Family Trip to Scotland or Switzerland Next Summer
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Anonymous
| Our family (2 parents, 2 grandparents, 20-year-old son, 18-year-old twin sons) is planning to take a trip next July to either Scotland or Switzerland. We want to stay in one location for about 7-8 days and are looking to rent a 3-4 bedroom house/cabin/chalet/condo/etc that has a living area and full kitchen. We love nature, hiking, biking, museums, interesting sights/excursions, and hanging out together. Any recommendations for one country versus the other? Any towns that you would recommend we choose as our location? Thanks in advance for any advice! |
Anonymous
| Do you have family history in either place? |
Anonymous
| It might be tricky to stay in Scotland in one place and see museums AND nature. Why don't you look at two bases, such as around Edinburgh and around the west coast e.g. Oban, or maybe further north at Inverness for nature. |
Anonymous
| Switzerland if you have not been yet. Nothing beats the alps. |
Anonymous
OP here. Not really any family history that we care about. I mean, we have English/Scottish ancestry rather than Swiss, but that doesn't matter too much to us in terms of where to go. We do need to just stay in one place, but we're fine sacrificing museums for nature... as long as there are some interesting things to do in the area. We don't want total isolation. Inverness would be fine; a cabin in a distant moor 20 miles from other inhabitants would be a little stifling. |
Anonymous
OP here. Any recommendations for where to go in Switzerland? We would need a larger place to rent. |
Anonymous
| +1 for Switzerland. You could do Geneva + Zermatt or Zurich + Lucerne if you wanted to try to combine a little nature and history. If you really only want to stay in one place, you could do Lucerne and do a couple of day trips from there? The train system in Switzerland is amazing and so are the roads if you wanted to rent a car. |
Anonymous
| Switzerland is breathtaking. |
Anonymous
| OP here. Switzerland sounds wonderful. We will be renting a car. Is Lucerne the best place to rent a spot for a week? |
Anonymous
Yes, lots of great things about Switzerland. And the flag’s a big plus. |
Anonymous
You really don't need a car. It's hard to overstate how nice the train system is. I think I'd stay in Lucerne. You can get to pretty much anywhere in a 3 hour or less train ride. If you need some down time, I highly recommend Lido beach on Lucerne. You pay an entrance fee, but then can rent chairs, buy towels, whatever you need. It's so pretty. The Golden round trip is completely doable by the grandparents. We saw lots of older people there. FYI, public transportation apparently operates on the honor system. We were never asked for our train tickets or bus passes. I think they must do spot checks occasionally. |
Anonymous
I can’t really say if it’s the best, but it’s beautiful and very central. Would be a good base for exploring and seeing other areas. You could easily do a day trip to Zurich and Interlaken from there. |
Anonymous
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I was in Switzerland for 2.5 weeks this summer. I would stay in Grindelwald, Wengen or Lauterbrunnen, as you’re right in the mountains. I prefer Grindelwald as I thought it had more going on than the other two towns. We stayed in Grindelwald for 6 nights and never ran out of things to do but we love hiking. Not into museums at all but we did take a day trip to Bern on the one day we were rained out. Lots of options for chalet rentals with full kitchens in this area.
Lucerne is a good, central location but it’s not in the alps. It was nice for a day but that was all. However, you could do a lot of day trips from there. I wouldn’t rent a car. Get the Swiss travel pass or the half fare card. The trains are amazing and get you everywhere. Our tickets were checked about half the time - it is absolutely not on the honor system!!! Make sure to have your passports too because they can ask for them and if you don’t have them, they are not shy to issue you a fine. We witnessed this a few times. |
Anonymous
Switzerland is breathtakingly beautiful. I've been to all of these places above, as well as Lucerne, Zurich, Zermatt, Lugano, etc. The best of Switzerland for a first trip is in or very near the Alps. Lucerne is indeed a pretty city worth a day trip, but it's going to be more expensive to rent there for a week or more and may not be in the center of what you want to see. I'd suggest you select your day trips (Murren, Jungfrau, Thun, Bern, Lucerne, Brienz, etc) and choose a smaller town that is well connected on the train or boat transport. Get a first class SwissPass and you normally get first class boat transport included, Postbuses too, I believe, which can be handy for more remote locations. We were in Scotland recently as well, with our base being Edinburgh for 6 nights. We did 2 day trips from there, one by private tour (Highlands) and one by train (Stirling Castle) It is possible to do more like Glasgow, Falkirk, St. Andrews. Driving, while not easy, would be more useful there, though the size of the vehicle necessary for 7 people would make it more challenging, especially on the opposite side of the road for you. Scotland is very friendly and also beautiful but didn't compare with the Swiss Alps. |
Anonymous
| Does anyone know how Switzerland compares to Denmark in terms of cost? I'd always heard Denmark was pricey, especially food, but we found it comparable to DC prices. Just curious about Switzerland as we're also planning a possible trip this coming July. |