Swiss trip suggestions needed

Hi,

We are a family of 3 (2 adults and 1 10 yr old) travelling to Europe, in July,for the first time from US.

Our travel itenary include a trip to Rome for 3 days and we have about 3 and 1/2 to 4 days in swiss. We'll be landing at zurich airport from Rome probably on a wednesday morning around 10 and have until saturday for us. Our main interest is to be in the Alps area and cover few other nice cities if time permits. Based on some of the threads here by other travelers I found Interlaken/Lauterbrennen area to be fitting our needs. Planning to book a B&B Inn at Lauterbrennen for 2 days. Here's what I have come up with please suggest if this will be correct for a first time traveller to swiss.

Day 1 (landing in zurich airport) - Planning to take a train to Lucerne or go directly to Lauterbrennen (suggestion needed). If we go to Lucerne then we can check in into a hotel and go around Lucern on Wednesday and take a train to Interlaken the next day.

Day2 & Day3 (Thurs & Friday) - Lauterbrennen area

Day 3 (Saturday) - Take Golden pass to Lucerne back

Our return flight is from zurich on Sunday at noon. I'm not able to decide on the following part. Should we come back from Interlaken to Zurich and stay there for saturday or can we go to Bern or any other city close to Zurich to spend the night. How easy is it to get to the airport in the sunday mornings? We might have to collect our luggage from the train station before heading to the airport which might cost sometime. If we plan to reach the airport by 9.30 AM on sunday which will be the best city to stay on saturday night.

Thanks a lot for all the information I'm getting from this wonderful forum.

advitha

Hi advitha,

There are lots of options, but I would personally focus on the mountains, not cities, in the little time you have, and have a few backup plans in case of bad weather (a city trip to Bern for example). This is what I would do:

Day 1: Go straight to Lauterbrunnen.

Day 1 to 3: Explore the Bernese Oberland/Jungfrau region

Day 4: Option A: go to Lucerne via the Golden Pass route, put your luggage in lockers at the station, spend a day in or around Lucerne (boat trip, Pilatus, etc.) and go to Zurich in the late afternoon. Option B: Spend more time in the Bernese Oberland and go to Zurich by the end of the day.

You can either book an hotel in the center of Zurich or choose one with a free airport shuttle near the airport.

Once you've finalized your planning you can pick a rail pass as explained here: www.myswissalps.com/train/ticketspasses/practical/chooserailpass. Note that you can get a $50 discount on a Swiss Pass or Swiss Flexi Pass for a limited time, see this post.

I am glad to hear the forum is useful for you. Please review the rest of the website as well. There's lots of information here to help you. If questions remain, just post here.

Thanks Annika for that itinerary that's going to help us plan out things better.

I saw from google that a train ride from zurich to lauterbrunnen might be in the order of 3 hours. Is that true? If so, by the time we reach Lauterbrunnen area I assume it will be close to midday or evening. Is there any activity we can do for the remaining part of the day? We are not seasoned hikers but occasional mountain climbers. What kind of activities can we do in lauterbrunnen with a 10 yr old girl. If this topic is already discussed then can you point to me to that thread?

advitha

Hi advitha,

The traveling time is 2h45. You can see trip details in the timetable. If you have a few hours left in the late afternoon you could visit the Trümmelbach Falls, walk to Stechelberg or visit Mürren. Lauterbrunnen is really small so don't expect lots of activity other than nature related. More lively towns are Interlaken and Grindelwald. More activity ideas are on the Bernese Oberland and Jungfrau region pages I mentioned in the other post.