8 day honeymoon trip in Switzerland !! Advice Plz.

Hello,

we are a newly wed couple from chicago, planning for a 8 day honeymoon trip in switzerland in the month of september !!

We are interested in the following activities...
1) hiking, walking
2) night life
3) Biking
4) scenery watching (green pasture, lakes, mountains)
We are not even close on knowing how to ski and other adventure sports. We would prefer more of a romantic tour (spending time walking together, travelling, njoying nature etc) :-)

Zurich will be our point of entry to Switzerland. Based on information i have read in myswitzerland.com and various forums, i have identified and listed down the below possible places of interest.

Zurich
Appenzell
Lucerne
Murren
Bern
Geneva

Could you please share your thoughts on the chosen destinations.

Which places would be better to choose as a base (meaning rent a room in hotel) and cover the near by places? How many days good enough to njoy in each place?

I really really appreciate your help here...Thanks a lot !!!

Thanks,
karthik

Any advice from the forum members on the above post.

Don't worry karthik, all posts will be answered. The places on your wish list are quite spread across Switzerland. That's no problem, but as you only have 8 days, you would be moving from place to place almost every day. Train traveling can be really good in Switzerland, but it's up to you to decide whether this is too much or not. More traveling means less hiking, biking, etc. The timetable provides traveling times.

I would suggest to start with a 1 or 2 night stay in Zurich to get a taste of Swiss night life. Then go to one of the Alpine regions such as (the surroundings of) Lucerne or Mürren. Both are really different. Mürren is a small car free town surrounded by peaks. Lucerne is a much larger historical town.

You definitely need an 8-day Swiss Saver Pass if you are going to visit most or even all of the places on your list.

Does this help? Let us know your further thoughts.

Than you Arno for the quick response. I really appreciate your help here.

We have finalised our travelling dates from Sep 17th to Sep 26th.

The places we have chosen for our trip are as follows...

Arrive in Zurich on Sep 17th (Noon)

Zurich (1 day)

appenzell (2 days)

Lucerne ( 2 days)

Murren (2 days)

Bern (1 day)

Geneva (1 day)

Leave to chicago from Geneva

1) Are the chosen places appropriate for our interests?

2) Are the chosen dates appropriate for our trip time frame for the chosen places (Sep 16 - Sep 26)

3) We have decided to take 8 day swiss saver pass for 2 of us (As it covers all the trains, discounts on mountain rides). Is that fine?

4) Are the above places too much to cover in 9 days? Do you recommend any other places ?

Any other tips/suggestions are very much welcome.

Way too much to cover in 9 days. Every time you change your base you lose 1/2 to one full day due to logistics: packing/unpacking, checking in/out, train travel, etc. Lots of rushing around. Not a very "romantic tour" in my opinion.

With 9 days I would choose two bases.

It seems you want to do two different kinds of things. Hiking, biking, and taking in the scenery (and in Switzerland, that means the mountains!) are in one group, nightlife in another. The first group can best be accomplished by staying up in the mountains. I prefer Wengen over all others. It is a car-free village with stunning scenery, a bit larger and with more amenities and a bit easier to get to than Mürren. Glorious hikes, gorgeous boat rides, beautiful bike trails, fantastic gondola/train rides to high mountain peaks, very good restaurants. I find Wengen to be the most beautiful place in the world. However, mountain villages aren't big on night life. I guess people are too tired from day's activities and a nice gourmet dinner to stay up late! There are, of course, a handful of bars but little entertainment such as shows.

Nightlife can be found in the cities (Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva, etc). These are lovely cities but there are cities everywhere in the world that you can go to. In my opinion, if you are going to Switzerland you should go to the mountains. The Swiss Alps are truly unique in the world.

I would go to Lucerne for your first 2 days to enjoy the "city life", then head to Wengen for 5 - 6 days, then on to Geneva the night before your departure.

Thank You Kim for such a wonderful response. That really helps.

I completely agree with you that we have to njoy the mountains of switzerland !!!

My Question is how are we gonna spend 5-6 days in wengen? Make day trips to interlaken, Murren, Jungfrau , Schilthorn etc? Please advice.

You could stay in Wengen for 3 months and have plenty to do! I've done that. . .

I have a 30+ page document of things to do/see, transport tips, restaurant recommendations, etc for Wengen and area compiled over my past 15 trips to the region. Happy to send it to you but need your email address to do so as it is too long to post up here. Send me a private message with your address in it and I will send it to you.

One of my recommendations would be Interlaken. From there you can travel to Grindlewald, Kleine Scheidegg[from clint eastwood movie-eiger sanction] and the Jungfrau at 11,000ft. Interlaken is a beautiful, manageable city with two rail stations and many opportunities for recreational and dining options. You didn't mention travel, I would suggest a swiss saver pass ordered from rail europe b4 you leave. Check it out to see advantages[ free lake trips, free entry to 400 musueums, buses & streetcars in quite a few cities, also discounts on excursions. to see interlaken go to interlaken.ch. Congragulations, you'll luv switz., I've been a dozen times.

Thanks Rahman for the response.

We want to njoy the swiss alps greenary and calm atmosphere. Keeping in consideration of these interests, would you recommend staying at interlaken and visit Murren, Wengen, Jungfrau , Schilthorn etc?

Interlaken is excellent base for travel. 45 mins. from Bern, couple of hours nto Zurich, maybe 1 1/2 hrs to lucerne. Depending on your age and budget, check out villa.ch, a methodist youth hostel[ not a party place like other hostels] A cheap way to see the schilthorn would be train from interlaken to lauterbrunnen, take a lovely hike up the valley of 72 waterfalls to stechelberg and cablecar to the schilthorn. Swiss pass will cover trip including cablecar, then purchase a reduced fare tkt to schilthorn. Jungfrau, use pass to get to lauterbrunnen, catch train to wengen[both trips free] take reduced fare cable car to mannlichen and hike down to kleine scheidegg[ lovely easy hike 1 1/2 hours] purchase reduced fare tkt to jungfrau. If your still up to hiking, after jungfrau hike down to grindelwald from kleine scheidegg and than to interlaken. other links[lauterbrunnen.ch, mt.pilatus.ch, kleinescheidegg.ch, murren.ch, zermatt.ch[, if u want to see matterhorn, check website webcam first, it took me 6 train trips over the years to see it when it wasn't socked in. again , i hope this helps rahman

Karthik,

Since this is your honeymoon, you may want to look into the special cruises on one of the lakes. There are evening cruises with diner, for example. Here's a list of such cruises from Zurich, and here around Interlaken. The regular scheduled boats are free with a Swiss Pass (no reservation required). The special cruises do require reservation. You may or may not get a discount with a Swiss Pass, you can best check with the ship company before booking.

If you're looking for a romantic town to stay, I would prefer a smaller place like Grindelwald, Wengen or Mürren over Interlaken. Interlaken is more city-like. There is a McDonalds, for example ;-) But as rahman pointed out, Interlaken is an easy accessible town because of the trains going in all directions. The smaller places are more secluded.

For the Swiss Pass, please check this page for details and to compare resellers.

Hi Arno,

Thank you for your advice on the cruise. As stated by you, we have chosen wengen as our base stay.

Regards,
karthik