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Rail travel questions

Posted by on

I am working my way through planning a 6 week trip, and would appreciate some advice re: train tickets and travel passes. My daughter (18) and I will be traveling from Normandy to Murren in June, and staying for 4 nights. I want to buy the TGV portion of the train trip ASAP since the lower price fares are already less available; but I haven't yet done the research to figure out if we need a Swiss Travel Pass, Berner Overland pass, etc. - and I'm not sure if that will affect my train ticket purchase. If I just buy the ticket from Caen to Paris / Paris to Basel now, is that impacted by any decisions re: Swiss travel passes? is there a downside to buying the train tickets in pieces, rather than all the way through? There seem to be a lot of transfers to get from Basel / Interlaken / Lauterbrunnen / Murren.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Posted by
20094 posts

You can do that. There will be plenty of trains from Basel to Muerren. There are a lot of transfers due to the location of Muerren, You have to change to a narrow gauge rail line at Interlaken Ost to Lauterbrunnen. At Lauterbrunnen, you change to a gondola lift to Gruetschalp and from there on another train to Muerren. Depending on the time of day, you may also have to transfer at Bern.

In Paris, you will have to buy tickets on the Metro to get from Gare St Lazare, where the train from Caen arrives, to Gare de Lyon, where the train to Basel departs from.

Posted by
1654 posts

One good thing to know: Even if you buy your tickets "in pieces" your connections will be protected. So you can indeed already buy the French part. Later you can buy the Swiss Part, and you can safely buy for example a Supersaver Ticket, as the connection in Basel will be protected.

May I incquire where you are going after Mürren? As that may affect some options.

Posted by
134 posts

We will be going onto Bern, and then Zurich airport, after 4 nights in Murren. So our entire time in Switzerland is:
June 27 - travel from Caen to Murren
June 28-June 30 - hiking in / around Murren
July 1 - travel from Murren to Bern
July 2 - travel from Bern to Zurich airport; fly out

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