Luxury holidays to Switzerland

Luxury holidays to Switzerland from Expressions Holidays. We have 30 years’ experience in offering luxury, tailor-made holidays for individuals featuring a personal selection of luxurious hotels, full of regional and local charm and character, which offer exceptionally high standards of comfort, service, facilities and cuisine. Switzerland did not just pioneer tourism, it invented it. Visitors still flock to its mountains for fresh air and restorative mineral springs, to the small valley villages to witness the country's sublime natural landscape, and to the larger cities for a taste of the livelier culture, artistic heritage, and romantic historical sites.

With a wonderful climate and spectacular glaciers and summits, the country today is every bit as beautiful and worth visiting as it was when interest began in the 1800s. Home to four languages (Swiss German, French, Italian and Romansch) and a trinity of cultures (French, German and Italian), Switzerland is effectively four holiday destinations in one. Switzerland's Alpine resorts compound this sparkling reputation – Zermatt and St Moritz, Grindelwald and Gstaad, for example – and beyond its après-ski, edelweiss and chocolate-box scenes, the small cities are also appealing: Lucerne with its covered bridge, Neuchatel with its fountains, and Lausanne with its ancient universities, vibrant art scene, and spectacular Gothic cathedral.

Throw in such cosmopolitan centres as Geneva, Zurich, and Basel, UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the frescoes of Müstair and the abbey of St Gallen, and it becomes impossible to deny the enduring appeal of the fantastic escape that is Switzerland. We will construct a holiday according to your requirements, based on our knowledge and experience.

SWITZERLAND - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Switzerland feels like somewhere we know, but we've never actually been. What makes it worth doing properly rather than just passing through?
This is a more common position than people admit, and it points to exactly why Switzerland rewards a thoughtfully planned holiday rather than a stopover. The country operates at a level of quality — in its hotels, its trains, its food, its management of landscape — that is genuinely exceptional, and which reveals itself most fully when you slow down and stay somewhere long enough to absorb it. Switzerland is effectively four countries in one: the German-speaking cantons, French-speaking Romandy, Italian-speaking Ticino and the Romansch-speaking Engadine each have a distinct culture, cuisine, architecture and pace of life. The mountains are obvious — and extraordinary — but Switzerland also contains some of the most beautiful lakes in Europe, cities of serious cultural depth in Zurich, Bern, Basel and Geneva, and a wine-growing region above Lake Geneva (the Lavaux, a UNESCO World Heritage Site) that almost nobody outside the country knows about. A week moving through two or three of these very different Switzerlands by train, staying in four and five-star hotels that are genuinely of their place, is a different holiday from anything else we offer — and one that consistently produces some of the most enthusiastic responses we receive from returning clients.

We'd like to travel by train. How does that actually work in practice, and is the journey from London to Switzerland realistic?
It is not only realistic but, for many clients, the beginning of the holiday itself. The journey from London via Eurostar to Paris, and then onward by TGV or the direct Lyria service to Switzerland, is fast, comfortable and — with an early morning departure from St Pancras — delivers you to Lausanne or Zurich by early evening, in time for dinner at your hotel. No airports, no transfers, no luggage carousels. Once in Switzerland, the train network is one of the finest in the world — punctual, scenic, clean and extraordinarily comprehensive. Most of our multi-centre rail holidays include a Swiss Rail Pass, which gives you unlimited travel across the network, often including lake steamers as well as trains, and allows a degree of spontaneity that a fixed itinerary doesn't always permit. The connections between destinations are smooth and swift: Zurich to Lucerne is under an hour, Lausanne to Zermatt around two and a half hours with one change. For those who prefer to fly — particularly from regional UK airports — British Airways and easyJet operate regular services into Zurich and Geneva, and we can combine a flight one way with rail travel the other, or throughout. We put together whatever combination of access routes works best for the specific itinerary.

The scenic trains — the Glacier Express, the Bernina Express — keep coming up. Are they genuinely as spectacular as people say, and how do they fit into a holiday?
They are, and they're also something quite specific that's worth understanding before you book. These are not standard express services — they are purpose-built panoramic trains that travel slowly through some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the world precisely so that you can see it. The Glacier Express runs between Zermatt and St Moritz — an eight-hour journey crossing 291 bridges and 91 tunnels, climbing to over 2,000 metres above sea level, and traversing landscapes that change utterly from the Valais to the Engadine. It is, by design, an event rather than a connection. The Bernina Express, from Chur or St Moritz to Lugano via the Italian border town of Tirano, crosses the highest railway pass in the Alps and descends through palm-lined Italian Switzerland in a sequence of views that bears no resemblance to anything in central Europe. Both trains are covered by a Swiss Rail Pass, though reservation fees apply, and we can upgrade to Excellence Class on the Glacier Express for a more intimate, all-inclusive experience. We build these journeys into multi-centre itineraries so that each train journey connects two destinations you would be staying in anyway — the journey becomes the centrepiece of a day rather than a mode of transport, which is exactly as it should be.

How do you typically structure a multi-centre touring holiday in Switzerland, and how long do you need?
The most satisfying Switzerland holidays tend to run from seven to fifteen nights, with three or four bases chosen to offer genuine contrast — a city, a lake, a mountain resort, and perhaps the Italian warmth of Ticino or the Franco-Swiss elegance of the Lake Geneva shore. A well-balanced ten-night itinerary might begin in Zurich, move to Lucerne for the lake and the mountains above it, take the Glacier Express across to Zermatt, and then connect south to Lugano for a final few nights in a softer, more Mediterranean Switzerland. Or it might sweep from Geneva along the lake to Montreux, ride the GoldenPass Line to Gstaad, and then continue to Grindelwald in the Bernese Oberland for the Jungfrau and the great rock faces above the valley. For those who prefer more depth and less movement, a single-centre stay in Zermatt, the Engadine or the Bernese Oberland — using the extraordinary local railway and cable-car networks to explore from a fixed base — works very well for a week or more. We have a range of suggested itineraries to provide a starting point, but we put together the specific combination of hotels, trains and timings that suits you — the pace of Switzerland is something we take seriously, and rushing through it is the one thing we try to prevent

Switzerland has a reputation for being expensive. How do you approach value in a country where costs are undeniably high?
Honestly, because there is no point pretending otherwise. Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries in Europe, and a well-organised holiday there reflects that. What it also offers, however, is exceptional quality at every level — the four and five-star hotels we feature maintain standards of service, food and setting that justify their prices, and the Swiss Rail Pass gives you extraordinary freedom of movement included in the holiday cost. The key to value in Switzerland is not cutting corners on accommodation or location — a budget hotel in a lesser setting is rarely satisfying — but choosing the right combination of destinations and making the most of what the country does best: travelling between them by scenic train, eating and drinking well, and spending time outdoors in landscapes that exist nowhere else in Europe. We also flag that Switzerland is, by design, highly self-contained: there is less temptation to spend on excursions, hired cars or entry fees than in many other destinations, because so much of what makes it extraordinary is simply there, outside your window. We will always discuss budget openly and find the right hotels and structure for what you want to spend — including some excellent four-star options that offer remarkable quality at a more accessible price point.