Itinerary check/advise please

manwiththeplan

Hello all,

This is my first post on the MSE forums though I’ve been lingering around the forum for a while.

I am planning a week long road trip next year in April with 3 others. I thought it would make sense to limit the trip to 2 main cities. Any more and we will be in danger of over doing it.

So here's the draft itinerary, with a few questions (no.3,4,5,7). Please feel free to critique:

1. Fly to Nice from Manchester on a Friday and pick up hired car from the airport.
2. Spend 3 nights in Nice (including a day trip to Monaco – by car)
3. Leave Nice on Monday morning and drive to somewhere in Switzerland. e.g. Geneva, Zurich, Bern or Lucerne etc… where would be best??
4. As this is meant to be a road trip we thought we'll give ourselves 2 days for the drive to Switzerland including 1 or 2 over night stops on the way. This way we can discover random places on the way and enjoy scenic drives. We could stop over at random food places, discover local culture etc (possibly drive via Italy? Turin??). Doesn’t have to be a big city, just worthy of an interesting overnight stay. Any suggestions?
5. This would give us 3 days to spend at our base in Switzerland, starting Wednesday – the question is which Swiss destination will be best for us? We want site seeing, enjoy local culture, architecture and importantly the swiss mountain scenery (probably no hiking because we’ll have our dad with us in the group, who isn’t 16 anymore . Not bothered about night life either. But a buzzing place where we won't get bored spending 3 days and 3 evenings. To give you an idea, we have previously been to Barcelona where we enjoyed strolling around the la rambla, doing the bus tour, cruise, cable cars, music fountains, strolling around the old town, the architecture, shopping and generally just soaking in the atmosphere in the lively town of Barcelona. Not that keen on museums either – won't mind checking them out if they are famous though (like the louvre in Paris and Vatican museum/city in Rome was brilliant).
6. Having said that, the stay in Switzerland should not be too hectic because we'll be tired from the driving earlier.
7. Depending on where we stay in Switzerland and what we do, we can either drop off the hired car upon arrival to Switzerland or keep it for the duration of our stay.
8. Then the plan is to fly back from Switzerland to Manchester on Saturday.
9. That way we'll have a day and a bit for recovery before work on Monday.

Instead of hotels, we're going to stay in rented holiday apartments because as a boys trip it will be more adventurous compared to hotels (and economical too).

What do you think of this itinerary? Our main criteria is that the drive has to be enjoyable and scenic as it's meant to be a road trip… would be a shame to spend most of it on boring routes and motorways. Having said that we do want to keep it semi-practical too as we'll have our dad with us and he'll get more tired than us.

Over to you for advice now

Armorica

For Monaco, you could consider taking the train/helicopter for a treat instead - the views are stunning.

Where in Switzerland depends on what you would like to do. I’m not overly fond of Geneva, it’s not very touristy yet expensive! Zurich is the other side of the country. Lucern is very nice and so is Interlaken (especially the waterfall valley around Lauterbrunnen and the rail up to Jungfrau past the Eiger). Swiss cities are relatively small, so one a day to every two days is fine.

You might want to consider Aix-Les-Bains or Annecy for stop-overs/visits. Annecy in particularly is a lovely old city. I’ve not made it to Bern yet, but it is meant to be a lovely old city too. Public transport in Switzerland is amazing, so don’t worry too much about the car.

If you go via Turin to say Lucerne, then the route is through the Alps. Are you/friends comfortable with mountain driving?

Caz3121

Make sure you check out the one-way fee for the car hire. Some will show it included in the price and others will say it will be charged locally
Looking at a random week in April you can get the same car through different companies, one for £170 and the other advertised £565. The difference being the £565 includes the one way hire and the other wants €960 on top of the £170 to cover one way charges and state tax

becominganobsessivesaver

I'd give the car a miss in nice, public transport is much easier and cheaper to get around. Pick the car up at the end....

If you want to avoid extortionate one way drop offs then starting and finishing in France may help.

rustyboy21

I would also check if you can take the hire car to another country too.


I am going to Lanzarote at Christmas and cannot even take mine over to Fuerteventura for a day trip, even though it is an island and you cannot disappear anywhere from it !

rs65

Annecy to Chamonix. Mont Blanc tunnel to Aosta. St Bernard Pass to Montreux. Up to Interlaken and visit Jungfrau and Schilthorn.

You'll probably need a Swiss motorway permit.

I would visit Nice and Monaco another time and just do this trip starting and finishing in Geneva. Or do the Med coast this time and do the Alps another time.

manwiththeplan

Thanks for all the replies.

Great points about the car hire business. I'll look into it further. Hiring it only for the journey from nice to Switzerland is looking like a more sensible option for us.

I must say we are not desperate for Nice/Monaco but we thought it would be good to do another famous touristic city in addition to Switzerland to make all the driving (and the spending) worth while.

I am starting to incline towards Zurich because it seems to have the feel of a lively touristic city. Also Lucerne, Bern, and interlaken seem within day trip distance. Or perhaps stay in Lucerne and do day trips to other towns including Zurich possibly. What are people's thoughts about that?

The only issue is that the flights from Geneva to Manchester are much cheaper than the Zurich end of the country. How practical is it to catch a train to Geneva from Lucerne/Bern/Zurich perhaps the day before the flight? This way we may be able to check out geneva also (am I getting too keen to fit too much in?)

About mountain driving - good point. What's involved? Is it scary to drive on these routes? How safe is it? I'm hoping the drive will be mixture of mountain, country side, and very minimal motorway driving (if we must do it).

Armorica

I can't drive personally, but it's worth checking what the weather is like that time of year and consider whether to drive on the lower ground only and use public transport for going up mountains. Some parts of Switzerland can be very tricky - I visited places that were only really connected to the outside town by rail. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mürren is pretty much unreachable by road.

My french is fluent but my german very poor so I've tended to stay on the left of the country

Bern is only a couple of hours by train from Geneva. I've got the train into Geneva easily on the day of the flight before (but it's probably worth a 24 hr visit since you've not been there before!). Lucern wasn't that much further than Bern. It's Zurich which is much further. Geneva to Zurich is under 3 hours by train. There are various train routes from Lucerne, Interlaken, Montreux which take a lot longer and are very scenic. http://www.swisstravelsystem.com/en/goldenpass-line.html

From previous research, Bern has a much nicer/older 'old' town that Geneva has (and my impression than Zurich). Bern is a heritage UNESCO site, the other two major cities aren't. Zurich and Geneva are the only two cities that could probably be described as lively lol although I believe Montreux is quite nice for the Jazz and Film festivals.

Interlaken town wasn't super-amazing, it's role is more as the gateway to the alps which are stunning.

Carwise, you could hire from Nice to Annecy (so within France) to make a drop-off more practical, then train into Geneva. Although some of Geneva's suburbs are actually in France.

Bern or Interlaken are the two most central - so good for day trips out to other cities. The way I did it ?last year was to fly to Geneva (as you say, it's cheaper!) then train that day to Lucerne. Then came back via Lucerne-Interlaken-Geneva (via Montreux), staying 2,3,1 nights from memory. But I'd stayed in Geneva a few times before that (hence less time) and have stayed in Montreux for a week before - which can also be a nice base to explore the west of the country from - the views are much better than Geneva.

Oh, and if you want to explore, I found that Google Maps/StreetView was great for getting a sense - will be even more so for roads.