For our more recent trips, I’ve been waiting until the end to write about all of my expenses for the whole trip. But for our 10-week trip this summer through Europe, I thought that our first destination, Switzerland, deserves it’s own post. There are a few reasons for this.
First, Switzerland was the first country on this trip and we spent 18 days (17 nights) there, which is the most amount of time we’ll spend in any country on this trip. Second, Switzerland was extremely expensive. I knew it would be, but I still wasn’t prepared for how expensive things were. Third, Switzerland is an amazing place.
This was our 44th country, and although ranking countries is very difficult due to so many variables, it’s certainly in our top three. Cost was really almost the only downside to our time traveling through Switzerland. We also got lots of questions about our itinerary and costs in Switzerland from our Instagram/Facebook pages, so writing out everything in an article should be helpful to those wanting to plan their own trip. I’ll give some details here but will mostly focus on expenses. Whitney will write a more detailed article with our full itinerary, where we stayed, and all the activities we did.
Switzerland Overview
We had a really great time during our 18 days in Switzerland and are really happy we finally made it there. We’d heard people rave about the mountains and glaciers in the past, but after spending last summer in Alaska and a couple weeks in New Zealand at the end of 2022, I was afraid the Swiss Alps could be a let down comparatively. Boy, was I wrong!
Whitney and I both agree that the views we saw there were the best we’ve ever seen on any of our travels. The mountains, glaciers, beautiful blue lakes, and top notch hiking were our favorite parts. Speaking of hiking, we did more activity in Switzerland than in any country we’ve visited in the past. There were so many things to see and great hikes to do that we just couldn’t pass anything up, so we went all out. At our busiest, on one seven day stretch we hiked 46 miles with over 15,000 feet of elevation gain! That’s way more than we’ve ever done in a week span before. When we weren’t hiking, we were walking around the cities and towns, visiting museums and taking in the sights. Between the hikes and walking around the cities, I averaged 24,000 steps per day during our 18 days in the country! So, although gyms weren’t easily accessible for day passes, we got plenty of exercise.
Whitney did a lot of research on how best to split up our time in different places throughout the country, and she did a great job planning the stops. There’s very little I’d change about the itinerary we chose, especially with the constraint of having to fly into Geneva due to limited award flight options from the US. We normally like to stay at least 4-5 days in each area we visit to reduce fatigue and hassle from moving too often, but since Switzerland was so expensive, we decided to shorten our stay in each place and just keep our downtime to a minimum to get the most out of our time.
Here’s what our itinerary looked like:
- Geneva- 2 nights
- Lausanne- 2 nights
- Zermatt- 3 nights
- Murren- 4 nights
- Lucerne- 3 nights
- Zurich- 3 nights
Below are my expenses for these 18 days in Switzerland broken down into categories. Stay tuned for Whitney’s post about all the fun things we did on this portion of the trip, but for now I’ll focus on the expenses incurred while in Switzerland. Keep in mind that all of the expenses that I’ll talk about below are my expenses only, since Whitney and I have quite different spending habits at times. We split all shared expenses evenly, so I calculate the numbers below with my half of the shared expenses and then my individual expenses.
Accommodations:
We stayed mostly at Airbnbs to save on costs, but we also stayed at one budget hotel. The options were very limited, and even the low end Airbnbs were expensive. It was very difficult for me, as someone who is usually searching in the $50-$80/night range on Airbnb, to come to grips with the fact that during the summer in Switzerland, even the budget places are around $200/night. We considered staying in hotels instead of Airbnbs, but the hotels in most cases cost double that amount and didn’t have kitchens which would mean higher food costs.
- Total for my expenses: $1,610
Food and drink:
We did a great job limiting how much we ate out in Switzerland. Part of our rationale for this was due to cost, but it more-so had to do with us wanting to do our best to limit weight gain on this trip. We always struggle to eat decently healthy while traveling internationally, and on this trip we vowed to find a balance between buying food at the grocery store/cooking when we could, trying local cuisine at restaurants, and getting in enough exercise.
Frequenting the supermarkets brought our food and drink costs down significantly. Buying food out was a minimum of $20/person for a meal, but at the grocery store we could buy reasonably healthy foods for about half of that cost. We had a decent number of sandwiches, salads, and premade grocery store meals as well which were much cheaper than meals at restaurants. Even with cutting costs at the grocery store, food and drink costs were much higher than we’re used to. We found foods at the grocery store to be about double what we’re used to paying at home, with some items like chicken and beef being 3-4 times more.
One really great thing about Switzerland is that they have some of the highest quality tap water in the world, which meant we could avoid buying bottled water. I’ve found in the past that when visiting countries where the water isn’t safe to drink, having to go to the store to buy gallons of water often is more draining than I would have anticipated.
- Total for my expenses: $670
Transportation:
Getting around Switzerland is very easy and convenient but, again, really expensive. We wanted to do lots of day trips from each place where we stayed to see as much of the country as possible, which meant either renting a car or using a lot of public transportation. After looking into the parking situation at the places we were staying and the costs, we decided to go with public transportation. In many cases, the train is faster than driving, and it’s relatively stress free. Plus, we’d heard that riding trains around Switzerland was a scenic attraction in itself.
Had we paid separately for each bus, train, tram, boat, and cable car we took during our trip, it would have cost us close to $800 each for our 18 days going all over the country. Luckily, Switzerland offers a travel pass for tourists that is a flat rate and covers just about everything. The 15 day Swiss Travel Pass that we got cost us $494 each. At first I thought that was way too expensive, but it actually saved us a lot of money compared to buying each ticket separately and also was much more convenient not having to buy tickets every time we went somewhere. As a bonus, the travel pass also includes free access to a lot of museums and attractions. More on this below.
Besides the travel pass, my transportation costs were pretty low. Some of the trains, buses, and cable cars that we went on (particularly in the Jungfrau/Alps region) weren’t completely covered by the pass, but were discounted 50-75%. We also had to pay full price for a couple train tickets that we needed, like getting to the airport on our last day, once our 15 day pass had ended. The flight from Virginia to Geneva we booked with points, so for that the only out of pocket cost was a $5.60 fee.
- Total for my expenses: $580
Activities:
Another great thing about the Swiss Travel Pass is that it allows free entry to tons of different attractions all over the country. We actually didn’t realize this when we bought it, but to our surprise, many of the things that we wanted to do and see were included for free. In total we visited more than a dozen museums, two castles, a chocolate factory, and a cheese factory for “free” with our passes. Between the free attractions with the passes, lots of walking around the cities exploring, and all of the hiking, my activity costs were pretty low. Mostly I just paid for a walking tour, one gym/pool visit, and one museum that wasn’t included with the pass.
- Total for my expenses: $55
My total expenses for 18 days in Switzerland, including accommodations, transportation, activities, and food/drink were approximately $2,915!
This comes out to an average of $161.94/day!*
*Keep in mind this is only my half of the expenses, and does not include Whitney’s expenses.
Trip Recap
$162/day is the most I’ve ever spent in any country that we’ve visited, or any trips that we’ve taken at all for that matter.
Switzerland is definitely expensive, but honestly it was well worth the cost. Of all of the places that we’ve visited, Switzerland and especially the Lauterbrunnen Valley area may just be the place I’m most excited about returning to in the future. I can envision many summer Switzerland trips later in life to hike and explore even more of the country. It’s an amazing place with friendly people and very efficient and convenient public transportation, which makes getting around a breeze. And the views just can’t be beat!
Hopefully costs will be a little less on the rest of this trip, but with Denmark, Sweden, and Norway coming up later, I’m not holding my breath. Stay tuned for Whitney’s article detailing our time in Switzerland, plus more trip updates from both of us about the remainder of our 10-week trip through Europe this summer!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 
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