In Wengen at least, winter high season has at least double the occupancy of summer high season.
Maybe in places like Montreaux or Lucerne with economies less based on winter sports it is more crowded btw we stayed at the Bellevue, which is in a bucolic location at the end of the main street - about a 10 min walk from village center but a lovely quiet place to be - as the name suggests. We were there at the end of June and most of the lodgings in the village were essentially unoccupied and the wild flowers in the mountains were wonderful (the purpose of our trip)
I would say to expect that things like the big cable car up to Murren from Lauterbrennen, that up to Piz Gloria or the train up to Jungfraujoch are going to be quite crowded, but it will be a festive summer crowd. The new little automated lifts around the valley behind Mannlichen etc are fun take to get around the sites and towns in the valley. Definitely get the Bernese regional ticket to cover all the transport optons or it gets really expensive. There is a fine bakery in central Wengen and the pastries at the the cafes at the next stop up from Wengen on the rail line is good (cakes with red currants, stuff like that) Actually we didnt have any bad pastry while in Switzerland that I can recall…but we stick with the fruit stuff.
Maybe it’s specific to Chamonix, and not across the board, that it’s busier in the summer, and perhaps that is due to its popularity for mountain climbing.
It’s also possible the French Alps would be busier in the summer than winter than the Swiss Alps, since the French Alps are somewhat more affordable for most tourists.
Id imagine climbers are every where - in late June we heard there was only 1/10 of the high summer occupance. It was truly beautiful but not everyone wants to take their summer holidays in the mountains then.
In general, summer months tend to be even more crowded in many parts of Switzerland compared to already quite crowded winter months. When we worked in Basel for example (and traveled through Switzerland) it is quite striking how much tourism in Switzerland is changing over the last 30 years to be more and more independent on snow as the winter sport situation has changed quite dramatically for a long time now.
Great to see Peruvian food penetrating further into Europe. Spain (Madrid in particular) has really excellent Peruvian restaurants now, from my perspective better than what I can find in the US but this was not the case 15 years ago. Not surprising it would emerge sooner in Spain given the language.
