Travel help for 15 days Switzerland in December

  • Removed user
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    8 November 2018 at 12:49:37 #818902

    Hi, We are a young couple traveling for 15 days. We are coming from Nice, France and Exiting from Zurich. Our dates are 17th December to 2nd Jan. Wanted some suggestions on how to plan our itinerary with respect to which towns should we kept as a base. Since its Christmas and new years time, we wanted to pick the right places, since most of the things would be closed on those dates.

    For now, we have planned the following, but need your inputs on the same:

    Montreux for 3N ( We fly into Geneve and take a late evening train to Montreux) – Can visit Geneva the next day by train? or Should we choose to stay in Geneva?

    Zermatt for 2N – Where can we travel around from here? or should we just stay in Zermatt? – This is ideally on 23-25th December. Is it advisable to Travel on 25th December to Interlaken? or should we add a night here?

    Interlaken or Bern for 3N (25-28)

    Grindelwald for 2N (28-30)

    Lucern for 4N (30-2)

    We want to Definitely enjoy the food, culture, mountain views, the falls, and the cities as well! Basically, experience everything Swiss has to offer in the short span we are around for.

    We are planning to take a 10 days Swiss pass, does that work? or do we have to take a 15days one?

    Do u think St. Moritz is doable in this?

    We are very confused as we don’t know if these places are too much to happen or too little to start with.

    Your advice would be ideal! So we can rework our trip accordingly.

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    Removed user
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    8 November 2018 at 18:47:04 #898869

    MD09 and welcome to MySwissAlps!

    To get a nice mix of what you are looking for, however brief your stay is here, they are pretty good choices for base towns. It is best to look through the towns in more detail though to see if the activities there or around the town are what you are looking for: http://www.myswissalps.com/wh eretogo/towns
    Each town page that you find, will give you a list of suggested activities that can be done there or nearby.

    For an overview of what there is to do in Switzerland, look here: http://www.myswissalps.com/ac tivities

    You’ll find traveling on Dec. 25 to be no problem. However shops and restaurants will mostly be closed anywhere you go. The mountains are generally open though so always a good idea to plan mountain visits on holidays. I would combine whichever days you were thinking of spending in Interlaken with Grindelwald (they are very close to each other). You can find travel times/schedules on trains between towns and mountains using the Swiss railways timetable here: http://www.myswissalps.com/ti metable

    There are no 10 day Swiss Travel Pass unless you are referring to the current promotion?http://www.myswissalps.com/fo rum/topic/swiss-travel-pass-extra-bonus-days-promotion

    But as you are in country for 15 days, then the 15 day Swiss Travel Pass would make the most sense I am sure: http://www.myswissalps.com/sw isstravelpass

    in order to figure out which rail pass will save you the most money on your holiday, you’ll need to plan out the travel you will do each day and then do the math to compare costs. Look here for help: http://www.myswissalps.com/tr ain/ticketspasses/prac tical/chooserailpass

    Removed user
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    9 November 2018 at 11:46:29 #898870

    Thanks for the above information.

    Can you give me some advice on whether we should stay in Bern or a day trip should be enough? IS Grindelwald better to stay in or Interlaken?

    yes was referring to the offer thats going on right now.

    Do you think St.Moritz is doable from the itinerary we;ve currently chalked out?

    Removed user
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    9 November 2018 at 18:19:50 #898871

    Probably Bern is ok as a day trip – lovely city though.

    Grindelwald is in a prettier location so it wins the competition between it and Interlaken for me.

    St. Moritz is out of the way on your current plans but could be done with some changes…. Montreux to Zermatt to St. Moritz to Lucerne to Grindelwald perhaps?

    Play with the timetable to see what can work for you.

    Peterli
    Participant
    1206 posts
    11 November 2018 at 8:01:32 #898872

    Hi MDo9

    I don’t have much time to comment right now, so to start I will limit myself to the following part of your proposed itinerary:

    Interlaken or Bern for 3N (25-28)

    Grindelwald for 2N (28-30)

    This is just my opinion, but it makes no sense to me to stay in Interlaken for 3 nights immediately followed by Grindelwald for 2 Nights. It would be far better to opt for Berne instead, visiting the city and making excursions to places such as Fribourg, Morat, Avenches, Gruyères*, and Neuchâtel, and perhaps to other places along the three lakes (Morat, Bienne, and Neuchâtel) and up in the Swiss Jura. There is no guarantee that you will find snow in most of these places, except the Swiss Jura, where you surely will. I put an asterisk beside Gruyères as this may be in your plans for when you are using Montreux as a base. If the weather is really soupy you might even consider taking one night away from Berne and adding it to Grindelwald, i.e. Berne 2N and Grindelwald 3N.

    I will add one other bit of information. Since you are going to be in Switzerland during Christmas, an old (2000) article from SwissInfo.ch, entitled Cathedrals of Christmas, tells you what kind of activities can happen in some of the larger cities. Or, perhaps it would be nice to drop into some smaller church wherever you might be. The locals will certainly welcome you.

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