4 day trip in Switzerland - Glacier Express a must

Hi,

Me and my friend are going on our first Europe trip.. excited!! - Our trip will start on 05 October, 2014 in Paris - Nice - Switzerland - Italy. We'll end our trip in Rome on 24 October, 2014. As we only have 3 weeks and travelling to 3 countries, we've allocated 4 days in Switzerland. Highlight is the Glacier Express train ride.. the swiss part of our trip will be from 11Oct to 15Oct.

Here's what we were thinking:

Day 1 (11Oct)* - Fly in to Geneva from Nice, take the train to Montreux, stay the night in Montruex

Day 2 (12Oct)* - Take the train to Visp and transfer to Zermatt, take the Glacier Express to St Moritz

Day 3 (13Oct) - Stay in St Moritz for the day and do some hiking/sight seeing

Day 4 (14Oct) - ?? - Day 2 moves down if we want to stay extra day hiking in Montruex or Zermatt

Day 5 (15Oct) - St. Moritz to Venice

I found the Day 1 - Day 2 from another thread in this forum

Questions:

1. what can be done in Geneva in a day, I was thinking that will be a deciding factor on what time we head to Montreux? I saw that the train to Montreux from Geneva is every 30mins and the train ride is slightly over an hour.

2. we want to see as much swiss alps as we can (lol), so where would you recommend for us to do some hiking? Zermatt and St Moritz? or Montreux and St Moritz?

3. Where would be cheaper (relative) to stay overnight? Zermatt or Montreux?

4. I suppose it is better to be on the Glacier express during day time right? so we should take the morning train?

5. I'm struggling to find the easiest / cheapest way to travel from St. Mortiz to Venice, any advice on that?

Thanks in advance.

Hello pmmstanca!

With only 4 days at your disposal, I would choose to simply spend 2 of them in Zermatt and 2 in St. Moritz. That will leave some time for hiking and exploring the area. Both towns offer enough to do for weeks. See the links for activity suggestions, hotels and more.

Both towns are not cheap, but there are budget hotels (see the above pages). The Glacier Express is indeed best during daytime, but there isn't much of a choice: it only runs during the day and the trip takes 8 hours.

A 3-day Swiss Flexi Pass would be perfect for your trip. On the last day you could use it to travel to the Swiss border. Additionally you need a point to point ticket from the border to Venice. See the timetable for travel details.

I hope this was useful. Enjoy your trip!