I need help determining how best to travel from Frankfurt, Germany, to either both Wengen and then Zermatt, or just directly to Zermatt, Switzerland. We will be visiting Frankfurt for three days this fall and will rent a car to get around. We then want to visit Zermatt for certain, but maybe Wengen too. We don't know if we should keep our rental car and drive, or return the car at the Frankfurt airport, then get to the train station and travel south by train. After Frankfurt, we will have nine days for Switzerland. Is it too much to try to visit both towns? We don't want it to feel like a rat race. Also, we will have to fly back to the U.S. out of Zurich, most likely, so we'll need to factor in getting from Zermatt to the Zurich airport and catching our flight the last day. (We are planning to fly from Chicago into Frankfurt, then from Zurich back to Chicago, because our airline has direct flights in and out of those cities.) Any insights from seasoned travelers would be greatly appreciated!
Posted by
88 posts
I don't have any advice on how to get from Frankfurt to Switzerland, but we were able to spend 3 weeks in Switzerland last summer and you will not need a car there. Zermatt and Wengen are car free, so you would just end up parking it in a pay lot anyway. If I were spending 9 nights at the places you have mentioned you would like to see, I would spend 3 nights in Zermatt, 3 in Wengen, and then 3 in Lucerne, which is close to Zurich. I don't know if recommending another travel forum is okay here, but we got invaluable information for our trip at MySwissAlps.com.
Posted by
OP
2 posts
Thank you very much, that is helpful!
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
Returning a German rented car in Switzerland will incur a large surcharge. And as lken56 says, both Zermatt and Wengen are car-free, so you would have to pay to park your car further down the valley in both cases.
That is two good arguments for using train instead of car.
Getting from Frankfurt to anywhere in Switzerland is easy. There are trains many times per day from both Frankfurt city centre station (Frankfurt Hbf), and the airport station (Frankfurt Flughafen) to Switzerland.
- Go to https://www.sbb.ch/en/
- Enter From: Frankfurt Flughafen (or: Frankfurt (Main) HB), to: Zermatt, date and time
- Click "Search" and you will get a list of times.
Getting from Zermatt (or anywhere else in Switzerland) to Zürich airport is easy. There is also a station at Zürich airport (Zürich Flughafen), and you can look up trains from Wengen to Zürich Flughafen on the above SBB site.
It is only 70 minutes by train from Luzern to Zürich airport, which makes Luzern a good place to stay for your last night.
The cheapest option for tickets is TBA, for a later post.