1 destination · 28 things to do

Switzerland

Zurich and Lucerne are the two halves of the classic first trip to Switzerland: a polished lakeside city of banks, guild houses and world-class museums, and an hour away by train, a medieval town on a turquoise river at the foot of the Alps, with three famous mountains at the end of its boat piers. Zurich gives you the cobbled lanes of the Old Town, the twin towers of the Grossmuenster and the Chagall windows of the Fraumuenster, the Kunsthaus and the Swiss National Museum, the FIFA Museum and the Lindt Home of Chocolate with the largest chocolate fountain in the world, plus summer swims in the lake and a cogwheel-free mountain, the Uetliberg, twenty minutes from the station. Lucerne gives you the Chapel Bridge and its painted gables, the Swiss Museum of Transport, and the mountain days that people cross the world for: Pilatus by the steepest cogwheel railway on earth, Rigi by the first mountain railway in Europe and Titlis by a rotating cable car to a glacier at 3,020 metres. This guide books the region properly, with honest notes on winter closures, the Swiss Travel Pass, Christmas markets and the Rhine Falls, then matches you to the right hotel, from the Baur au Lac in its private park to a 500-year-old inn in Lucerne, because in a country this efficient, where you sleep decides how many mountains you can fit in.