Clarity required regarding Rail and Swiss passes

how will you get around between the countries? Are your stops in order? So you need a long distance set of trains from Zermatt to Nice, for example, and from Paris to Barcelona?

Or are you doing something different?

For the Swiss part - are you doers or sitters? What do you expect to do or hope to do at the various Swiss bases?

More importantly, I see you are using a count of days. That can be a trap. Are you including your moving days in those days? 2 days can often be only one night and that is often an unproductive time. If day 1 of your 2 days counted as Strasbourg (an area which with Colmar and the Wine Route and probably Freiburg im Breisgau is well worth at least 4 or 5 days) is the 7am TGV from Nice to Strasbourg (the fastest of the selection of 9 to 11 and a half hours train combinations) you don't get into Strasbourg until 4pm. By the time you have checked in and seen which end is up it is dinner time.

Are you then moving on to Paris the next day? With a 3 hour hour train ride I guess you'll have to be packed up by lunch time.

It can be easier for planning if you think in nights in a location. Or are you doing that and taking 3 nights for 2 days? Usually it takes one more night than the number of true sightseeing days.

If you are able to share a little more of your actual plans then coming back with a more accurate answer will be much easier and we won't have to assume or guess.... Thanks

Thank you Nigel for quick response. Really appreciate!

I have tried to answer each of your question, hope this helps:

how will you get around between the countries? - Trains

Are your stops in order? For Swiss, I believe they are

So you need a long distance set of trains from Zermatt to Nice, for example, and from Paris to Barcelona? Yes

For the Swiss part - are you doers or sitters? What do you expect to do or hope to do at the various Swiss bases? -

Mix of both, we have excluded Jungfrau Top of Europe as its going to be crowded and way too expensive, instead we are planning to do some other mountain excursions (recommendations are welcome), adventure activities, go for hikes, visit museums (chocolate and Fifa), Boat rides, and explore the area, etc.

We have total 10 nights in Switzerland and this is how we have divided them:
2 nights in Zurich
3 nights in Thun, 3 nights in Murren (we are planning to cover Murren, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Wengen, keeping Thun and Murren as our bases)
2 nights in Zerrmat for Matterhorn.

Below is detailed itinerary, hope this helps:

4th morning landing in Zurich, 4th to 5th in Zurich (2 nights)
6th to 9th in Thun (3 nights)
9th to 12th in Murren/Wengen or Lauterbrunnen (3 nights)
12th to 14th in Zermatt (2 nights)

14th we will enter France. We haven’t booked anything in France and Spain as of now; however, our return flight date is going to be on 2nd, so we have 14th to 1st (18 nights) for France and Spain.

In France we are thinking of covering Paris, Strasbourg, and Nice, and in Spain: Seville, Barcelona, Alicante Valencia in Spain. Jotting these down we feel it will be a lot to cover so we are open to narrow it down.

Not sure if this is relevant, but wanted to let you know that we both will only be carrying our bag packs of around 40L.

This will be our first trip to these countries and maybe this is why we are being over ambitious 😊, we have covered Italy in the past….

Hope this will give you some idea….

What month are these days you have listed? You are flying into Zurich, are you flying out of Madrid?

September 4th we Land in Zurich. We were planning to fly out from Madrid, but now we are thinking of skipping Spain totally (after your response 😀 , and instead use those days to cover France and add Amsterdam for 3 nights. Please advise, we are open for suggestions, thanks again for your time and help!

Change of plans.
Not going to Spain. Now we will have enough time for Nice 4 nights, Strasbourg 4 nights Paris 4 nights...can add 1 or 2 more if req.
Will fly out from Amsterdam...
6 nights in Amsterdam should be enough I guess.