I just going to fly out of this thing at high speed and shoot down the mountain? Maybe, let’s go.”
Kids can go on these alone so even though they go fast, they are pretty safe, swiss engineering and all that. I went down with Spencer and we had a blast. The views were awesome, the ride itself was thrilling though maybe to short, but great, would recommend.
The fly swing was great, but the ride itself wasn’t even my favorite part of it. I was a youth pastor for years, I went to summer camps with high school students and did high ropes challenge courses. I’ve seen many students and adults be paralyzed by fear and unwilling to climb up trees whilst safely attached to harnesses. Part of me wondered how our girls would respond when they saw that they would drop off the edge of a platform dangling 10-35 meters above the ground. Even Bethany was a little anxious. However, She calmly showed the girls step by step what was happening to her as she was strapped in, how to sit, what helped her feel safe and she was off. Adah went next and did the same thing for Spencer. Spencer got on and I encouraged her as well. Within a minute our whole family was swinging through the Swiss forest without a care in the world, aside from whether or not I drop my phone. It was a really nice moment.
By the time we got down the mountains we saw our time frames closing in, tram / lift schedules shutting down as well as the emotional states of our girls which at this point were fragile. We ultimately chose to head back to Brienz for dinner and bedtime. We got dinner at Bino’s pizzeria, had some good food and made our way back to get the girls bedtime routine started.
It’s becoming apparent that “one” activity a day is probably about the limit with kiddos while traveling. Future me will have this confirmed tomorrow. We came home stopped and started three different movies before turning in for bed. Tomorrow we go back up the mountain to one of Switzerlands many alpine playgrounds.
