transportation milan- grindenwald
 

My daughter who lacs travel experience
nneds to go from milano to interlaken/grindenwald
which will be the best way/cost ?

the fastest way is to hop the Cisalpino tilting higher-speed train that links Milan to Spiez, Switzerland, where you change to a train to Interlaken Ost (about 20 mins from Spiez) and then at Ost take the narrow-gauge mountain BOB train to Grindelwald (25 mins from Ost). Total transit time Milan-Grindelwald with changes should be about 5 hours. Cisalpino trains require reservations before boarding on international runs, though inside Switzerland you can just get on them and not pay the reservation fee. They are other slightly slower Milan-Spiez trains besides the Cisalpino ("Chis-alpino")

You can also purchase a seat reservation on the Cisalpino train within Italy (if you can't meet the time limits for seat reservations from the station of boarding), although this is not the preferred method, and you may need to hunt around for an empty seat.

Normally, I would completely agree that using the Cisalpino service is ideal...HOWEVER, depending on the time of year/date of travel the FIRST Cisalpino which runs all the way to Spiez without changes does not depart Milan until 5:10 PM so a better option might be taking a non-Cisalpino service.

Go to www.cisalpino.ch for further information; there is an easily understood English version.

If you go to the swiss train site (www.rail.ch) you'll see that there are non-Cisalpino trains that leave at 9:10/11:10 and 13:10 that involve three changes to Grindelwald and a 14:10 departure that involves only 2 changes. These are Intercity trains out of Milano Centrale--though the 13:10 connects to an ICE from Spiez to Interlaken Ost.

Trip time is 5:01 to Grindelwald on the first three itineraries, and 4:31 for the 14:10, two-change departure.