July 2018 trip to Switzerland and italy

When and what time of the year do you plan on traveling?

Flying multi-city is a great time saving strategy to maximize your time in country. The two one way tickets would be a good plan, but if you are many months from going try a little patience and wait for better prices to come along. Another cogent strategy I HIGHLY recommend is: when you purchase your air tickets STOP looking because it will only make you crazy.

Buon viaggio,

Thank you for the advice! We are going this coming July. We went last March and did the Tuscany-amalfi coast trip and it was awesome. The only thing that I didn’t like was we flew into Rome then used the train system to go to Tuscany and amalfi coast. Then flew back out of Rome. Which was a hassle to get from Sorrento to Rome in one day to fly out, so this time I’m flying in one city and leaving from another. We stayed in agriturismo’s during the entire trip and loved them but I plan on doing it again on this trip but I don’t think Switzerland has agriturismo’s? So we are staying 4 days close to Gimmelwald

One-way tickets can work if you fly a budget airline like WOW, Icelandair, or Norwegian Air Shuttle. Otherwise, you should be choosing the "Multi-city" option on the website of your choice. Two one-way tickets on legacy airlines will nearly always be much, much more expensive.

You have not told us where you live. If you do that, folks here will be in a better position to help. If you have set your dates, knowing those would also be helpful.

It's always smart to check prices for any viable starting and ending airports. There's often quite a difference between flights to Zurich and Geneva, and sometimes Munich is even less costly, though quite possibly not enough to justify the extra time on a train.

From my origin Milan is usually the cheapest destination in northern Italy, but you could also look at Venice, Pisa, Florence and Bologna to be sure you're not missing something.

Google Flights will allow you to check a round-trip price (so you'd need to do this twice, one for Italy and once for Switzerland) to a country, not a specific city. That helps identify what might be the cheapest Swiss city to fly into and the cheapest Italian city to fly out of. However, the cheapest multi-city tickets are on flights from the same airline group; cheapest Swiss RT destination + cheapest Italian RT destination may not turn out to be the cheapest multi-city.

An example: I just looked at July 13-28 from my origin, and Zurich is $182 cheaper (round-trip) than Geneva. Basel falls in between, and only the insane would opt to fly into Bern (over $3400!). For Italy, Milan and Venice were cheapest.

Before fixing on Venice as your departure point, take a good look at the flight time. A lot of travelers have found themselves on flights departing extremely early, requiring them to travel to the airport before public transportation is available. Not only might you need something like a 4 AM wake-up call, but you'd have to pay for costly private airport transportation.

Thanks for all the great advice. My city of origin is Louisville,Ky. Our plan as of right now is a 14 day tripwhich will include 4 days in the Swiss alps,3-4 in the Lake District of northern Italy. Then 4 days in maybe a central homebase of Verona, from which we can take a train to Turin,Milan,Venice but returning everyday to our agriturismo base.Then fly out of that area to go home.

I checked for departures on Saturday, July 7 and July 14 with the return 15 days later on a Sunday. In both cases Geneva is a bit less expensive than Zurich. What was really striking was the possibility of saving hundreds of dollars by flying out on Friday rather than Saturday.

For Italy, Milan and Venice were closer in price overall, but the exact date matters. In either case you'll save a good bit if you can fly back on Monday rather than Sunday.

One thing to be careful about with Venice is the possibility of a crack-of-down departure requiring a 4 AM wake-up call and costly private transportation to the airport if you choose not to stay out near the latter on your last night (in which case you'd at least avoid the expensive transportation).

Everything I saw into Switzerland out of of Italy was well over $1000 per person. July is peak season, so I don't know how much better you can do.

I also took a look at Cincinnati as an origin. It doesn't appear that it would be cheaper, but it does bring Basel into play as a possible landing point in Switzerland. I'd definitely check it out as well, for every possible combination of travel dates. Sometimes a really good fare will pop up for an isolated date.

If you happen to have friends or family you can crash with in Boston, New York, Philadelphia or DC, you might save some money by taking advantage of budget airline flights out of and into one of those gateways. That technique is very risky, though, because if something goes wrong with your domestic flight and you miss the transatlantic one, you will lose the entire ticket. The prospect scares me to death.

I appreciate the help a lot. Chicago is only a 4 hr car ride or a 45 min flight so I will look into departures from there also. I’m still not ready to nail down the exact dates but I will by next week, then I can start doing some real pricing. If we decide to go in June would it be cheaper then July?

I bet you can save money by flying out of Chicago. And yes, June might be less expensive than July. But every route (origin/destination) and every date can be different. No one knows what goes on inside those fare-setting computers. A route I'm looking at for next year went from $800+ one day to $1300+ the next. 24 hours later it was back down to $800+. Just a few days later it spiked again. Totally unpredictable.

I think your best options might be with American (and British Airways).

Louisville > Charlotte > London > Zurich
Venice > Philadelphia > Louisville

I will look at those options thank you guys, we have never been to Switzerland so I’m wondering if it’s difficult to just get off the plane in Zurich or Geneva and take a train straight to the Gimmelwald area then a train to the Lake como area next?And I see we’re they use a different currency then the euro I believe?

You can explore the train schedules on the SBB website. From Zurich the trip will take between 3 and 3-1/2 hours. You will probably have to change trains at least 4 times. That is not generally a problem; the Swiss trains keep to their schedules. It will be much easier if you don't have a lot of luggage, though.

The last leg of the journey appears to be an Alpine lift rather than a train.

Yes, the currency used in Switzerland is the Swiss Franc.

This might be a nice routing to minimise long travel days with many changes of train.

Arrive Zurich
To Luzern (2)
To Interlaken-Lauterbrunnen (3)
To Stresa-L Maggiore (2)
To Varenna-L Como (2)
To Verona (3)
To Venice (2)
Depart Venice

Hello
we are thinking about doing something similar in 2019 May. I have been reading the Switzerland forum for ideas. We might go into Zurich and then immediately go to Lauterbrannen area for a few days. From there, we would go to Verona via Milano central. We would use Verona as a base for Lago Garda, Vicenza and Venice, as we have stayed in Verona twice and flown out of Venice on a 11:45 flights back to PHL (Verona is so much more than Romeo/Juliet mindset) . I was thinking about spring here and not the weather there and told that in May and even first part of June, it can be rainy and muddy in those area. Going in July would be better, but remember look at the prices of the train in Switzerland, which is very expensive, especially when compared to Italy.