Thank you very much, Arno. Now I am getting more excited. Thank you for taking time out to reply. I love this site already!
I read the car vs train page and yes after everything I read (which was very detailed by the way, thank you!), we still opt to rent a car as this would give us the luxury to stop at any place that would catch our attention to shoot photos and videos. We love taking travel videos thats why.
I decided to delay the trip to May 29-June 12 after reading up online that April isn't really the best time to go to Switzerland. Do you think this is a good decision since we would like to enjoy Murren and Gimmelwald as well?
My itinerary is finally taking shape and here it goes, hope you can comment or suggest ....
- arrive Geneva airport, pick up car rental and drive straight to Montreux, stay overnight
- explore Chillon and then drive to Visp, leave car in the parking and take train up to Zermatt, stay in Zermatt for 3 nights
- from Visp, drive to Lugano, stay overnight in Lugano.
-drive to Tirano via Lake Como (maybe explore Como?) ***now, here's where it gets a bit confusing for me. I want to get on the Bernina Express in Tirano. Take the Tirano-Chur BE route. So I will have to drop off my car in Tirano. Apparently, car rental companies won't let me do this. Instead, I can drop off my car in Lecco (still an Italian town), a train ride away from Tirano. Is there a better way to do this? We badly want to take the BE Tirano-Chur route though. I take your suggestion that it would be cheaper to drop the car in another Swiss town but I can't seem to find one near Tirano. The one you mentioned, Chiasso, is still a bit far from Tirano.
- we arrive Chur via BE, stay overnight, get a car rental again the next day and drive to Lucerne, stay for 2 nights in Lucerne. *** is it better if we stay overnight in Pontresina instead of Chur?
- head to Bernese Oberland/Interlaken area to explore Gimmelwald, Murren, Klein Scheidiegg, Lauterbrunnen, Jungfrao and maybe Grindelwald? How many nights should I allot here? I'm sure though that I will spend 2 nights in Murren. The rest I have no idea yet.
-from Interlaken area, either we go to Zurich or Bern, stay for a night and then fly back home.
Is this itinerary feasible in my dates?
I will surely take note about getting a Swiss Half Fare Card. Thank you for suggesting this.
So excited for this trip!