traveling from Venice to Interlaken

Yes, traveling via Milan is your fastest route and you will change trains in Spiez. To see timetables for the whole route, go to www.bahn.de and click on the drop-down flag menu for English. After you get summary timetables for Venezia Santa Lucia-Interlaken Ost, click on the arrow to the left of each departure time to see the connecting points. There will be a timetable update in June so enter a date in May to get complete timetables.

Buy your Venezia Santa Lucia-Milano tickets when you get to Italy. If you book your Milano-Interlaken Ost tickets well in advance (up to 90 days allowed) on the Swiss Rail site, www.sbb.ch/en, you can get a discount fare as low as 39.60 CHF.

If you take any trains solely within Switzerland and if you plan to ride mountain lifts, then you probably would benefit from buying a Swiss Card or Swiss Pass. You can compare the features of cards and passes here.

Thanks Tim. We will be spending about 6 days in Italy between Rome first then Florence and Venice. Do you suggest we purchase a rail pass within Europe as well or is it best to just buy point to point tickets once getting to Rome. We do not plan on spending time in Milan, just using it as a transfer city to Interlaken.

This is the exact route we took from Venice to Interlaken. We had Swiss Passes so we only had to buy an Italian rail ticket from Venezia San Lucia to Domodossola. Then the Swiss Pass kicked in and took us on to our destination.

Jennifer,

Point-to-point tickets in Italy are relatively inexpensive, especially if you are willing to take slower trains when available rather than high-speed EuroStar Italia trains. If your only trips will be Rome-Florence, Florence-Venice, and Venice-Milan (and beyond), then P2P tickets should be cheaper than a pass. Buy them when you get to Italy. You can check fares as well as timetables on the Trenitalia site. Again, enter a date in May.

Great, thanks so helpful!. Any suggestions on how to travel once in Interlaken onto Munich? That is our final destination.
I am assuming train would be easiest? Would this be covered if we bought a swiss pass?

If you book well in advance (up to 92 days) on the German Rail site, www.bahn.de, you can get a Savings fare as low as 39 EUR from Interlaken all the way to Munich. The cheapest tickets sell out fast, so book ASAP.