Every Swiss day out is a timetable. Here is which one to book.
What the train up the Jungfraujoch costs before you give it a whole day. Whether Pilatus beats Titlis out of Lucerne. Reviews of the tours you can book across Switzerland.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $386Jungfraujoch Day Trip from Zurich: Swiss Alps & Bernese Oberland
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $292Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen Lungern Interlaken Semi-Private
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $118Lucerne Walking & Boat Tour: The Best Swiss Experience
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $252Tandem Paragliding Experience from Interlaken A summit, a lake crossing, a canopy over Interlaken, a chocolate room in Geneva.
The four bookings a first Swiss week tends to hang off. What each costs, and what the people who went say.
- 01The high dayJungfraujoch Day Trip from Zurich: Swiss Alps & Bernese OberlandCog railway to the highest station in Europe, then the ice tunnels and the Sphinx terrace. Go on the clear morning, not the free one.
02The Lucerne roundMount Pilatus Summit from Lucerne With Lake CruiseSteamer across the lake, the steep cog railway up Pilatus, cable car down into Kriens. One ticket, four kinds of transport.
03Twenty minutes upTandem Paragliding Experience from InterlakenOff the Beatenberg slope and over the Interlaken meadows on a tandem canopy. Weather decides the slot, so leave it a spare morning.
04The Geneva walkAward-Winning Geneva Chocolate &Old Town Tour with Boat Ride (3h)Old Town lanes, three chocolatiers and a turn on the lake by boat. The most booked single day in the country.
Jungfraujoch, Pilatus, Titlis or the Rigi. Pick your summit.
Switzerland sells one decision above all others: which mountain you give a day to. Four kinds of ascent, what each costs to board, and the town it leaves from.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Jungfraujoch: Top of Europe Day Trip from Zurich
JungfraujochIce palace, glacier terrace, the longest railway day.
Mount PilatusLake steamer up, the steep cog railway, cable car down.
Mount TitlisRotating cable car and a footbridge over the crevasses.
Cable car daysShorter ascents when the forecast will only give you an hour.
Compare every Swiss day out →
Six Swiss towns, and the day out each one is built to sell.
A banking city with a lake at the end of the street, a covered bridge and a paddle steamer, a French-speaking waterfront, the valley the paragliders drop into, a Rhine crossing full of museums, and the village under the Matterhorn.
Zurich is the door most of Switzerland opens through.
Everything in Zurich →
Half the country is a day return from the Hauptbahnhof, so the question is rarely what to see in the city. It is which morning train to be on. These three carry more travellers than anything else leaving Zurich.
The Rhine Falls, and back for dinner
Europe’s widest waterfall is fifty minutes north, with the painted river town of Stein am Rhein usually bolted on. The short version leaves the afternoon free.
The lake, the Old Town and the cable car
A guided turn through the guild houses and the Bahnhofstrasse, then the boat, then the Felsenegg cable car for the view back down the Limmat valley.
Lindt’s home, and a tasting to finish
The chocolate house at Kilchberg runs on timed entry and fills up at weekends. Most versions pair it with a lake cruise so the day still has a view in it.
The Swiss days out more travellers book than any other.
Every Swiss tour we have reviewed →Eight days that take the bookings, and what each one gives you for the money.
1
Award-Winning Geneva Chocolate &Old Town Tour with Boat Ride (3h)
Join a small group in central Geneva for a three-hour walk through chocolate shops, pastry stops, and Old Town landmarks. Guides such as Paul, Ethan, Olivia, and Anatole combine chocolate lore with local stories, tastings, the Marmite tradition, and a short boat ride near the Jet d’Eau.
From · $131
Read our review →
2
Mount Titlis and Lucerne Day Trip from Zurich
from $215
3
Heidiland and Liechtenstein Tour from Zurich
from $120
4
Tandem Paragliding Experience from Interlaken
from $252
5
Jungfraujoch: Top of Europe Day Trip from Zurich
from $380
6
Jungfraujoch Day Trip from Zurich: Swiss Alps & Bernese Oberland
from $386
7
Chamonix & Mont Blanc Panoramic Sky-Glass Bus Guided Day Trip
from $131
8
Mount Pilatus Summit from Lucerne With Lake Cruise
from $223
The lakes are the cheapest seat with a view in Switzerland.
Paddle steamers still work the Lake Lucerne timetable, the Brienz water reads green against the rock, and a Geneva or Zurich crossing costs less than lunch. Half of these boats are part of a mountain ticket anyway.
Fondue, raclette and the chocolate rooms of Geneva and Zurich.
Cheese here is regional and argued over: Gruyère from the Fribourg hills, Emmental from the valley, Appenzeller nobody will explain. Book the chocolate room for the wet afternoon and the fondue for the cold night.
What a day in Switzerland actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Switzerland is expensive and the mountain railways are the reason, but the lake and the Old Towns are not.
Old Town walks, castle entry, a lake crossing, the chocolate factory at Broc.
- 1Chaplin’s World Entrance Ticketfrom $39
- 2Zurich Old Town Walking Tourfrom $33
- 3Zurich City Tour with Audio Commentaryfrom $44
City days with a boat, the Rhine Falls run, chocolate and cheese tastings, Chamonix by coach.
The high railways, paragliding, private drivers and the full Jungfrau day.
Three things Switzerland does that nowhere else bothers with.
Mountains and lakes are ordinary in the Alps. A railway drilled through the Eiger, a treasure hunt printed into a city, and a country that times its trains to each other are not.
The Jungfrau Railway
The line from Kleine Scheidegg climbs inside the Eiger and the Mönch to a station at 3,454 metres, the highest in Europe, finished in 1912 after sixteen years of tunnelling. At the top there is an ice palace cut into the glacier and a terrace looking down the Aletsch. Everything depends on cloud, which is why the railway publishes a summit webcam and why nobody sensible books it for their last day.
- 1Jungfraujoch: Top of Europe Day Trip from Zurich★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,647 reviews
- 2Jungfraujoch Day Trip from Zurich: Swiss Alps & Bernese Oberland★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,409 reviews
- 3Jungfraujoch Top of Europe Day Trip from Lucerne★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 840 reviews
Foxtrail
A trail of hidden clues laid through a real city, solved on foot with no guide and no app telling you the answer. It started in Bern in the 1990s and now runs in most Swiss towns, using trams, back lanes, a lift in a car park, a bench nobody looks at twice. Groups take two to three hours and argue the whole way, which is the point.
- 1Baden Foxtrail Aquae★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 29 reviews
- 2Lugano Fox Trail Galileo★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 18 reviews
- 3Rapperswil Foxtrail Baccarat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 16 reviews
The panoramic lines
The Glacier Express takes eight hours to cross from Zermatt to St Moritz and calls itself the slowest express in the world without embarrassment. Seats are reserved, the windows curve into the roof, and the Bernina line over the pass is a UNESCO stretch. Book the seat before the hotel; the carriages sell out long before the valley does.
- 1Gruyères Tour from Geneva With Train, Chocolate and Cheese★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 258 reviews
- 2From Milan: St. Moritz and Panoramic Bernina Express Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 215 reviews
- 3Glacier Express, Swiss Alps & Lucerne Tour | From Zurich★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 164 reviews
Four Swiss bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be sorted the night before from a station board. These four run on reserved seats, timed entry and weather windows that take no interest in your itinerary.
- 01Jungfraujoch: Top of Europe Day Trip from ZurichThe railway runs on a fixed timetable and the summit sells the view, not the seat. Clear mornings go first and the ticket is too expensive to gamble on cloud.
- 02Tandem Paragliding Experience from InterlakenFlights only launch in the right wind. Operators rebook rather than refund, so it wants a morning early in your week, not the day before the flight home.
- 03Glacier Express, Swiss Alps & Lucerne Tour | From ZurichSeat reservations are compulsory on the panoramic trains and the carriages are small. In summer they are gone weeks ahead of the departure date.
- 04Zurich Sights: Cruise, Lindt Chocolate and optional FIFA TicketThe chocolate houses run on timed entry with a cap on each slot, and weekend afternoons are the first to close.
Switzerland in the rain is still a good day, just an indoor one.
The mountain railways sell a view and the weather takes it away four days out of ten. The answer is already in the timetable: a chocolate room, a dairy with the vats running, a museum city on the Rhine, a thermal pool, or a city trail that works wet.
By town — where the day starts
By kind of day — summit, lake, table or trail
Zurich, Lucerne, Interlaken, Zermatt: the loop almost everybody does first.
GrindelwaldThe newest Swiss tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Full-Day Private Zurich Sightseeing Tour and Chocolate Tasting
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Zurich Scavenger Hunt and Sights Self-Guided Tour
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Day trip to Swiss Villages from Zurich – Small Group Tour by Car
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Zürich, Lindt Chocolate, Rheinfalls and Stein am Rhein
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Private Car Tour to Rhine Falls, Titisee and Black Forest
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Mount Titlis Cable Car with Ice Flyer and Lucerne from Zurich
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