MySwissAlps.com features ads, commercial and non-commercial Amazing 8 day trip around Switzerland in July
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Chris and I started our tour with a weekend in Munich, touring the city, meeting up with friends and visiting Dachau concentration camp.Stayed City Aparthotel – very good location, clean and facilities to prepare basic food and drink.
Whilst we weren’t trying to have a budget holiday, we also didn’t have a bottomless purse, so were careful not to spend more than we needed to. We bought an 8 day Swiss Travel Pass and tried to make best use of it. We also found Man in seat 61 website and book to be invaluable, as well of course as MySwiss Alps, which was amazing at answering specific queries when planning.
21st July Travelled by Flix Bus- cost £9 each – and reservation for front seats top deck ( good service ) from Munich to Freidrichschafen
Freidrichschafen short walk to jetty to catch ferry boat across Bodensee to Romanshorn using STP to get half price fare. From Romanshorn took train along the lake to Schaffhausen, from where we caught the bus with no problem to our good Airbnb in the suburbs.
22nd July Walked around Schaffhausen ( one of our favourite Swiss towns) and than walked out to the Rhine Falls. Train back to Schaffhaussen , walked around Schaffhausen again in the evening it is such a lovely town!
23rd July Schaffhausen via Zurich to St Moritz, not the most direct route but we detoured for the scenery, arriving in St Moritz in time for a beautiful walk around the lake, the actual town was glitzy as you would expect, but we stayed in Hotel Soldanella which was lovely, and cheap (£115 b&b for 2 booked in advance) for the town, and walking distance from the station ( we didn’t discover till later in the day that there is an escalator from the edge of the lake up to the town centre)
24th July Glacier Express to Zermatt. Amazing! We had to book well ahead, and even still couldn’t get seats together, but we were lucky some bookings didn’t arrive so we had a table to ourselves. We took our own food and drink, and were glad we did as the meals being served didn’t look worth the expense. Hotels in Zermatt were prohibitively expensive, so we took train to Tasch next stop and stayed in Welcome Hotel Tasch – good but fairly basic £84 + tax
25th July Back to Zermatt and did the Gornergrat railway trip. Welcome hotel had allowed us to leave our cases near reception, so we headed back there to pick them up and move onto our Airbnb at Heimberg near Thun. This proved to be a great spot, and wonderful find, as we were away from the main tourist hotspots- whilst being within easy reach with our STPs of the Interlaken area.
26th July We had debated about doing Jungfraujoch, but decided to do Schilthorn instead, as we couldn’t be sure of the weather and the area was very busy with visitors, and we were glad we did- it was an amazing day- lovely train journey, then cablecars, which were much less expensive than Jungfrau, we particularly enjoyed the rotating restaurant, where we made a coffee last a full rotation!, came back via Murren, and then cable car from Grutschalp. Another great day, despite intermittent low cloud.
27th July We made a late decision to do Schynige Platte, despite having to retrace some of our journey from the day before, and we were not disappointed. In fact it was probably one of our best days. We enjoyed the spectacular rack railway, and the beautiful alpine gardens at the top, we did a bit of a walk, but my husband found it too vertiginous to go quite as far along the ridge as we had hoped. We were even able to borrow walking poles free of charge from the shop. Despite a wet afternoon we thoroughly enjoyed getting off the train at Spiez, and taking the boat to Thun– by which time the rain had stopped! Lovely day
28th July Sadly time had come to leave Switzerland , and the weather had deteriorated further! We had to meet family in the French Alps, so we decided to make a detour and we did a great trip from Thun to Zweissimmen, then to Montreux ( the Golden Pass route, -we were unable to see much of the scenery due to bad weather, but we did have an amazing old wooden carriage, with electric candles on every table, which was a real treat) from Montreux we got a boat to Lausanne, then another to Thonon le Bains, and again the weather improved. Again a memorable day!
Our experience of STP was great- we calculated in our 8 days we had done 26+ train journeys, at least 10 bus journeys, 4 boat trips, and 5 cablecar trips! Apart from the money saving element, the convenience of not having to buy tickets, and in particular the ease of travelling by bus and train, due to punctuality and clarity of signboards etc made for very stress free travelling.
We found eating out in Switzerland, especially in the Bernese Oberland area, to be prohibitively expensive, but we were lucky to have good Swiss breakfasts everywhere we went, so ended up having a snack at lunchtime and mostly buying our own food in the evening, -we had some memorable picnics on the side of rivers and lakes etc, and great beer and Swiss wine, so we didn’t feel deprived, just a little disappointed not to have experienced much Swiss cuisine.
At the end of our visit to family rather than fly back to UK we travelled from Geneva via TGV to Paris and then Eurostar to London- it was a great way to end our train holiday, and actually took no longer and no costlier than flying. Environmentally better too! Finally, we travelled light with hand luggage sized cases,and small rucksacks, and we were so glad we did!
All in all a wonderful memorable holiday, and thanks to Myswissalps for all the information and help provided. Switzerland has certainly changed a lot in the 50 years since my last visit as a teenager! By writing this I’m hoping it may give other travellers an idea of whats possible etc.
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Hi Jillclethero,
Loved reading your trip report. Glad you had an amazing time and can’t agree more about train travelling being better for the environment than flying. Good choice too with the Swiss Travel Pass 🙂
http://www.myswissalps.com/sw isstravelpass
Thank you so much for sharing.
Anna
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