Swiss Rail Pass vs ZurichCard for Zurich & Lucerne

  • Removed user
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    23 June 2017 at 22:11:01 #812381

    Hi – My husband, teenage daughter and I will be traveling to Zurich for 2 days and then on to Lucerne for 1 1/2 days. From there, we will be traveling to the Rhine Falls and meeting up with friends from Germany. I’m having a hard time deciding if the Swiss Rail Pass would be worth the $. We’ll definitely need to get from airport in zurich to hotel, then maybe some bus/tram trips around town. Train to Lucerne (hoping to get in a boat tour of lake or Mt. Pilatus trip). Then train to Rhine Falls. I’ve tried to check prices of the various train trips and it seems like it might be more affordable to just get a ZurichCard for use in Zurich on buses and trams (it’ll also get us into some museums for free) and pay for the train trips by themselves. Any suggestions?

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    Removed user
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    72625 posts
    24 June 2017 at 0:20:10 #865667

    Hi Jennie, and welcome to MySwissAlps!

    I agree that it’s not worth using a Swiss Travel Pass for Zürich. A Swiss Half Fare Card might be worth it for the rest of your trip, especially as you hope to include a fairly expensive mountain visit. But there is only one way to know for sure, and that is to add up the cost of all trains, buses, boats and cable cars you intend to take and compare the point-to-point costs with other options.

    There is a page here that can help you with that:

    http://www.myswissalps.com/tr ain/ticketspasses/prac tical/chooserailpass

    If you have no compelling reason to be in Zürich, I would recommend you minimise your time there and spend more time in Luzern. If this is your first visit to Switzerland, I would skip the museums and spend time in the mountains and on the lakes 🙂

    Alpenrose

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