Hi,
We will be driving from Lauterbrunnen towards Zurich in early August and are looking for a place to stay on our last night before we board a 1 pm flight home from Zurich airport. We would prefer not to have to deal with downtown Zurich or an airport hotel--a quiet suburb/place with a nice hotel/view and easy/no hassle parking would be ideal.
Thank you!
You are only a 2 hour drive from the airport in Lauterbrunnen. Why not just stay there and get going at 8 am or a tad sooner.
The best no-hassle parking is to just take the train and not have to deal with a car at all. Get rid of the car for your entire trip in Switzerland if at all possible. If you just absolutely can't get rid of it then go drop it off at the airport the night BEFORE your flight. Take the train from the airport to downtown main station and stay in one of the nice hotels downtown. Get up the next morning and leisurely take the train from main station to airport.
It's best just to not have a rental car.
I haven't been to Switzerland recently, but I know there are places from which you can get a direct (no change) train to the Zurich airport, which would allow you to drop off the car the day before (eliminating the uncertainty about how long to allow for that step) and hop on the train the next morning. Among the train stops are Winterthur (up to 19 min.), Thalwil (36 min.), Zug (52 min.), Lucerne (62 min., but not all trains are direct). Winterthur is not in the same rail line as the others.
Some of those options might have less expensive hotels than Zurich; I'm not sure about Zug, it's a pretty place (well, just about everywhere in Switzerland is a pretty place) on the lake of the same name, and I think it's a bedroom community for folks who work in Zurich. I stayed there several decades ago to save money, but I probably did not.
Several people suggested Bern the last time you make this inquiry. Or Luzern. Either is fine. Both have an easy 70 minute rail link to the Zurich airport with frequent departures.
I stayed in Winterthur for my last night before flying out of Zurich, and it worked very well. It's a small city, not a rural area, so it may not be what you're looking for. But my hotel was just behind the train station (there was even a ramp from the street level down to track level, so I didn't have to hike my suitcases down stairs) and was half the price of Zurich hotels at the time. It was the Hotel Wartman am Bahnhof: https://www.wartmann.ch/en/home
