SHUX

Is it possible to take a day trip from Paris to anywhere in Switzerland? I'm not familiar with the distance from point to point. We'll be in Paris, but I'd love to see Switzerland, if only for a few hours.

suze

You can get from Paris to Geneva or Lausanne in 4-5 hours on high speed train. That's one LONG day.

francophile03

Sorry, but it's not going to be worthwhile to do a daytrip. You will spend a total of 8+ hours on the train. That's most of your day right there. A daytrip to Brugge, for example, is not even worthwhile and that's 4+ hours total travel on the train.

CotswoldScouser

Of course it's possible.

An 0700 from CDG gets you into Geneva airport at 0800 more or less. There are flights roughly hourly in each direction. And best of all, there are just-about-convenient Easyjet flights from Orly (closer to central Paris) in each direction, with the last leaving GVA at 2000. Checkin closes, promptly, 30 mins before departure.

Neither Geneva nor Lausanne are worth such a long day out for most people. Presumably it's Alps, not unexceptional cities, you want to see.

Swiss Railways operate a spectacular service around the country both from Geneva airport and from the city's central station, which has trains coming in from the airport practically every minute. You can see an AWFUL lot of Alps in the 10 free hours you'll have.

Intrepid1

If you really want to do this the TGV services take 4 hours each way Paris-Lausanne as has been mentioned; EasyJet gets you to Geneva in an hour and if you book early enough the flights are very economical.

I'd go for it.

Cicerone

Get a map and look at the distance, it is about 300 miles from Paris to the Swiss border. This is like going to Niagara Falls for a day when you are in New York City; doable but not at all worth it IMO. You are going to be in a wonderful city with so much to do and see, you should stay an enjoy it. If you want to see countryside, go out into the Loire valley.

Also, I know from your other posts that your trip to Paris is in early May which is very iffy weather in Switzerland, esp for the mountain areas. Take a look at weatherbase.com for temps and rainfall. Many areas are going to be cool to cold and worse, rainy and foggy. You may spend 4-5 hours or more each way getting to the Alp areas only to find them completely fog bound and you won't see anything. You may also find it is actually snowing, and there will still a good bit of snow on the ground, so you will need good boots, gloves, winter coats, etc.

Remember once you get to Geneva if you want to get up into the mountain areas, the closest would be about the Château-d'oex area which is 2 hours by train, so door to door by train from Paris you are talking about 5.5 hours each way, or an 11 hour train ride for a day trip. A very long day indeed. If you fly, with check-in, time for security, immigration, flight time and then train time to mountain areas, you are talking about 4-5 each way or 7-8 hours total travel time at a minimum, and that is IF flights are on time, which intra-Europe flights have a nasty habit of not being. Just to go to Geneva by air for a day would be a total waste of a day, IMO. They won't even stamp your passport so there will be no record of the trip besides pictures you may have of city streets and the Alps far away across the lake if it is clear and not raining or snowing.

While the Lausanne area along Lake Geneva is very beautiful and has Alp views (clear weather needed, could be iffy in May), the area will be quite brown at that time of year as no trees or flowers will be blooming and the hillside vineyard will not have their first green bloom yet. Again to go all that way for cold rainy weather and a distance view of Alps seems like a waste, and esp to leave Paris to do so. (And I used to live in Switzerland this Lausanne is one of my favourite places, but not so much that I would day trip there from Paris.)

SHUX

Thanks everyone. Spoke to my travel agent this a.m. and now I don't even have a layover in Switzerland....it's now in Dublin. Thanks anyway.