How much time do you want to spend traveling?

If you take the train, you can leave London Waterloo and go to Paris where you change for a train to Switzerland: Bern or Geneva or Lausanne on the TGV as the first stop. Total train travel time is almost 8 hours.


If you fly, you can figure on a half hour train ride to Gatwick and about a 90 minute flight to Geneve on EasyJet. Allowing an hour or so for checkin, you probably have 3 hour trip.

There is a train station in the Geneve airport for connections all over Switzerland.

I think the cost is substantially less to fly. The Eurostar, London to Paris is an expensive ride I understand.

One other problem with the train is that you arrive at Gare du Nord, but must leave from Gare de Lyon. That will require a cross town commute from one train station to the other.

The RER and/or the Metro is not what I call luggage friendly. A taxi is not too expensive, and is much more convenient.

I had to make a similar decision this summer, and I flew EasyJet. Ticket costs vary with EasyJet depending on time and date. Right now, if you buy in advance about 30 days, the lowest fare is 30£ and the most expensive is 80£.

The EasyJet pricing model is very sensitive to the demand for seats.
The variation in price just quoted is a function of the route being flown, the time of day, the day of the week, and the season of the year.

The cheapest fare is on a Monday at 8:10; the most expensive one is on Saturday at the same time.

I'm flying with Swiss from Zurich to London on Sunday. It's got the same pricing strategy now as Easy Jet and Ryan Air. Swiss flies into Heathrow, which is the easiest airport in getting to London. I'd check it out. Helvetic is similar but I don't know what airport they use in London.

Easyjet flies into Geneva too, as mentioned above.

Choices, choices, choices. However, I wouldn't take the train unless you want to stop in Paris along the way.

You can get the train a lot more easily and painlessly than many people think.

You don't need to change stations in Paris and you don't need to spend a fortune.

There are many connections during the day that just require you to change at Lille-Europe and Lyon-Part Dieu. Both these changes are a million times less horrid than messing with Heathrow or Gatwick. Work your way through www.seat61.com for strategies on doing this - essentially by buying separate tickets for the Eurostar and the TGV, and getting the cheapo £59 Eurostar return (you don't need to come back if you don't want to).

Timetables on the SNCF and Deutsche Bahn sites, but you need (unless there's some trick I've not discovered) to do two separate searches: one for London-Lille, and one for Lille-Geneva, as asking for London-Geneva only gives answers that involve trekking across Paris.

I always fly thru London on my way to Geneva. the London/Geneva flight is about 1-1/2 hrs. Unless you have a reason to want to take a long train ride, or stop other places along the way, I'd fly.