BristolUK

Were those your reviews on Tripadvisor?

quiltman

Nope! Never ever posted review on Trip advisor. Just the hotels our Swiss distributor (who lives in Nyon)booked us into. Purely personal experience. Like the Beau Rivage, except in January when the spray from Lac Leman froze on the railings and road. got a photo somewhere - I'll look for it later.nice restaurant about 50 metres away. speciality is the lake fish - delicious. there's a mongolian restaurant on the main highway - think it's called Le Periquito , the Parrot.

quiltman

Used to also stay in Rapperswil-jona, south of Zurich whilst visiting company in Pfaffikon.
lovely town on the Zurichsee. Rapperswil means rose town. Has old castle and churches.
Stayed at either Hotel Schwanen or the Best Western - the Hirschen, I think it was.
About 30/40 minutes from Zurich, train station right by lakeside, nice day out from Zurich.
I used to cover all of europe for about 17 years before I retired and found some lovely places. Hated staying in the big cities, unless I had no choice.

MillieF

Just to say I hope you have lots of pleasure planning your trip You can't plan to go Europe and miss out a quick visit to Holland, Amsterdam is great and I think Mastricht is a beautiful City...with some fantastic restaurants (happy gastronomic memories from there) although the weather in Holland is always a bit dodgy...but from your Mil's point of view it's flat, and the people are always charming.

I don't like Rome, I used to, but the world's woes seem to have really come home to roost there, economically and socially.

Paris is fun, very good value, epic memory possibilities and the Parisiens are great....I have never understood why they get a bad rep.

Very happy trails!

BristolUK

It's a diversion from the other stuff right now although still only at the 'ideas' stage.
I think I've had my fill of Holland. I like it too but I've been a few times and traveled around a lot on a rail pass.

Absolutely. There's just so much there too. I didn't even mind the overpriced croque monsieur in Les Deux Magots.

And although my French isn't any good, the stepkids and MIL speak it. Well, the Quebec version anyway.

DandNHill

Montreux...and they have a huge jazz festival in July... Montreux Jazz

BristolUK

And the Golden Rose TV Awards

DandNHill

Hmm, can't say I had ever even heard of those awards!!! I obviously don't get out enough! lol

BristolUK

I found some Easy Jet fares that were £26 pp and a 20k suitcase was £12, so could still be cheap enough. Not that a case each would be needed.

As much as I'd like to do a train journey, I'm seeing Easy Jet for the same journey for less than half the cost of the train.

Shard

Is that the full price? Whenever I check EJ these days the final price ends up
2-3x the initial quote.

Oakvillian

...and it'll cost you that much again to get to where you want to go from an airport some distance away from the city. Check carefully where they fly to and from: a colleague was once a little dismayed to take a low-cost flight to Vienna (I think it was probably on Ryanair rather than Easyjet, but the principle's often the same) and ended up in Bratislava. Granted, not too far away, but before Slovakia joined the Eurozone in 2009 it must have caught a few people out when they didn't have appropriate currency for a phone call or a cab fare.

BristolUK

I priced up four one way flights (Geneva to Nice) and the whole thing was £104 and £12 a case. Train fares for the same route were £78 pp.

Yes, that is another consideration. It may vary quite a bit from place to place.

I know Nice airport is close and a cheap/short bus ride into town.

Geneva-Nice by air @ £104 and, say, 2 cases for £24 is £128 all in.
By train 4 @ £78 is £312. That's £184 available to get to Geneva airport.

However, that's the cheapest flight I found and not necessarily the cheapest rail tickets.

Zoe Bell

Partially discharged

I visited Rapperswil in 1995 as I had a friend living in Mannedorf to the north. Nice town with nice views of the hills. It is a rather sedate upper middle class town in Switzerland. Highlights include seeing the Orient Express pull into the train station in Mannedorf and seeing it from our friends apartment. Low points include crap indonesian food along the lake edge in Rapperswil at highly inflated prices.

For a nice Swiss village, Oberwald ticked the boxes for me.

BristolUK

I had been wondering about Nyon as a base rather than Geneva due to accommodation cost.

I have discovered Annecy, not far away. It looks an absolute peach of a place and I have found several accommodation possibilities all better situated for much less than Geneva. Looks an even better bet than Nyon while allowing a visit to Geneva should we wish.

Right now it throws open an overnighter in Venice too.