Welcome to our Switzerland Travel Guide practical information page, where we share some advice and travel tips to help you plan your own trip to Switzerland.

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Trip planning and itinerary

As we highlighted earlier, we had to choose a specific area within Switzerland given our time constraints and our desire to not have to move around too much. Obviously, given Switzerland’s size, you could take a more express approach to visit the country and cover more ground. 

If you do a little research, you’ll quickly understand that 1) Interlaken and Lucerne are favourite travel destinations,  2) of all Switzerland’s major cities (Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Bern, Zurich),  Bern has some interesting sights and is probably the best Swiss city to get a feel for the culture (though Zurich is also very nice, it is less geared towards budget travellers and doesn’t compare to other major European cities (e.g. London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Vienna)), 3) outdoors and in the mountains is where you really want to be. If you are looking for a great travel guidebook we can recommend Rick Steves Switzerland, Lonely Planet Switzerland, and The Rough Guide to Switzerland.

Although Geneva is well known, primarily because of the Geneva Convention, and located next to a lovely lake of the same name, we were under the impression that there were less interesting sights to see compared to elsewhere; Rick Steves is rather direct by saying that “Geneva is pleasantly situated on a lake, like Buffalo or Cleveland.”  You also may have heard of Zermatt,  a remote ski resort area in southern Switzerland that is famous for being the place to see the famous Matterhorn mountain. But once you’ve seen that landmark, there isn’t that much to see or do there (not to mention that it’s located at the end of a private rail line, so it’s more complicated and usually a more expensive destination to reach than Interlaken).

If you have less time or would like to limit the number of hotels you are staying at, you may want to consider basing yourself in Lucerne. The city is centrally located in German Switzerland and is often described as the pocket-sized version of Switzerland. Day trips to Zurich or Interlaken are roughly one and two hours away, respectively. In contrast, if you are more into outdoor and mountain life, you can easily spend a full week in and around Interlaken: we spent four days there and felt like we barely touched the tip of the iceberg. 

Flights

If your focus, like ours, is on German-speaking Switzerland, there are three international airports that are ideally located to complete this itinerary. Both Zurich and Bern international airports are perfect bookend airports, whereas Basel international airport is just an hour train ride from both Bern and Zurich.

Weather

We chose to travel in mid-June, just prior to the high season, primarily for three reasons: warm but pleasant temperatures, long daylight hours, and the photographic contrasts of green meadows with snow-capped mountains. During our week there, we were lucky and had nonstop sunshine with daily maximum temperatures in the low-to-mid 20s C. Truth be told, however, the temperature dipped into the mid-teens on the day of our departure.

For more information on the local weather, see also this Wikipedia page for monthly temperature and rainfall averages.

Transportation

Although we typically like to go the road trip and car rental route, we decided to do things differently this time around because Switzerland probably offers the most comprehensive public transport system in the world. Trains, buses, boats, lake steamers, funiculars and cable cars are found pretty much all over the entire country. Trains, in particular, are the fastest and most convenient way to get around Switzerland. The major train company is called SBB (or CFF in French and FFS in Italian)- though there are several other private ones that specialize in scenic and touristic routes. Generally, tickets are valid for a certain time span and not for a specific service, therefore reservations aren’t necessary. Whether you buy it two days or two minutes in advance, you’ll pay the exact same price.

There are several multi-day travel options including the Swiss Travel Pass, which is available for 3, 4, 8, or 15 consecutive days (in addition to getting you into a large number of museums for free), or the Swiss Travel Flex Pass, which for a slightly increased fee removes the consecutive days’ requirement. For more info on public transit in Switzerland, check out this website. Technically speaking, cable cars aren’t part of the public transport system because most of them don’t get any financial support from the government, so you’ll generally have to buy separate tickets for these, but the views are generally worth it!

Costs

If there is one drawback when it comes to travelling to Switzerland, it is that the costs can add up quickly.  In fact, Switzerland is regularly rated as one of the most expensive countries in the world to visit, with Geneva and Zurich being two of the ten most expensive cities to live in. It’s particularly expensive to visit compared to its Euro neighbours Austria and Italy. However, everything is relative to where you stay and what kind of accommodations you require. You can definitely cut costs by staying in Hostels, where you can find perfectly comfortable private rooms for much cheaper than the cost of a hotel room. If you’re staying in Bern, Lucerne, Basel, Geneva or Lausanne, you get to use local public transport for free. The Swiss Travel Pass can save you a lot of money, but it can also cost you money if you don’t carefully think about how many trains you plan to use during the trip.

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