I will be in Switzerland for almost the whole month of June and don't know which train pass to purchase. The first 2 wks we are
in Lausanne with lots of days train trips and wkend trips. Then for the last 2 wks traveling around the rest of the country for 2-4 days in different places one of which is to Lake Como, but It looks like I would take a bus from Stresa to Menaggio.
Thanks for your help,
Susan
Three options:
Only an exhaustive analysis of the cost of all your planned trips will tell you which will save the most money.
Stresa is on Lake Maggiore. I did not know about a bus to Menaggio on Lake Como.
If you're travelling more than 15d in that 27d period, you may benefit from two passes so you may want to price that out as well. Rather than paying extra for the flexi, get two regular (not flexi) 15d passes or a 15d and 8d pass if there are a few days in between that you will be in one place. May not make financial sense to do it that way but it will depend on where you're travelling and when.
I think buying two passes is a bit of overkill. An 8-day and a 15-day is 703 chf, and what are you going to do the other 4 days? Two 15-day passes is 800 chf. Remember, you will not be traveling from one end of Switzerland to the other every day, some days you will just be taking a local tram to the museum and back, but you are paying about 30 chf everyday for travel. The Half Fare will probably save the most money overall. Buying train tickets out of a vending machine is not too much more difficult than buying a can of soda from a machine. Once you get used to it, its second nature. You select the Half Fare option collect your ticket, validate it and away you go. If the ticket inspector asks, you just show him the ticket and the Half Fare Card. That's the way the Swiss do it, and that's the way you should do it. Unless, of course. money is no object for you. In Switzerland, any way to stretch the budget is usually necessary for those of us mere mortals.
Edit- Rick Steves (and Rail Europe) are running a sale of 20 % off on Swiss Passes for travel completed by the end of June. So you can factor that in as well.
