6 days in Lucerne or Zurich during 15-day trip?

Hello Everyone!

Again, thank you so much for helping us by maintaining this forum and website, it has been so helpful to plan our so expected trip to Switzerland!

A little background of our journey:

• We will stay 15 days in Switzerland, in which we will kinda follow the Grand Train Tour.
• It will start in Fribourg where we will visit that region (Montreux, Lausanne, Gruyeres), then we will go to Wilderswill where we will visit the region of the Interlaken (passing by Bern and Thun on the way there).
• From there we will go to Zermatt, and from there, we will go to Bellinzona for the Lugano region, through the Glacier express way (using normal trains), and then off to the Luzern /Zurich region

Now off to the issue:

We will have from April 25th to May 1st on this area.

We want to visit Mount Pilatus, explore a bit the Canton of Luzern / and then Zurich, and the region. We also wish to do day trips to Schaffhausen, St Gallen, maybe liechenstein, maybe Basel.

At first I was thinking about staying the 6 days in the Luzern region, but when checking the times to reach all these places, it is very far.

So we switched to maybe staying in Zurich because it is a bit more central.

Is Zurich a good place to stay? I found a deal in Bremgarten on an apartment with washing machine (we saw it is fairly expensive to wash clothes in Zurich, not a lot of laundromats), would that area be a nice one to stay?

We really would like to stay the whole 6 days in the same place to chill a bit as we are with a 4 year old and switching hotels gets very tiring, but we can also think about staying maybe 2-3 days in the luzern area and 4-3 days in Zurich area?

Could you input your expertise in this?

Thank you!

Hi,

It's good to know that this forum has given you some helpful information. Now let's address some of your concerns.

Zurich is certainly a good base because it is a transportation hub and offers plenty of accommodation options: https://www.myswissalps.com/zurich. But Bremgarten is not in Zurich. It is a little further away (much closer to where I live in fact) and doing day trips to your listed destinations from Bremgarten may take a bit longer because of limited train connections. However it is a lovely town set along the River Reuss and is definitely a nice place to stay. I would try and look for places to stay near a train station that has a good network. Alternative to Zurich HB would be Zurich Oerlikon or Winterthur.

It might be a good idea to have 2 base towns for your trip. A few days in Zurich to cover Schaffhausen, St Gallen, Liechstentein and Basel. And a few days in Lucerne (https://www.myswissalps.com/lucerne) for faster access to south of the central region such as Montreux, Lugano and Zermatt.

You can use the following link to search for hotels and rentals: www.myswissalps.com/accommodation

Hope this helps in your travel planning.

regards,

Anna

Luzern is my favorite city so I would opt to stay there. There is a great washing service there called Jet Wasch. You can drop off or they pick up from many places. Besides Mt. Pilatus you might want to consider Mt. Rigi, across the lake. Also, consider the Swiss Museum of Transport in Luzern. Great Place!