First trip to Switzerland - 9 days in June

Hello Myswissalps team,

Great site with lots of useful information. I did read thru some relevant trip reports and other posts, and it ha been very helpful. I am putting together an itinerary for our upcoming trip and would like your advice.

We are traveling with our 2 teenage kids, arriving at Zurich 4pm June 17th, returning back early morning of June 26th ( should stay at hotel near Zurich airport to catch 6:45 am flight back home).

I am thinking of buying 8 day Swiss travel pass.

June 17 - Arrive in Zurich 4 pm. Check into hotel, stroll thru Zurich( on foot) relax.

June 18 - Start using Swiss Travel pass ( I hope we can do so, and not loose a day on a pa for 17th), visit Rhine falls, university of Zurich ( this is per request from my son) . can we do any additional sight seeing this day? like city tour or something? Will we have time? Overnight at Lucerne.

June 19 -20

1. Lucerne City and Mt Rigi
2. Mt Titlis or Pilatus ( leaning more towards Titlis)

June 21st - Travel to Bern, sight see Bern and then over night at interlaken/Murren/lauterbrunnen/wengen.

Jun 22- 25 - following are the activities I can think of. I know we can't accomplish all of these in 3 days, but listing all here,to get your input on best choices/combinations and can also serve a backup plan in case of rain. Thanks to various posts and documents on the forum for this, I forget the name, but there are 3 docs posted with all details about Wengen area which has detailed and excellent information.

1. Wengen to Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg
2. Eiger Trail
3. Trümmelbach Falls.
4. Lauterbrunnen to Stechelberg, optional to Mürren
5. Schynige Platte to First
6. Lauterbrunnen to Lobhornhütte, return via Grütschalp
7. North Face and Flower Trails.
8. Mt Jungfraujoch
9. Travel to Vevye - castle chillon
10. Lake Thun or lake Brienz
11. Montreux and geneva

What would be best to cover in 3 days in your opinion ( from above list) Can we combine any of these in a single day?

We have to allow time to travel to Zurich on June 25th.

Alternately I am thinking if staying in interlaken/Murren/lauterbrunnen/wengen instead of split stay in Lucerne may give some more flexibility? What would you suggest?

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to MySwissAlps, Shubadha!

First of all, I think an 8 day Swiss Travel Pass could be a good choice for your itinerary, although it depends on the details of your finalized plans. Of course validity can start on June 18 if you want. Just use regular tickets for June 17 in that case. You won't need much, by the way: only tickets for the short leg from the airport to the town. That's all if you'll be exploring Zurich on foot for the rest of the day. And if you pick a hotel close to Zurich Airport for your last overnight stay on June 25, note that many of them offer a free transfer to the airport on June 26, allowing you to avoid additional traveling costs. Please find further information on the Swiss Travel Pass, including validity overviews and purchase options, here. Mind that you can only tell for sure which pass is best once your itinerary is fully finalized and you've made detailed calculations as explained at our "How to choose" page.

As for your further questions:

• if you visit the Rhine Falls quite early, you should be able to do some more sightseeing in Zurich in the afternoon. Please find tips at our Zurich page, and consult the timetable and our Rhine Falls page to plan your trip in detail;
• it's hard to recommend what you should or shouldn't do during your three days in the Bernese Oberland, as your own personal preferences are most important. In general, I'd advise to focus on the Jungfrau region in order to avoid unnecessary traveling time, especially if weather is good over there. So to me, the longer trips towards Montreux and Vevey would be back-up plans in case of bad weather in the Jungfrau area. Some of the remaining ideas on your list can well be combined within one day, for example: Jungfraujoch, Trümmelbach falls and maybe even a boat trip over either Lake Thun or Lake Brienz in the afternoon if you're still up for that. Wengen-Männlichen-Kleine Scheidegg and Lauterbrunnen-Stechelberg would be doable within one day as well. If you check the information on the pages I linked to (and/or our further attraction pages) and use the timetable, you'll be able to find out which combinations are acceptable to you and your family.
• you could spend all of your days in the Jungfrau region indeed, but that will result in very long day trips to Lucerne, Rigi and Pilatus/Titlis. So if you'd like to visit those, spending a couple of nights in Lucerne as in your current itinerary is a good idea.

Thanks Arno for the reply and links. I will do more search.

Few more questions.

1. As I want to calculate which train pass/ticket option is better, how do I find out rail station names? eg, I will book a hotel somewhere in the city, how would I know name of railway station nearby?

2. I browsed for a sample and all the prices it returned were for some some kind of Flexpass options. Any idea how do I get full price (without any pass)?

3. it also asks for connection ("via") option. Does ticket price change per option or is it more for convenience and travel times?

Shubhada

HI Shubhada,

Generally the railway stations have the same names as the towns they're in. Larger towns may have more stations. In that case you'd best use a map showing railway stations to find names. You can also start typing in the timetable; a drop-downlist with options will appear then.

As for retrieving full fare prices from the timetable: it shows 50% reduced fares by default, so you'll have to de-select that default mode in order to get full fares. How to do so is explained on both our "How to choose" page and the timetable page. Did you read the explanations there? And did that work for you?

The timetable provides the quickest routes by default. If you want to look for alternative routes (which will be detours in most cases) you can use the"via" stations. This may affect prices.

Thanks Annika for further info. This should help me with my task.

Shubhada

Shubadha-

In this thread, Alpenrose explains how to use the timetable to get a map of the city streets near a train station:

www.myswissalps.com/fo rum/topic/where-do-we-board-glacier-express-in-chur#dQDGQ6DW9mqS6v8AA FcRTQ

That may help you.

The larger cities have a main station - Hauptbahnhof in German - which is abbreviated as HB or HBf in timetables.

Slowpoke

Thanks Slowpoke, that i very helpful.

Does this map also work for smaller towns? I am trying to book a home fro our tay, and have no clue if it is closer to train station or what woudl be mode of transport and how much time it will take. I am looking at e.g 3812 Wilderswil, Switzerland -> how do I know how far i this from Wilderswil station, and if far is there a bus available?

Hi Shubhada,

The best way is to just give it a try. The timetable me and Slowpoke referred to has all the details you need. As explained on the timetable page I mentioned, you can even fill out the address of a hotel and have the timetable show the journey to any train station or location you like. Spend some time on it and I'm sure it will be a great help to you. I use it all the time myself. By the way "3812 Wilderswil" is just a zipcode and town name, not a full address.

Hi Shubada -

This map can also help:

map.search.ch/?x=-28570m&y=-21974m&z=128

enter a street address in the search box

Slowpoke