|
First time to Switzerland
Hello
I am a female, planning my trip to my dreamland of switzerland for 8 days. Read Rick steve's books, and forums here at fodors. Mind-boggling info..available my plan is to visit mountain view towns [stay and take a closer look at peaks] and lakes Use the train passes and boat rides as much as possible. Stay in safe, clean and cheap places. How should I plan and places that i can visit in 8 days. I welcome any information, tips and suggestions. Thank you |
trip is planned for late April to early May
|
Sorry - cheap does not go with Switz - generally much more expensive than the US for everything.
If you stay i modest B&Bs in smaller towns prices will be less than in tourists cities - but I would start now looking at prices to see if you have the budget. We LOVE Switz and have been to many different parts on a variety of road trips - but we are not budget travelers. |
The area that we think of as most typical of Switz in the Berner Oberland and there are a number of smaller villages in the foothills of the mountains.
But be aware that late April is kind of early (the mountain passes often have snow until June and paths can be very muddy) - mid May would be better for walking, seeing flowered meadows etc. You can get boats in Interlaken to visit Lakes Thun and brienz as well as the various small towns around the lake - and you should be able to ascend the Jungfrau for the highest mountain views. |
The visiting time can be an impediment. Since you already seem to have Rick Steves' (Switzerland?), look at <i>Planning</i> section at the beginning of the book, in <i>When to go</i> section, you will read that resort towns like Zermatt or Mürren are dead in April through early May.
|
|
Hi HariRam
How exciting! My husband and I were in Switzerland for the first time in Sept for 5 nights and absolutely loved it. I'm not sure what April/May is like but I thought I would share our itinerary which we found worked really well. The train system is fantastic and we found getting to each place was very easy. We decided to base ourselves in Lausanne for the 5 nights rather than packing/unpacking - but perhaps choose 2 places for 4 nights each. We stayed at the Ibis Lausanne Centre and was very affordable at $185AUD a night inc brekky (we thought we'd spend a lot more but decided since we were doing day trips every day that all we needed was a clean room with a bed - which is was). We did day trips as follows: - Geneva (we did the day we arrived, visting United Nations, Red Cross, having a walk along the lake and an early dinner. - Monteux and Vevey area (Chillon Castle, lunch on the lake in Montreux, train ride on the Lavaux Express through the vineyards). - Matterhorn and Zermatt (cable car to the summit and lunch in the town. Little to no snow but scenery was beautiful and the town is gorgeous) - Gruyere (amazing little town, Gruyere Castle, cheese factory and then a short train ride to the Cailler Chocolate Factory) - Lucerne (walk around the city and lake). The scenery on all train trips was just beautiful. The swiss pass is definitely the way to go as individual train trips are expensive. This was our first trip to Europe and I spent 18 months planning for (reward after 6 years of study). We tried to balance the amount of travel and seeing what we could and for us it worked. Have fun planning! |
thank you so much for sharing your trip plan and how it went.
I am little more confident in making this trip by myself. |
| All times are GMT -8. The time now is 04:04 PM. |