Visiting the thermal baths in Leukerbad had been on my list for the longest time. Almost four million litres of healing water flow from 65 springs into the thermal baths each day at temperatures of up to 51 ºC. I was incredibly excited when we finally booked the trip to spend New Year’s Eve there recently.
The drive from Basel to Leukerbad was supposed to take under 3 hours as we were loading our car on the Lötschberg train to take us through the mountains. Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone in Switzerland was looking to escape to the mountains and it took us almost 5 hours to arrive!
We immediately went to Leukerbad Therme after checking in to the hotel. The warm waters were exactly what we needed. The kids loved the slides in the pools and we particularly loved the outdoor pools with warm waters in the frisky winter air.
After breakfast the next morning, we went to the Gemmi Bahn to take the cable car up to the Gemmipass at 2350m. We were incredibly lucky with the weather and were greeted with the most amazing views of the Alps.
As we wanted to go sledging, we bought day passes for another cable car that goes down a different route – 1.2km and 1.5km of sledging runs!
We had so much fun in the snow.
In the afternoon we took a walk into town for our second trip to Leukerbad Therme and were in awe with the view of the surrounding mountains.
We stopped by Pizzeria Giardino to get take away for dinner as we enjoyed the food so much the night before. This is an amazing restaurant with the biggest indoor and outdoor play area for kids. Whoever has heard of a restaurant with more than 10 bobby cars, slides, foosball table, Playstations and more? The risotto, pasta, pizza and fries are highly recommended.
We greeted 2018 by sleeping in after a long day.
The next morning we took one last chance to go for a last swim to welcome the New Year.
We enjoyed our stay at Hotel Beau Sejour which I can recommend. It was right across from the Gemmi Bahn.
Check out this video of Ilyas talking about his favourite place in the world below:
We loved Leukerbad as well and are super glad you shared your secret with us about this amazing place in the Swiss alps. We had so much fun creating another #matildavisits episode with you https://youtu.be/O73gPOEj1xA