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Luzern and Lauterbrunnen in April

While we realize that we are not going at the ideal time, my wife and I will be landing at 8:00 AM in Zurich on April 14 and need to be at CDG airport outside of Paris bright and early on Sunday, April 20 to pick up friends with whom we will be spending the next week based in a timeshare near Disney, Paris.

Our tentative Switzerland itinerary is as follows:

Immediately take a train to Luzern, staying in Luzern for one night. Hopefully we
will have enough energy to explore a bit and enjoy our time there.

Leave Luzern and head to Lauterbrunnen or thereabout, stay
there Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It seems like this would be a good base to explore the town, possibly with excursions to Jungfraujoch, Murren or Interlaken.

Leave Lauterbrunnen first thing Friday, taking the train to a border location where we
can pick up a car to use in France. We considered taking a train to Paris, but we
had a great time on our last trip driving through small towns and thought
that 1 1/2 days to meander across France would be fun. The 7:00 AM pickup at CDG is a bit
tough to work around.

Our primary goal is to see a bit of the Alps, do a little site-seeing and eating, and to relax.

We have not booked anything yet, but this is the direction we are leaning. Not being at all familiar with the area, it is tough to get a handle on what it will be like and whether this is a good itinerary. We considered heading from Luzern to Murren, staying there 2 nights and having one more night elsewhere in Switzerland on our way to the French border and the car pickup, but it seemed that the "relaxation" goal might be better served by 3 nights in one room.

It seems like it would make sense to get the 8 day Swiss Rail Pass, although I have not yet compared the prices to the individual trips that we expect to take. As the pass provides more flexibility, it is probably worth a little extra.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments I would very much appreciate hearing them. Specifically, suggestions on good places to stay and eat in Lauterbrunnen would be great. I suspect that browsing the forum I should be able to find plenty of info on Luzern.

There may be a better place to post this question, but the other significant detail that I am researching is where to best pick up the car. It seems the Geneva Airport is one obvious option, but we can save the airport pickup surcharge if I can find a car rental location near a French train station. For some reason I am focused on the area near Basel, although the distances are do similar that pretty much anywhere along the border would work. Tricky stuff, never having been on a train in Europe other than the Paris subway.

Thanks in advance for any comments and suggestions!
David

Posted by
19635 posts

Two thoughts.
1. You are arriving on Monday and going directly to Luzern where you will relax and do a bit of touring of the city. Any kind of Swiss Pass will be costing you 60+ chf/day. The train fare from Zurich Airport to Luzern is only 28 chf pp, so that is a waste of a pass day. Just buy the tickets at the Airport Station and get a 4 day Saver Pass. That will cover you Tuesday to Friday and save a couple of hundred francs.
2. You will want to rent the car in France to avoid International drop charges. That could be at Geneva airport at the "French" sector car rental, or Basel Airport, which is actually in France. You have to take a bus from Basel station to the airport. Or actually take the train into France a ways, paying the small added fare for the France portion. Dijon is one spot and spend time in Burgundy, Colmar is another to spend time in Alsace before heading to CDG.

Posted by
6 posts

Sam,
Thanks for the suggestion. I have been banging my head on the timetables at https://www.sbb.ch trying to figure out what makes sense. It looks like the trips that we know we will take total $252 total for the 2 of us, the 4 day pass would be $660. Hard to believe that we will get out money's worth out of the discounts, but I guess I'll need to research that a bit more.
I looked at the fair to take a train to downtown Dijon, that looks like it will ad 93 EU each from Bern. A train to downtown Mulhouse, FR from Basel adds 10 EU, we should be able to pick up car there to start our travels in France.
I'll probably try plugging a few other near the border towns in to see what else pops up.

Posted by
19635 posts

I come up with a slightly higher figure. ZRH-Luzern 28 pp,Luz-

I come up with a slightly higher figure. ZRH-Luz 28 chf pp, Luz-Laut 38.40 chf pp, Laut-Bas 65.40 pp. That comes to 131.80 chf pp or 263.60 chf total. That is $312 at todays exchange rate. The wild card is how many other trips you will take while in Lauterbrunnen, and those could be weather dependent. Jungfraujoch is pricey and you don't want to go if you are socked in. With another 110 chf pp of train tickets you will be a candidate for a one month half fare card at 120chf pp.

Posted by
6 posts

Sam,
I added a couple day trips to Interlaken and Murren, comes out to about $204 USD each for individual trips.
The best pass deal that I see for us would be the 4 day flex saver for $284 each, add the $30 Zurich to Luzern trip and it is a total of $314. It seems that even the discount for the trip up the Jungfraujoch would not be enough to make it worth it, although the price of that and the discounts applied seem hard to determine.

Posted by
12040 posts

For the Lauterbrunnen Valley, keep your expectations low in April. I can't predict the weather, but expect cloud cover blocking your mountain views and rain. And the smell of manure. This is the time of year when the farmers fertilize the pastures, and probably the biggest reason why most tourists avoid the region during the shoulder season.

Posted by
19635 posts

Here in Wisconsin, we call that the smell of Spring. Still seems a long way off.

Posted by
6 posts

Tom, Thanks, we will try to keep it realistic. It will be great just to get away. It is certainly not the ideal time, but this is when we can go this year. It looks to be an interesting area anyway. From what I can tell, the weather is not going to be much different anywhere in the region. We are considering changing the focus to Bellinzona and just exploring the castles and a little bit around there, but will likely stick with Lauterbrunnen.

Posted by
6 posts

Well we are here. Clear as a bell and plenty warm, I did not check but I would guess low 60s. Supposed to be about the same for the next 2 days and we are out of here on Friday. I believe that we made a good choice. Again, thanks for all of the input.

Posted by
32510 posts

So glad you are having a great time, davidm, and I'm glad that the weather is holding up. Yay!