At the tail end of our trip, we will be spending 2-days in Luzerne and then heading to Zurich to fly home. I was thinking of driving to Zurich the night before we fly home and dropping off the rental car to save us a day in rental fees. My question is, can we get from the rental car drop off to our hotel and get around Zurich without a car okay? I have no idea what to expect and am not usually comfortable with public transportation. Is it easy to get to the airport with public transportation?

I figured we'd save the rental car fee for that last day and not have to pay for parking overnight in Zurich. Does that make sense, or should we just hang on to the car?

Thanks for your advice!

Jessica

Makes sense to me. There is very good transpport (by train) from downtown Zurich to the airport. The airport train station is inside the terminal so it is very quick and easy---about 12 minutes.

As for getting to your hotel, I'm sure there is good transport there too, but you'll first need to find the downtown rental car office, and then choose a hotel. Hopefully someone local can help you with picking the car drop location. Lots of us can hoep with choosing a hotel.

Downtown Zurich is right on the river and lake, and very pleasant. It's a nice place to spend your last night of a vacation.

If you return your car at the airport, it is just a short walk to the airport train station. The trains into downtown depart every few minutes and take 12 minutes.

Be sure to stroll through Old Town at night - on both sides of the river Limmat.

Both Zürich, Luzern and in fact all of Switzerland has a dense network of very good public transportation. You can simply assume the any two moe or less important ponts will have a good connection to each other.

The answer to your question is "Yes."

If you stay at a hotel in Kloten, which is near the airport, you can take a hotel van to the airport. The Welcome Inn and Hotel Fly Away I know have a shuttle service because I have ridden them. The Movenpick is a little nicer and a little more expensive. (Lot more??) It too has a van.

In all cases you MUST book the van in advance. The times I have taken the van, it was full!! If we had not reserved seats, we would have been forced to take a taxi. Because of our departure time and the van schedule we only had a choice of one trip time.

I don't like the Fly Away all that much although the room was ok to better than just ok, but the restaurant was expensive and inferior. Also the managers allowed smoking, which to my nose caused me to definitely NOT enjoy the meal.
If you eat in Kloten, reservations are needed usually.
There are not that many places and they tend to fill up.


If you stay downtown, there are train connections to the main airport in Kloten. There are frequent departures from the main train station. I counted the number of departures in an hours once on SBB.CH (the train scheduler) and there were about 8 per hour starting early in the morning.

The trip is about 10 to 15 minutes depending which train you take. Avoid the connections that require a change. There are too many non change connections to take one that forces you to change trains.

The airport train station is down in the bottom of one of the terminal buildings. There are only two that I know of. We have flown Delta and had to ascend to the second floor as I recall to find the checkout counters.

Then there was a long hike to an American style security check with one major difference: The personnel doing the security are considerably more courteous than their TSA counterparts!! The young man who checked out my artificial hip took me into booth like area where we had some privacy.

None of this demeaning, heavy handed, public semi stripping that we have to go through in the US. No bellowing at the passengers TSA style either. The difference was like night and day.

The only ones better in terms courtesy to the flyers that I have personally experienced were at Gatwick and Glasgow.
The German ones are very thorough in my experience.

At Gatwick (Never been through Heathrow.) dignified officer asked me if I knew why I rang the alarm bill. I said I did; it was my hip. He took me aside and asked in good British style: "Sir, may I feel of your hip?" I said sure. He gave it a probing squeeze for about 10 seconds and said: "Have a nice flight."

In Glasgow, soon after some Arab type drove a car laden with propane tanks into the bollards protecting the entrance ways, we hit ultra high security. As I passed through the security gate, I fully expected to ring the bell and be pulled aside. Instead, nothing happened. I was so surprised that I stopped dead in my tracks. A security lady in uniform, held up her finger to her lips in a "Shhhh" motion and waved me inward. I learned later that my hip was obvious. No need to stop me, and no need to reveal how they knew.

We are driving to Zurich area for air departure at 0930 and will stay for 2 nights in a small hotel/restaurant in Jestetten in Germany. The tow is about 44km from the airport. Tried to stay in Switzerland but the hotel prices are so much more than Germany. Will drop our rental auto at the airport the morning of departure. Jestetten is close to Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein and the Rhein Falls are very close so we will have plenty of beautiful sites to visit.