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Hi ! I have a 8 day SWISS TRAVEL PASS and am in Geneva for a couple of days and moving on to Lucerene for a week from where I’ll be undertaking the Jungfrau, Titlis & Glacier 3000 excursions. However I’ve nothing lined up while in Geneva. I was told that the SWISS TRAVEL PASS gives me free entry in to Museums. Does that include all Museums ? Is it also valid for any of the Mini Train Tours in Geneva? Do I need to make reservations for short Boat rides? And finally, I plan to go from Geneva to Lucerene via Golden Pass route. Do I need to make reservation and how much time will it take from Geneva to Lucerene ? Thanx
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Hello Captrsanil and Welcome to MySwissAlps
For museums and galleries covered by the STP see http://www.museumspass.ch/en/ where-to-use-my-museum-pass/.
Not sure about “mini trains”.
You don’t need reservations for lake boats.
You don’t need reservations on Golden Pass except at peak tourist times between Montreux and Zweisimmen.
Use the SBB Timetable (http://www.myswissalps.com/ti metable) to plan your travel and calculate travel time. You want to search Geneva to Luzern via Montreux, Zweisimmen and Interlaken. If you are not familiar with using the timetable it will pay to first read the instructions on that page.
You can make reservations for the Golden Pass Line (http://www.myswissalps.com/go ldenpass) including seat selection at bit.ly/2kaq6Rf. Click the “e” for English language top right of the page. (where it says “Sprachwahl: d i f e”). Then change the class of travel, date of travel and start/end points to suit.
A word of warning that only Titlis is in the Luzern area. Jungfrau and Glacier 3000 are more distant from Luzern and will take up more travel time. In particular, Luzern – Glacier 3000 is around 4 hours travel time. Also you are likely to duplicate Goldenpass route trips, as Glacier 3000 is on the GoldenPass route.
And finally a few comments about the Golden Pass route:
The Golden Pass rail route:
Current tourist branding can be confusing
The true Goldenpass is just the MOB railway Zweisimmen – Montreux.
The Luzern – Interlaken railway is actually the Brünig Pass line operated by Zentralbahn (ZB), which dubs the regular trains “Luzern – Interlaken Express’. It’s OK but not spectacular scenery
A few facts about the Montreux – Zweisimmen railway – ie the MOB (Montreux-Oberland – Bernois):
The Golden Pass is historically only Montreux – Zweisimmen, only more recent marketing branding takes the ‘Goldenpass route’ east of Zweisimmen to Interlaken and beyond to Luzern.
The Golden Pass is the touristic branding for the Montreux – Oberland Bernois (MOB) railway but after a few years of favouring ‘Goldenpass services’, the company decided it was losing its tradition and has reverted to putting the Chemin de Fer Montreux – Oberland Bernois name on publicity and train coaches.
MOB pioneered the Panoramic coach concept on Swiss trains, starting in 1976.
There are now several versions of panoramic coaches in service, but MOB keeps changing its mind how to dub each service.
It hardly matters anyway as most modern Swiss trains have large windows, even if not officially panoramic. The key element of a ‘panoramic’ coach is ‘toplight’ windows above your head but in practice very few of the major views from panoramic trains are directly above your head, so the view through the normal side part of windows is normally fine.
You will get roughly the same scenic experience from any train on the MOB and reservation is not obligatory
It is very scenic, but the MOB route is far from being the most spectacular (although any dubbing of this nature is going to subjective and personal) in Switzerland.
Hi and welcome to MySwissAlps!
The two gentlemen above have given you plenty of information already!
Indeed the Swiss Travel Pass gives you free entry to museums, see below for more information:
http://www.myswissalps.com/sw isstravelpass/details
Having looked at the list of museums, there are two that stand out for me, the Red Cross museum (which I absolutely adored when I went!), and the Patek Philippe museum. If your travels take you through Lausanne (on your way to Lucerne), I would also recommend the Olympic museum! http://www.myswissalps.com/la usanne
For boats around lake Geneva, have a look at: http://www.myswissalps.com/bo atlakegeneva
I do not believe the mini trains are covered by the Swiss Travel Pass, however Geneva is not that big, so it can be covered easily by foot, you will mostly want to see the Old Town and the Jet d’Eau (jet fountain in the middle of the lake).
Hope this helps, have a wonderful trip!!
Maria.
I agree, with 58 years intimate knowledge of Geneva, I also recommend there is no need to use the ‘mini train’. Walking and tram/bus will do just fine.
There is a great little museum in the old town with a superb scale model of Geneva in Mediaeval times. It is called Maison Tavel.
It is included in this list of Geneva museums:
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