Swiss Trip Planning Guide | Switzerland Itinerary on a Budget | Know Before You Visit Switzerland

Ready to have the best Swiss vacation ever? We're going to guide you on a quest to plan the Swiss vacation of your dreams. By the end of this video, you're going to learn where to go, what to do, how long to stay, and how to do all of that on a budget. Basically, here's what you need to know before you go. If we haven't met, we're Jana and Brett and we love Switzerland. I mean, we've spent more than six months traveling here. We first came on our two-week honeymoon, then we came back for 10 days, then one month, two months, three months. I think you catch my drift. But we quickly realized there's a lack of high-quality travel content about Switzerland. Not just like a list of what to do, but how to actually do it. So that's why all our content is passionately created to help you travel Switzerland with confidence by maximizing your experience, minimizing your planning time, and stretching your budget. And that's what this video is all about. Here's an outline of where we're heading. Kind of like a treasure map leading you to the Swiss vacation of your dreams. Obviously, these little icons don't mean anything yet. But they'll make total sense as we work our way through three key objectives for your trip, three tough decisions you'll need to make, even if you'd rather not, and three insider secrets you won't want to miss. Plus, five pieces of evidence that prove that what we're about to share actually works. So if you're ready to get started, let's jump right in. The first objective is to maximize your experience on your trip to Switzerland. And the big idea here that we really hope will sink in is that you need to intentionally shrink the map and limit your options. Yes, in order to maximize, you actually have to limit yourself. I mean, think about it. When you're planning your trip, you're going to be tempted to visit more places and to do more stuff and to cram more activities into that little carry-on size bag that you call your vacation. More, more, more. Sure, you can see more this way, but we don't believe that more is always better, especially when it comes to your Swiss vacation. There's a lot of info coming your way, but we've spent loads of time in Switzerland. And this is how we would plan our very first trip, knowing all that we know now. In fact, this is exactly what we shared with six groups of family and friends who came to visit us this past year in Switzerland. So you can maximize your experiences by making these three tough, but very important decisions. The first decision is to stay longer. If you're flying over to Europe from the US, you'll want 10 days minimum. Here's why. It takes two days just to travel there and back. You'll need some time to recover from jet lag. And although Switzerland is a compact country, you'll want to visit more than one region. After all, if this is your first trip to Switzerland, you're going to want to get a true taste of the country. Now, you might be wondering, can I afford more than one week in Switzerland? Or do I have enough vacation time? If not, wait until you have at least 10 days available. Because by the time you fly over there and back, adding a few extra days doesn't have to significantly increase your budget, which we'll talk about later when we discuss objective number three. If you only have one measly week of vacation, try to use a US holiday like Memorial Day, the 4th of July or Labor Day strategically. Doing this and taking advantage of two weekends should give you the 10 days that you need. However, if you're coming from within Europe and not just popping in for a quick weekend, plan at least one week. If you're flying to Switzerland, the number one destination we recommend visiting is two to three hours by train from the Zurich, Geneva or Basel airports, which means you'll still spend a full travel day on either side of your trip. Plus, a short trip to Switzerland is the best way to find out how fabulously expensive it can be. Overall, we think the sweet spot for your first trip to Switzerland is 10 to 15 days. This gives you enough time to experience a variety of Swiss destinations without totally exhausting yourself. Plus, it provides some budget stretching benefits that we'll discuss later in objective number three. Okay, so at least a week, but ideally 10 to 15 days for your Swiss vacation. But how and where should you spend your time? Everything we've suggested so far is for the benefit of slowing down, which is decision number two. Don't ruin your itinerary by cramming it full like an overflowing suitcase. I see you sitting on your bag, pray and it closes. We brainstormed a huge list of the benefits of slowing down on your Swiss vacation. So here are 10 of them in no particular order. You won't feel as worn out or frazzled on your trip. It's better for your budget. You'll spend less time traveling between places and more time actually enjoying them. It's better for the environment. You'll have extra minutes or hours to relax and decompress. It's a way to savor your experiences and see more than just the highlights. You'll have the opportunity to meet locals and other travelers. It's an ideal balance between adventures and rest. You'll get to prioritize the things you actually want to do. And it means you won't need a vacation from your vacation. We know that it's tough to build a sightseeing itinerary that takes all of this into account, especially when you've never been to the destination before. Well, keep watching because this is exactly what we're going to help you accomplish with objective number two. Most people take the amount of days they have available and try to maximize the number of places they can visit during that time. Like going to 10 countries in 10 days. No lie. We've had multiple friends who have attempted this whirlwind European vacation and we don't recommend that. That is not the best way to maximize your experience in our opinion. Instead, we think you'll have a better experience traveling Switzerland if you visit fewer places, which is decision number three. Look, we get it. You're here because you want to have your dream Swiss vacation. But with every video you watch and every hour you spend researching, you just add items to the growing list of everything you think you must see or do. It's overwhelming and tempts you to go at a nonstop pace that will require you to have a vacation to recover from your vacation. So our recommendation is to visit no more than three destinations on your 10 to 15 day trip to Switzerland. Aim for at least three nights per place and eliminate any one or two night stays. The only exception is if you spend one night near the airport at the very end of your trip. This allows you to have home bases, which translates to less time hauling your luggage, less time dealing with check-in and check-out windows, and less time packing and unpacking your bag, plus lots of other benefits. Okay, so where are the three destinations we'd pick on our first trip to Switzerland? In our opinion, you'll get to enjoy a great variety of what Switzerland has to offer by just visiting these three spots. First is Lucerne. It's a smaller but typical and charming Swiss city. It has something for everyone with historical sites, incredible architecture, a lovely river, covered bridges, plus tons of nearby excursions to lakes and mountains. Second is Lake Geneva. It's a beautiful and expansive lake in the French part of the country, boasting quaint Swiss villages, some of the best wine in Switzerland, and an unforgettable castle. Plus, Gruyere, with its famous Swiss cheese, is not far from here. And last but certainly not least is the Jungfrau region near Interlaken. This is the quintessential heart of the Swiss Alps, overflowing with Alpine culture, and it definitely delivers that wow factor you've without a doubt been drawn to during your Swiss vacation research. With these three destinations, you'll experience French and Germanic cultures, lakes, cities, castles, mountains, hiking, shopping, food. What else do you need? You'll notice that we left a lot of places off of this list, and you might be yelling at us through your phone or computer right now. You're crazy! We didn't choose these destinations because they're the only ones worth visiting in Switzerland. In fact, we think everywhere in Switzerland is worth visiting at some point. We're just trying to help you focus your plans so you can maximize your experience on this trip instead of spreading yourself too thin. Look, if you follow our tips and love your time in Switzerland, then you can always come back another time to visit other destinations. In fact, we totally encourage this. Then you can visit Zermatt. A lot of our subscribers have shared how much they love their experience in Zermatt, but if they had to choose, they'd pick the Jungfrau region near Interlaken because there's just more to do in the general area. Plus, trying to visit both Zermatt and the Jungfrau region gives you less time in each place, making your experience way more dependent on the weather conditions. So if you only have time to visit one of the iconic alpine regions in Switzerland, make it the Jungfrau region. You could also visit Appenzell, which is a very traditional canton in Switzerland. However, Appenzell just feels a bit far from everything else in our opinion. You could visit it using public transportation, but we just think it's way easier to do it well if you have a car. Then there's Zurich, Geneva, and Basel. These Swiss cities are great, but unless you just really enjoy big cities, Luzern is more charming. But you could visit one of these at the end of your trip before flying home. And of course there are lots more, but these were the ones most likely to generate comments. So how much time would we spend in each place? We'd stay two to four days in Luzern, four to seven days in the Jungfrau region, and two to three days on Lake Geneva, plus one night near the airport if necessary. Go for an even 50% split of your time, half in the mountains and half in other places. Even if you're not an outdoor enthusiast, you have to consider the possibility of poor weather in the mountains, which can greatly affect your plans and the views. So staying longer just gives you more flexibility. As you can see, maximizing your experiences basically comes down to having more concentrated experiences. It's kind of like Swiss cheese. Young fresh cheese is delicious and has its place, but often the aged cheese is more flavorful and valuable. Now your trip could be like a young fresh cheese where you pop all over the country and you visit 10 places in 10 days. Or it could be more like an aged cheese paired with a fine wine where you slow down and more fully savor the experiences, kind of like just visiting three places in 10 days. At this point, no matter which cheese you choose, you now know where we would go in Switzerland and how long to spend in each area. But what do you do once you get there? In a minute, we're going to share the details with you about our done-for-you Swiss Alps itineraries, which are totally going to help you maximize your experiences. But for now, let's keep going. We asked our YouTube subscribers what takes up most of their time when planning a vacation, and 43% of you said creating a high-level itinerary of what to do and where to stay. So objective number two is minimizing your planning time. We get it. Assembling all of these details takes a lot of time. But the big idea here is that you don't need to spend dozens of hours researching every single destination, activity, experience in order to have a great trip. Here's the thing. If you made the three tough decisions we just mentioned, then objective number one is accomplished and you've already cut your planning time by at least 50%. You don't need to know where to go because we've already told you where to go. And since you'll be staying in just three locations instead of five or seven or 14, that's less time researching and booking Airbnbs or hotels and less time figuring out how to get there from the train station. But we've got three insider secrets to minimize your planning time even further. Now, we know there's still planning to do. Like what will you do once you're actually there? Most of you will probably use YouTubes or blogs to help plan your trip, but maybe you prefer flipping real pages instead of swiping the endless scroll of the internet so you go out and buy a guidebook. Well, beware. A guidebook will likely increase your planning time. And that's why secret number one to minimizing your planning time is to actually skip the guidebooks. We're talking about those giant Fodors and Lonely Planet guides and others like them. Now, we bought a Rick Steves Switzerland book before our honeymoon in 2012 and it was fantastic. However, we still spent dozens of hours researching and planning and choosing activities and knowing where to stay and trying to organize that all together into an itinerary. And then we showed up and still didn't know how to get from one place to another or how long it would even take to do all the activities that we wanted to do. That's because these guidebooks and really most forms of social media and blogs give you endless ideas and options, but very little advice about how to narrow them down or actually pick the ones you want to do. If you love researching and maximizing your options, then guidebooks can be great, but decision fatigue is for real. And you're gonna find yourself making loads of decisions both before and during your trip. So you can minimize that by just skipping the guidebooks. Since 50% of your trip is gonna be spent in the mountains, our second secret is to put most of your energy into planning your visit to the Jungfrau region. The Alps are the reason to visit Switzerland in our opinion. The landscapes, food, outdoor experiences, and Alpine culture are just unlike anything else you will have experienced, unless you're from Austria. So to help you further minimize your planning time, here's our top 10 list of places to visit and things to do in the Jungfrau region, put in no particular order and set to ridiculously dramatic background music. Gorgeous, right? But even a top 10 or top 11 list leaves more questions to be answered. You're probably wondering, where should I stay? How do I use public transportation to get to these places? Which train pass should I choose? How long should I spend at each spot? Are they open year round? And how do I build this into an itinerary? After skipping the guidebooks and focusing your experiences to our top 10 list, our biggest tip to minimize your planning time is to invest in a done for you itinerary. Because in case you can't tell, there are a lot of details that go into planning a vacation, which is supposed to be stress-free and fun. So we've done the stressful work for you by creating an ultimate one-week itinerary to the Jungfrau region. After spending multiple summers immersed here and leading six groups of friends on this exact itinerary, our brains are like overflowing with insider advice about how to help you plan a one-week trip to the Jungfrau region. In fact, Leanne told us that you took the guesswork out of picking the best activities for each day and helped us make sure we didn't miss the most significant things about Switzerland. Each guide helps you know where to go every day so you don't have to piecemeal your own itinerary, where to stay so you can maximize your adventures without spending unnecessary time on trains, exactly which train pass will give you the most coverage, flexibility, and bang for your buck, how to reach each destination using public transportation, and Beverly said that without that, we would have probably wasted a lot of time waiting, not to mention stress, a recommended timeline so you know when to visit and how long to stay at each spot, where to eat in order to enjoy the famous local food that is worth the money, and Steve mentioned how much he loved the recommendations for quaint spots with fabulous food and drinks that fit into our daily activities along the way, and a whole lot more. I think it's obvious by now that we love Switzerland and know that you will too if you don't already. So we've staffed this tried and true guide full of helpful bonuses like a custom map for each day's itinerary, a bonus rainy day guide, how to budget for this trip because in Toby's words, you can enjoy a Swiss experience on a limited budget. It doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. Our favorite cafes, bakeries, and farm fridges, bathrooms, because I know I'm not the only one with a tiny bladder, and so much more. If you want to see more details or purchase this guide, you can find it at aplansandalps.com slash guides. But what if you're spending less than seven days in the Jungfrau region? We didn't forget about you. Our shop also includes a one-day guide to our favorite destination and a three-day guide to Grunewald. And who knows, by the time you watch this, maybe the digital shelves of our shop will have even more resources there for you. So whether or not you purchase one of our Swiss travel guides, we love AJ's advice. She said, just watch y'all's videos for practical travel advice and ideas of things to do. Yes, she really does say y'all, but we love that she found both our free videos and our paid travel guides to be ultra helpful. So yes, you could piecemeal your itinerary together from massive guidebooks or hodgepod YouTube videos and still have a great trip. But we promise that our done for you guides will help you maximize your stress-free experiences, minimize your decision-fatiguing planning time, and stretch your hard-earned dollars or francs or euros or whatever currency you use. You're on vacation, so it's time to start acting like it. Less stress and more fun. Here's how to make that happen on your next trip to Switzerland. First, purchase this digital bundle at aplansandthealps.com slash guides. Second, download it to your phone and pair it with our complimentary maps. Third, go on your Swiss vacation and have some fun. But hang on, there's one more objective in planning your dream Swiss vacation. First was to maximize your experience. Second was to minimize your planning time. And the third is to stretch your budget. And the big idea here is that Switzerland can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. Traveling isn't getting any cheaper, but that doesn't mean that you can't be strategic. Let's recap everything we've discussed so far and show you five pieces of evidence that prove these strategies really will work by saving you lots of dough. By staying longer, you lower your cost per day because flights are one of your biggest expenses. For example, if your overseas flights cost $1,400 and you stay for one week, that equals $200 a day. But if you stay for two weeks, those same flights now cost you just $100 per day. I know, that might seem like a mental trick you're playing on yourself, but it's one of the best ways to save money on your travel experiences. By slowing down, you can buy a train pass for one country instead of who knows how many flights and buses and trains for a whirlwind vacation. And by choosing the best Swiss train pass for your itinerary, you could save hundreds of Swiss francs per person. By visiting fewer places, you're more likely to find affordable lodging. We've enjoyed discounts of up to 10% by staying for a week and even 40% by staying in one Airbnb for a whole month. By planning to buy one meal per day from the grocery store, you'll save at least 25 Swiss francs per person per day, if not more. We know you're on vacation and we do think it's worth eating out some. But by staying somewhere with a kitchen, you can save money and still have plenty of great foodie experiences. And by buying one of our done for you itineraries, you'll have an invaluable guide that will save you hard earned money, not to mention countless hours of planning time. For example, we estimate you'll save a minimum of $500 by following our one week guide to the Jungfraut region. If you look at the math, a guide more than pays for itself. So whether you've already booked your flights and know you'll be spending a glorious vacation in Switzerland, or whether this trip is still a dream in your head, our done for you comprehensive guides are exactly what you need. You can buy one today at aplansinthealps.com slash guides. However, I always ask a million questions before I buy something. Maybe not a million, but I usually have one or two questions. So here are a few FAQs. What's the best time of year to visit? This is such a tricky question because it depends on what activities you want to do on your vacation. However, all of our guides specify which season they're best for. Usually mid-May to mid-October is kind of that sweet spot, but some of the activities can be done outside of that time too. So just check the dates for each guide before you purchase. Each guide recommends which train pass is best if you follow that exact itinerary. And it also tells you where to buy it and how to use it. But one thing is certain, not buying a Swiss rail pass is usually like throwing your Swiss francs in the garbage. So don't skip that section of the guide. And if it helps, we took our friend Bud on his first European vacation and he mentioned that the Swiss train pass system is easy once you know how to use it. Will these itineraries work for families with children? Yes. Although we don't have any children, we are an aunt and uncle to nine nieces and nephews. So we get what it's like to be around kids of all ages from babies to teenagers. We always mention in our guides when a destination has a playground, which is pretty common. And sometimes we'll offer alternative suggestions for families with young kids if that activity isn't ideal. In fact, our friends Toby and Stacey came to visit us last year with their elementary age daughters and they made countless family memories that they will never forget. How much should I budget? University students on a backpacking trip are gonna spend differently than a couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. So the budget question is sticky, but we provide cost estimates and budget tips in each guide. And for comparison, we usually nerd out and show you just how much this would cost if you don't follow our guide. What if I'm older or have limited mobility? Switzerland is not just for the young or the fit or the physically active. My mom had both of her knees replaced years ago and she still spent a whole week in the Swiss Alps just doing mild activities. In each of our guides, when we describe our hikes and walks, we include how long they are, if they're flat, if they're paved or how steep they are. And a lot of times too, we'll give alternate suggestions of how to bypass the hike using public transportation so you can just meet us at the next stop on the itinerary. And almost all public transportation is handicap accessible as well. That means limited mobility should not hold you back. What if this itinerary doesn't exactly fit my trip? While our guides are carefully crafted with each day fitting together like pieces in a masterful puzzle, you'll gain lots of benefits even if you have something different in mind. Each day is basically its own itinerary, meaning you can follow some days but not the others, follow some of each day while choosing to do something different with the rest of your time or simply use the guides as a reference while you plan your own personalized itinerary. And don't forget, we have guides for one day, three days and seven days in the Jungfrau region with more options and destinations in Switzerland coming soon. If you have another question that we didn't answer here, drop it in the comments below and we'll reply to you there. After clicking the buy button, your brain will thank you for the oodles of energy you just saved, your calendar will appreciate the extra margin you just delivered and your bank account won't mind spending a few bucks in order to save hundreds. So hop on over to aflinsandthealps.com slash guides to buy yours today and we'll see you in Switzerland.