Any help or advice for my itinerary?
 

Hi folks,

I've booked all of my travel and hotels, now I'm looking to find good specific suggestions for things to do. We will be there from 5/26 - 6/6. Here's what we have planned:

Days 1 - 3 Locarno (Hotel Du Lac) - First day will be recovering from jetlag. Probably just stay around town and explore. I know we will want to go visit Lugano (is that a full day or 1/2 day)? What else should be on our priority list? Any particularly good walks or bikerides to take?

Days 4-5 Lucerne (Hotel Des Alpes) - We are planning on taking the William Tell to Fluelen, then taking a boat the length of the lake. That way we get to explore and travel to our location at the same time. We will have a day and a half after travel in Lucerne. Should we plan on just staying in the city and exploring, or is it worth the trip to Pilatus or Titlis?

Days 6-9 Wengen (Caprice Hotel) - We know that we want to do some hiking, explore the other villages (Murren, Grindelwald, Lauterbrunen, etc.), take a trip to Schilthorn or Jungfrau (do we need to do both, or would one be sufficient?), maybe spend some time on the lakes of Interlaken. Should we consider a daytrip to Bern, or should that just be a rainy day option? Anything else that people can suggest?

Day 10 - Zurich (Sofitel Zurich). We'll just explore the city this day.

Also, I enjoy a nice trip to the casino every now and again. Of the areas we are visiting, who has the nicest casino? Ticino, Lucerne, or Interlaken?

We are counting the seconds.....

topping for our Switzerland experts

Hi mj,

I suggest that you repost using Switzerland in the title.

I can't address the other stays but we spent two nights in Lugano and found it charming. I think you can keep busy for a full day what with a boat ride around the lake and visiting the small villages that surround it. Then there's the ride on the funiculare to the top of Mount San Salvatore with it's history and views. You can walk partway back from there to the centro through the park that edges the lake and then on to the street that runs by the high end shops. And do a little browsing through the CO-OP department store with its deli/grocery in the basement. We also visited the casino but it was a little low key and samll by comparison to Vegas (what isn't) and was mostly table games which I'm not familiar with (there or in the States).

We took a day trip to Thun from Wengen. It was a very pleasant place, we toured the old castle and I wish we would have done a ferry ride from the lake there, too. (We had dinner reservations that night at The Caprice so we ran out of time. We also stayed at Caprice & loved it).

BTW, one of the best pieces of advice I got on this board when I went to Wengen was on when to do the Jungfrau. Take the early train (6AMish I believe) - that way you can see everything before the clouds roll in, and there are also not droves of tourists yet. It was great.