Please sign in to post.

transportation questions: Belgium/Holland tour & Switzerland tour

Posted by on

Travel questions relating to combining 2 tours:

1. Heart of Belgium & Holland begins: Sept 11, 2019 in Ghent & ends Sept 21, 2019 in Amsterdam

#2. Best of Switzerland begins: Sept 23, 2019 begins in Luzern & ends Oct 4, 2019 in Bern.

We are planning to fly multi-city from Salt Lake City to Brussels and return from Amsterdam to Salt Lake City.

  1. Would it make more sense to travel from Amsterdam at the end of the Belgium trip to Zurich and from Zurich back to Amsterdam on a round trip flight or use the train?
  2. Flying back to Salt Lake City from Zurich is more expensive and requires more stops/changes.
  3. If we use a train, what web site would be the best to use?
  4. Any experience using Swiss Air?
  5. For Belgium trip: train transportation from Brussels to Ghent looks very doable. I did not see any advantage to buying tickets ahead. Is this correct?
  6. For Switzerland trip: train transportation from Zurich to Luzern and from Bern to Zurich looks very doable. I did not see any advantage to buying tickets ahead. Is this correct?

Thank you.

Posted by
7832 posts
  1. I would fly. That is too long a train ride and depending on what time you take too many changes. There is no kind of overnight sleeper car service offered on that rout that I can see

  2. OK.

  3. I would use this to book your train https://www.thetrainline.com/?redirected=true

  4. Yes. I've taken Swiss Air using miles and would take it again if the prices were lower or if I had miles I could use

  5. Correct no advantages to booking a train from Brussels to Ghent in advance

  6. Correct no advantages to booking the Swiss rail travel in advance

Posted by
6365 posts

  1. If you plan to include Zürich, flying to Amsterdam and returning from Zürich makes more sense.

  2. Adding Zürich-Amsterdam flights also costs money and adds stops.

  3. www.bahn.de is a good place to look for connections, but you get the best price from the company that operates the trains.

  4. Swiss has a pretty good reputation, but I've never flown with them myself. (Swissair went bankrupt in 2002.)

Posted by
20074 posts

Swiss is a very good airline, but be careful if you book the low price "Swiss Light" fare. You'll be dinged for 45 CHF to check 1 bag and more for the second.

Posted by
1019 posts

Getting from Brussels to Ghent was pretty easy. We did the holland Belgium tour April 2016 . Signed up before their bombing and had reservations for three nights in Brussels before heading to Ghent. We bought our train tickets when we arrived while we were at the train station with ease. Our flight had to be changed to in and out of Amsterdam. Train to Brussels before tour started. Our hotel was prepaid so could not change plans

This topic has been automatically closed due to a period of inactivity.