switzerland by car
 

Thanks to all you folks for all the valuable info out there on CH.
We are planning to be in CH in Sept and plan to most travel by car. The cities we plan to visit - Lucerne, Lugano, Lake Como, Zermatt , Geneva - Lausanne. We have a total of 8 nights. We have 3 nights in Lugano and Lucerne each and 2 in Geneva area. Please advise.

I need to know how to plan for the local sightseeing. I do not want to start finding tours once we are there. I know this is kind of last minute- Sorry !

If you're taking tours why would you need a car. You would either do one or the other.

The purpose of having a car is not to get from one city to another - it's to be able to stop in the smaller towns or villages as the mood strikes you - for meals, to shop, to see sights that are interesting, to change y our plans if the weather changes or something that looks more interesting pops up.

If you plan on taking tours to see/do things then it's easier to train from city to city.

A car will be more of a hindrance for the itinerary you list, since it involves almost all cities. Hard to impossible to park in cities, often not even allowed. The only place where a car makes sense is renting one in Lugano for the Lake Como area that is not that well served by trains or even buses. Pickup and dropoff in Lugano, then back onto the trains.

Zermatt cannot be reached by car, you have to get off in Täsch and take the train, and the narrow valley up to Täsch is better travelled by train in the first place.

Where trains don't go (and that's not too many places!), you can look for the postal buses/coaches called Postautos - at www.postauto.ch.

For trains, learn your way around the excellent website www.sbb.ch - local buses and trams are available outside each train station, and train stations are typically right in the middle of a town where cars may or may not be allowed.

We drove to Lake Como, Lucern and Lugano all this past June and had no problem at all with parking, all these places have parking lots and none of them were full. As for sightseeing . . . I would go to your bookstore and get a couple good books, buy some very good maps, having a GPS is very helpful. Mt. Pilatus in Lucerne was fantastic. Bellagio was amazing. We stayed in Lezzeno at Hotel Aurora and we enjoyed being right on the water. We took a ferry boat ride from town to town during our stay there.

As for tours, I can't help you much -- we preferred to navigate ourselves around both Italy and Switzerland.

To be clear - we always do road trips in Switzerland - and many other part of Europe - but we don't do tours. We get good guide books and organize our own trips to fit our exact desires - and have the option to change plans at a moment's notice. Have not found parking to be a problem (but you need to make sure your hotel has parking or tells you the nearest reliable lot). We did numeorus mountain trips, boat trips etc - and you don;t need a tour for nay of those.

If you are doing tours it makes no sense to have a car sitting in a garage at $150 per day (car rental plus garage) plus pay for expensive tours on top of that. It's true you can;t get to some of the smaller towns higher in the mountains by car - but you can park the car and hop a rain or bus for the final distance - and not sure why you would go to Zermatt except in winter.

..."and not sure why you would go to Zermatt except in winter...."

Take a look at this: http://tinyurl.com/3a2ecve

We have been to Switzerland a lot, and have never missed having a car, as the public transportation (trains, boats, and buses) is so good. In Lugano, we saw everything we wanted via boat. In Luzern we had a similar experience; in fact, they sell a circle tour ticket to Mt. Pilatus that put us on a boat, then a cogwheel train up one side of the mountain, cable cars down the other side, and a city bus back to the center of town. I don't think you could do that with a car. Geneva was much the same.

I would go to Zermatt in any season, just to see the Matterhorn, but it is quite a way from the rest of your sites. Perhaps the train to Chamonix from Geneva to see Mt. Blanc would be a better fit.

Yes, Zermatt is beautiful. Switzerland is full of beautiful mountains and beautiful views. It makes sense to do ones that are in the same general area unless you have unlimited time and can go to see EVERY mountain.