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Lucerne 3 night itinerary

We are a family of 4 staying in Lucerne for 3 nights. Any advice or suggestions on our plans are much appreciated. This is our family's first trip to Switzerland (and Europe).

We fly in to Munich April 8 and will spend a few days there before renting a car and driving to Lucerne on Tuesday, April 10. We have to fly out of Munich, so we will be driving back from Lucerne on Friday, April 13. Our plans are as follows:

  1. Drive from Munich to Lucerne on Tuesday April 10, driving to Neuschwanstein Castle en route, spending much of the day there and arriving to our hotel, Hotel Central Luzern around 18:00 Tuesday night.

  2. Spend Wednesday, April 11 in and around Lucerne. We would like to leave specific planning open here. We definitely plan a walking tour, possible lake cruise, chocolate-related tour... any recommendations are welcome.

  3. Spend Thursday, April 12 at Mt. Titlis. We plan to drive to Engleberg and purchase cable car tickets to the top, spending a good portion of the day there, allowing the children to explore the activities up there including snow tubing. Return to Lucerne in the evening. A few specific questions about Titlis - are the activities such as Glacier Park and Cave included in the cable car tickets, or are there separate fees once up there? Also, we will have waterproof hiking boots, hats, gloves, light weight down jackets (thinner packable style). Do we need to rent anything further - such as heavier jackets, snow pants, etc.? This children will definitely want to snow tube.

  4. Drive from Lucerne to Munich Friday, April 13. We'd like to drive a route that would allow us to spend some time at Rhine Falls. We need to return the car in Central Munich by 21:00. Any suggestions on touring around Rhine Falls are appreciated.

I'm just hoping to get thoughts on the feasibility and efficiency of this plan.

Posted by
61 posts

Re: Titlis: your clothing sounds fine, especially if it's sunny outside. When I went (late June), many visitors were in jeans and sweatshirts! When you buy your cable car ticket, buy a ticket for the Ice Flyer, which is the chairlift that takes you over to the snow tubing area. I didn't encounter additional costs beyond those tickets (besides buying lunch). Have fun!!

Posted by
7209 posts

How old are your kids? If they're less than 16 they'll travel all over Switzerland with you for free...even to the highest most expensive mountain tops. That's a great incentive to travel via train. How long are you spending in Fuessen/Schwangau to see the castles? Since you'll have a car there I would suggest visiting Linderhof Castle also and spend the night in Schwangau before heading to Lucerne.

Posted by
2 posts

Thanks!

The boys are 9 and 10 years old. The only reason we are renting a car is that we thought it would be a good way to combine activities on our travel days (such as Neuschwanstein and Rhine Falls), but we have gone back and forth as to whether the ease of train travel would still be better. Would you recommend train travel and not renting a car at all instead? If so, is there a certain type of rail pass that would work best for us for travel between Germany and Switzerland (and possibly a day trip to Salzburg?