Advice to plan the trip and buy passes

Hi

I and my husband along with my seven months old child will be travelling to Switzerland for 4 days. Reading posts on internet and on this forum, I planned my trip like this :

Day 1 : Jungfrau

Day 2: Lake Lucern

Day 3: Trekking through the small valleys

Day 4: Looking around small and beautiful places around our stay.

I have following questions. Kindly reply to these so that I can plan a nice trip.

Q1. Is if fine to travel to Jungfrau with my little child?

Q2. Which is the best buy in regard of passes for us to optimise our expenses to the most ?

Q3. Which is the best place to book airbnb to ease my trip if I want to go ahead with this plan.

Any suggestions regarding the places worth seeing are most welcome.

Thanks

Rajni

Hi Rajni,

Thank you for sharing your plans with us.

Q1: You'd better consult your pediatrician. In general it's not recommended to take children under 2 to places above 2500 m. Please see our Jungfraujoch page.

Q2: You can best have a look at the 4-day Swiss Travel Pass and the Swiss Half Fare Card. Which one is better depends on your preferences: whether you mind buying tickets for each trip, for example. Regarding price, you can compare the expenses with both passes as explained here.

Q3: I don't know anything about AirBnb. There are affordable hotels as well. Where would you like to stay and what's your budget? Are you planning for two days in the Jungfrau region and two near Lucerne? The links help you to find accommodation as well as places to see.

When does this trip take place, and how/where do you arrive and depart?

Hi Arno,

Thank you very much for writing back. Based on your reply, we have drawn a tentative plan for our visit to Switzerland.

 We arrive in Basel in the evening (on the 9th of September) and plan to move to Lucerne the same day. We would like to spend the following day in Lucerne (I heard the lake is great and the place is nice). We plan to do a hike on the following day and will probably try to fit in a panoramic train ride (I hope this will be covered in one of the passes that we intend to buy).

We will then move to Interlaken in the evening and visit Jungfrau the day after. After returning from Jungfrau, we will stay in Interlaken for one more night. The following day, we have our flight back from Basel in the evening, so we have few hours that we might spend in Brienz.

Could you please give your inputs on how feasible this trip is (I hope we are not trying to do much in too little time)? Also please advise us on the appropriate choice of travel passes (for 2 adults and one infant).

 Thanks and regards,

Rajni

Hi Rajni-

Some partial answers -

The trip seems reasonable....you are giving each place/region a couple of days, and not trying to do an impoosible number of things in a short trip. Once you see how many choices and options there are, you may wish you had a few more weeks. ;-)

There are nice places to hike all around Lake Luzern (German spelling for the name). Many involve climbs and descents ( on very good trails or roads) of a few to several hundred meters.. There are some scenic easy ones, as well. Many can be reached by train, or lake boat, or bus.

For an example, walks on the upper parts of the Rigi are very scenic and can be easy or difficult, as you choose.

Trains up to Rigi Kulm (top) are quite scenic. The one from Vitznau has better views.

www.myswissalps.com/rigi

Once you are in Luzern main station, go to the tourist info office by track #1. Talk to them about hikes appropriate for your family.

The train route to/from Luzern/Interlaken, via the Brunnig Pass is a reasonably scenic route.It will be covered by various passes -- some half fare, some full fare.

The train rides near Jungfrau are very scenic. covered to varying degrees by the passes. Once you get past "inter-urban" trains and get on "Scenic Excursion Trains" such as from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch, discounts diminish. These latter are privately run railroads, not part of the public transport system

Jungfrau -

Arno says this before your response:

<<"Q1: You'd better consult your pediatrician. In general it's not recommended to take children under 2 to places above 2500 m. Please see our Jungfraujoch page.">>

You then say:

<<"We will then move to Interlaken in the evening and visit Jungfrau the day after. After returning from Jungfrau,">>

I think that there is a disconnect.

Slowpoke.

Hello Rajni,

The trip up to Mount Rigi suggested by Slowpoke is really scenic, and it's free in case you decide to get a 4-day Swiss Travel Pass. You can combine this with a boat trip, which is free as well.

An alternative to the Swiss Travel Pass is the Swiss Half Fare Card. Please see both links for all the details. Which one works out cheaper depends on which trips you end up doing. This guide helps you to calculate. The Swiss Travel Pass is the more convenient option as you don't need to buy tickets for most trips; and unlimited traveling is simply more flexible. You can take advantage of the discounted price on www.swisstravelsystem. co.uk, or the offer by ACP Rail: www.acprail.com/rail-passes/swiss-pass, which is still much cheaper than the regular price. You only need a pass for each adult, the infant travels for free.

Dear Arno,

Thanks a lot for such prompt reply and advice :-). Its a very useful forum. I have made this itinerary for our 3 and half days :

• Day1: Zurich: Spend a couple of hours at Rhine falls and then return back to Zurich. Go around the down-town and the national museum. Lastly, do a boat-ride for lake Zurich
• Day2: Go around Lucerne lake and city centre. Visit Mount Titlis
• Day3: Visit Mount Rigi. And do a panoramic train trip, (Golden Pass) from Lucerne to Montreaux. Reach Geneva
• Day4: Spend time in Geneva and return back to BaselI will be based in Baar for the first two days and will stay in Geneva for one night.

Here are my questions :

1. Please tell me the best way to enjoy ride to mount Titlis ( boat or train or cable car). We will be travelling with our daughter whose 7 months old. I have read few posts on the forum about it but still not clear regarding the same.

2. On 3rd day we are coming to Lucerne from Baar and in the morning may be around 09:30 , we want to start for Rigi, We wish to do some easy hiking too and also want to make the most of scenic trip to Rigi. Please advice over the same.

3. After Rigi, we want to take golden pass and from Lucerne we plan to go to Montreux, (www.myswissalps.com/go ldenpass/gettingthere). I checked this link and it tells that the train is in total for 05:30 hours. Now my question is it shows the journey is in three parts. Can we get down after the first or second part is over (Lucerne to Interlaken Ost-Interlaken Ost to Zweisimmen-Zweisimmen to Montreux).For example from Lucerne we go to Interlaken Ost and get down there see some of Interlaken and take the train after sometime again for Interlaken Ost to Zweisimmen ? Basically I mean can we break our journey for our convenience ?

For this stay we will be buying a 4 days Swiss Pass.

Thanks a lot

Rajni

Hi Rajni,

You already asked about this itinerary in your other topic, using a different user name. Why do you have two accounts?

Hi Arno,

I have not been asking the same questions again, nor I have an additional account.

My husband posted something from his account yesterday but clearly our questions are different. He asked about the itinerary in general and I have some more specific questions.

I appreciate the help we have had from this forum but I want to assure you that there is no intention to spam this forum with rather redundant queries.

Thanks for your help.

Rajni

Hi Rajni,

Sorry, I was just confused about two users from the same address asking about the same itinerary. It's all clear now. As for your questions:

1. You'd best ask your pediatrician whether this is ok. One should be careful taking children that young to altitudes over 2500 m. Please see our Titlis page.

2. The Rigi page mentioned by Slowpoke suggests a few round trips. You can combine those with an easy hike, e.g. from Rigi Kaltbad to Rigi Kulm (the top) or vice versa. I would estimate this to take 60 to 90 minutes. There are two more train stops along the way so you can do a shorter walk as well. You don't have to start the day in Lucerne by the way. You can also start in Arth-Goldau and take a boat back to Lucerne. That would make sense as you need to end up in Lucerne anyway to take a Golden Pass train.

3. With a Swiss Travel Pass you can get off the train wherever you like and proceed on another one, unless you book seat reservations for a specific train.

I hope this helps!

Dear Arno,

Thanks a lot for all the useful information. We will be reaching day after tomorrow and I hope with this useful forum we would have a nice trip. Few more queries :

1. My daughter is 7 months old. We have bought Swiss pass for our four day stay (12-13-14-15). But for 11th we have booked train tickets from Basel to Baar. Do we need to book train tickets for my daughter also or she travels free with us ?

2. Regarding the Golden pass trip, I saw it is in three parts (Lucerne to Interlaken Ost,Interlaken Ost to Zweisimmen,Zweisimmen to Montreux). We are planning to do it and then from Montreux , we plan to go to Geneva by train as we stay there. Can we do any one first two parts of the trip via boat? I read in the forum that interlaken lake trip is very beautiful, so I thought if we could divide our journey in Golden pass and boat? If yes then which part should we travel by boat and the journey would be how long (We do not want to miss the best part of Golden pass as I heard its amazing).

3.I did not understand what you meant by "You don't have to start the day in Lucerne by the way. You can also start in Arth-Goldau and take a boat back to Lucerne. " You meant that from Baar we should come to Arth-Goldau and go to Rigi (via ? I mean hiking?cogwheel? ) and when we come back we should take boat from Rigi to Lucerne?

Thanks

Rajni

Hi Rajni,

You're welcome! As for your questions:

1. No, she does not need a ticket.

2. You can do the section Brienz to Interlaken Ost by boat. The train trip takes at least 6.5 hours. Including this boat I would say it's 8 hours or so. Interlaken West to Spiez can be done by boat as well, but you'd have to walk for about 20 minutes uphill in Spiez to reach the train station there.

The trip will be even more attractive with either of these boats, but it will be a long day.

3. Yes, you can take a train from Baar to Arth-Goldau and take the cogwheel train to Rigi Kulm. Then the train down to Vitznau and the boat from there to Lucerne.

Thanks a lot Arno.

we have reached today and will be exploring Zurich tomorrow. I was trying to find out the schedule and timings for Golden pass but I am not able to do that. Could you please tell me where to find it out ? Do we need to reserve seat in the same for our journey ? If we stop at interlaken and stay for an hour to see city, can we board train again to complete the other two parts of train trip?

Hi Rajni,

You don't need seat reservations (see here), and you can get off the train wherever you like. Note that Interlaken is not particularly scenic. It's a good place to shop though.

All trains can be found in the nationwide timetable. Also you can find a link to a specific Golden Pass timetable on our Golden Pass page. After clicking that link you can download a PDF with all schedules (click "Timetables").

Thanks a lot Arno Switzerland is indeed beautiful !