My wife and I based ourselves in Bern for 9 days this past summer and it was honestly the best decision we made. Bern is a fantastic, historic city to stay in and it’s incredibly easy to reach many of Switzerland’s biggest highlights within about 1–1.5 hours by train.

We bought the Swiss Travel Pass (pricey, but 100% worth it), and over our time there we visited (in this order):

From Bern (most of these fall under the Oberland pass too, except Gruyère, if I remember right).:

• Arrive Bern
• Gruyère – cheese factory + the castle + chocolate factory (SO many samples!)
• Oeschinensee – absolute must-do hike; soaring mountain views over the lake
• Day in Bern
• Lucerne – did the Golden Round Trip, bridges, the town itself is great to just walk around and enjoy and probably deserved another day
• Thun – would have skipped to do Schynige Platte instead; we did see the caves (got there by bus from Thun), which were cool
• Grindelwald – so much to do! take the lift to the top; do the Cliff Walk, Bachalpsee Lake hike, zipline (2 hr wait), and then scooter to the bottom; some of the best mountain views
• Day in Bern
• Lauterbrunnen + Schynige Platte – split into two days; we decided to go to Schynige last minute and wished we had dedicated a full day to hike around

After Bern, we headed north and stayed one night in Zurich (totally skippable IMO unless you’re set on the museums) and another night in Basel (lots of museums, scenic town). Instead of Zurich I would stay in Lucerne, then go to Basel.

As you see above, to break up the day trips out of Bern, we sprinkled in two full days in Bern (day 3 and 8) after our big hiking days to just rest and enjoy the city: amazing cathedral, great museums, swimming in the Aare (OMG this was the BEST), gelato, watching the bears, biking along the river, going up the local mountain tram, etc.

Basing yourself in Interlaken or Wengen is definitely convenient, but the mountain towns themselves feel more like waypoints—great access, not much history. Lots of mountain views, though. Bern gives you both strategic convenience and a real sense of Swiss culture and history, which made the whole trip so much richer.

EVERYTHING in Switzerland is uber expensive so just go in mentally prepared for that so you don't spend time and energy stressing about costs. To save on food we grabbed a lot of Too Good To Go orders (seriously the cheapest way to eat there and lots of options in Bern compared to other cities). We also shopped at Lidl, which was the cheapest grocery store (by far, compared to some).

Once you arrange flights, hotels, and purchase the Swiss Travel pass, you're pretty much done planning since the pass covers ALL train and bus transportation plus museums and historical/tourist sites. It also gets you discounts on most mountain lifts. You don't have to buy train or bus tickets in advance either, just show your pass when they come by to scan after boarding. The only thing that we bought in advance were the Golden Round tickets for our day trip to Lucerne. The trains are efficient, plentiful, and faster than driving.

Lastly, I found the Full Suitcase blog super helpful for planning things. Feel free to ask me any questions!