Hi, We are signed up for the RS My Way Alpine tour in September 2023. What is the best way to travel from San Francisco, California to Salzburg, Austria (and back home)? Per RS website, most tour members fly into Salzburg and out of Geneva. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
Posted by
24 posts
I did the My Way Alpine tour in 2022. I flew into Frankfurt and then on into Salzburg. I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel. I flew out of Geneva. The only tricky part was getting from Chamonix the last day of the tour to the Geneva airport. It turned out to be easy. I took a bus, Swiss Tours I believe, direct to the Geneva Airport. The hotel where we stayed was on the same block as the bus station for all of the bus companies that go to the airport. . There are many bus companies. Everyone seemed to have booked different buses and we all left at about the same time and ran into each other at the airport.
I got to Salzburg two days early and did some day touring and was there during the music festival so had tickets to a concert. If I were to do anything different it would have been to stay in Switzerland for a few more days at the end of the tour.
Posted by
San Francisco area
1883 posts
Both United and Lufthansa fly non stop from San Francisco to Munich. Looks to be about a 2 hour s barn and train ride to Salzburg.
Posted by
Los Angeles
94 posts
I did a RS My way Alpine tour in June 2022 to and from LAX.
Going over we flew United from Lax to SFO, then Lufthansa direct SFO to Munich. We arrived in Munich around 10am, purchased train tickets in baggage claim (34E total for 2, Bayern-Ticket), and simply followed the signs to the train station at the terminal. We went from MUC to Munich Ost (30min) where we needed to change trains, then direct from Munich Ost to Salzburg (1hr 45min). Our train to Salzburg was super crowded and we ended up having to stand the whole time. We arrived in Salzburg around 1:30pm I think, then we took a quick bus ride to get close to our hotel. We spent 2 nights pre-tour in Salzburg so we could further explore the area.
We spent 2 nights post tour in Chamonix as well. I reserved a shared shuttle pick up with Alpybus for 42E/pp to go from our Chamonix hotel to Geneva airport the morning of our flight (~1.5hrs). We had a 6am pickup for our 9:35am flight. We ended up napping on the shuttle and had no worries about getting to the airport in time. The Geneva airport is not super large and doesn’t have the same security lines or delays as other larger airports.
Hope this helps.
Posted by
OP
san Francisco
735 posts
Hi, thanks a lot for your replies. It seems like flying to salzburg may be the easiest so we don’t have to take the train although that will mean 2 flights- SFO to Frankfurt then to salzburg.
On one of our trips about 5 years ago, we spent a a few days in vienna then took the train to salzburg. Train was so crowded. There were people standing on the train.