Switzerland in 4 days from Geneva
-
Hi, Arno / Annika –
It’s me again! Still a new member of myswissalps and going thru the forum threads and your posts have definitely been very helpful, but at the same time, making it difficult for my friend and to decide where to go! such a short time to be spent in switzerland and being first timers as well, we’re very much enthusiastic to do a lot of things. of course, we can go back but then this would be in a relatively long time. so to cut this short – need your help please on deciding which ones we should cut out from our itinerary. our base is in Geneva, which is unfortunately far from most of the sites that we wanted to go. accommodations are booked, though i think we may be able to negotiate on cutting the nights in geneva so we can stay 1 night in a nearer base. snapshot of our iti:
Sept 5: arrive from milan at around noon. Go around Lake Geneva / Lavaux region. Hopefully still have the time time to walk around lausanne. Back to Geneva
Sept 6: Zermatt (Klein Matterhorn). back to Geneva.
Sept 7: Jungfrau region. back to Geneva
Sept 8: Golden Pass panoramic. Back to Geneva.
Sept 9 (am): fly out of Geneva
This is actually an itinerary with travel times that are so far and in between. Of course we did not realize when we decided to book Geneva and fly out from there (back to the Philippines). we will be getting the swiss travel pass – and we of course would like to be able to maximize the use of this as much as possible. hope you guys can help me!
1. the zermatt and jungfrau regions have killer views, but the travel is so taxing. i feel that we will need to drop one of them. my friend and i would love to see snow, the mountains and alpine meadows, and do some easy to moderate hikes. we’re not professional hikers, so having proper equipment is out of the question. We have the hiking attire, but fairly modest compared to those who have been doing this for some tome. i myself are into exploring quaint little towns. for a first timer, which between the two should go to? I’m leaning towards the Jungfrau region since there just seems t0 be a lot of sights to see, even if it’s raining.
2. Bernese Oberland / Jungfrau region – would love to see/do the following: top of the europe, grindelwald, lauterbrunnen, kandersteg-oeschinensee (yes we wanna do the toboggan!) . I am foreseeing that we will need to spend a night (Sept 7-8) in the region, which i am pretty sure is still not enough!
a. where would you recommend that we stay the night? was looking at grindelwald, but saw that this tends to become touristy (though i am still drawn to it). Lauterbrunnen seems to be a pretty good alternative, but then Bern is there too. we of course would want an 1-night base that will be fairly accessible to the Golden Pass Line.
b. for “moderate” hikers like us – which among Grindelwald, lauterbrunned and kanderstegg is a good option for us to explore? would really love to see meadows with the alps as a backdrop 🙂 my friend tends to get umm tired a bit more, so having relatively maybe rest areas or gradual slopes in between can be considered. saw that wengen is also a candidate having seen this post http://www.myswissalps.com/fo rum/topic/kandersteg-vs-wengen — the thread itself and kim’s documentation were such good reads, but has now made even more confused! if you can give an advice as well on travel in between – would be a lot of help too!
c. golden pass line – very convenient for use since we can opt to take this going back to geneva and be able to check on Montreaux too. will it be better to take this from bern? saw in your other posts that we can take this by section, but not sure whether we start from section2 (interlaken to zweisimmen) or section 3 ( zweisimmen to momtreux).
3. chocolate train – is there still a chance that we can still squeeze this in the 4 day trip?
PS: i’m actually flying to zurich from geneva and staying 2 days (Sept 9 – 10), leaving in the afternoon of sept 10. I’m planning to do lucerne and basel and explore its towns. however, i’m still hoping that i can do a panoramic train or even a short hike. any recommendations?
sorry for the super lengthy post – but really looking forward to your reply 🙂
Kate
- The thread ‘Switzerland in 4 days from Geneva’ is closed to new replies.