Best rail route from Milano to Paris

What time of year?

You will go through Switzerland and there are several different routes, but the most scenic is probably the Bernina Express route. The "official" route goes from Lugano to Tirano by bus, then you switch to a train. You could go directly to Tirano by train from Milan and avoid the bus leg. Pontresina might be a good place to spend 2 nights if you would like mountain scenery. another would be Luzern, for a lovely city on a lake.

If you don't wish to make both overnight stops in Switzerland, you could take the more direct Gotthard route from Milano to Zürich, but change at Arth-goldau and head to Luzern for your Swiss stop. From there head to Bern or Basel to pick up the train into France. This Gotthard route is also quite scenic, although the train does go through a number of tunnels (short ones).

A third route through Switzerland would be to go straight north form Milan on the main route to Bern. You could detour a bit off the main line to find a nice overnight stop in Switzerland, but my suggestions for that might depend on what time of year you will be going.

You can use the Swiss rail site to see the routes and connections: www.rail.ch

Thank you for your reply. We will be traveling in September 2011, We have been to Lucerne before and would probably prefer to stop somewhere else but we are still in the early stages of planning so who knows?

How about: 2 nights Nice area and 2 nights Avignon area.

We have also considered heading up to the Rhineland then west from Koblenz and across to Paris.