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Zermatt from Annecy, France. Doable by train in a day?

Posted by (Winooski, VT) on

Hello Travel Friends!

Finally have our dates and flights, now booking the details. We will be in Annecy the night of June 9th. We want to leave Annecy Monday morning the 10th of June and travel to Zermatt by train. From what I gather this might be 6 or so hours, so we could leave early when schedules present themselves. Plan to stay 2 nights there.

My question. I've not really been on trains much, will this be a good experience? I'm hesitant to stay in the middle because we then want to go on to 3 nights in the Bernese Oberland (suggestions welcome on a good base for explore.

Looks like I'll probably get the swiss travel pass, 8 nights.

Anyway, thanks in advance as always.

Posted by
285 posts

@scythian you are so helpful (again)l, many thanks! Ultimately we will end in Zurich where our flight takes us back to the US so looking at a map even thought Zermatt is a bit out of the way this is why I chose the order I did.

Thanks again, feels like this will work! I really didn't want to rent a car and buy rail passes so this is great. Cheers!

Posted by
285 posts

Another question, since we fly out of Zurich. Should we spend 2 night in Zurich or 1 night in Zurich, and one place between like Lucerne? Thoughts on that?

OR just do 4 nights in the Bernese Oberland? Then train back to Zurich for 1 night?

Posted by
8889 posts

Another question, since we fly out of Zurich. Should we spend 2 night in Zurich or 1 night in Zurich, and one place between like Lucerne? Thoughts on that?

Neither, unless your flight is really early, 2 nights in Luzern. It is only 70 minutes by train from Luzern to Zürich airport. Skip Zürich.
If it is an afternoon flight, you could also travel from the Berner Oberland to Zürich airport and fly out the same day.

Posted by
285 posts

@chris F thank you, I've wondered about that. I've not done much research into Zurich but at a glance looks like a big city no dissimilar to Milan for example, which aside from the Duomo wasn't my favorite

Posted by
8889 posts

Dant, When looking up trains on the SBB website ( https://www.sbb.ch/en/ ), you need to know that the station at Zürich airport is called "Zürich Flughafen", "Zürich HB" is the one in the city centre, do not go to the wrong one.
And all rail lines in Switzerland have at least 1 train per hour, often two.

Zürich is a nice city, but you go to Switzerland for mountains, not cities. Hence Zermatt, Berner Oberland or Luzern, which is a lakeside town, with boat trips, views and trips up mountain.
360° panorama of Luzern: http://tour.luzern.com/360/en/

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