Geneva to St. Moritz

Why travel west to east

Two arguments favour this direction. First, arriving at Geneva and departing from Zurich gives you a clean open-jaw flight with no backtracking. Second, the scenery escalates: vineyards and a lakeside castle, then the pre-Alps, then the high Engadin plateau. Reversing the route works perfectly well, but it puts the biggest landscapes at the start and leaves the gentler ones for the tired end of the trip.

Stage one — Geneva and Lake Geneva

Geneva is compact, international and, by Swiss standards, expensive. Two days is plenty: the Jet d'Eau on the waterfront, the cathedral and cobbled lanes of the Vieille Ville, the Palais des Nations in the international quarter, and a lake crossing on one of the small yellow shuttle boats that count as public transport. Hotels generally issue a transport card covering local buses, trams and those boats for the length of your stay.

The far better scenery starts once you move along the north shore. The Lavaux terraces between Lausanne and Montreux are a UNESCO-listed landscape of dry-stone vineyard walls dropping to the water, and the footpath between villages such as Rivaz and Saint-Saphorin is one of the most pleasant flat walks in the country. Trains stop at small stations along the shore, so you can walk one section and ride the rest.

Montreux itself is worth a night for the lake promenade and for the Château de Chillon, the island castle at the eastern end of the lake, reachable on foot or by local bus and boat.

Stage two — Montreux to Interlaken by the GoldenPass route

From Montreux a narrow-gauge line climbs sharply out of the vineyards into the Pays-d'Enhaut, passing Gstaad before dropping into the Simmental and on towards Spiez and Interlaken. The GoldenPass Express runs through services on this corridor using variable-gauge carriages, and the regional trains that share the route cost less and stop more. Either way, the first twenty minutes above Montreux, where the lake opens up behind the train, are the best part of the journey.

If you have already covered the Bernese Oberland using guide 02, you can pass straight through Interlaken and continue to Lucerne on the Brünig line, then east towards Chur.

Stage three — Chur and the Rhaetian Railway

Chur bills itself as the oldest town in Switzerland and makes a practical overnight stop, but its main function on this route is as the hub of the Rhaetian Railway — the metre-gauge network that runs the Albula and Bernina lines. The Albula section between Thusis and St. Moritz, together with the Bernina line beyond, is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list for its engineering: spiral tunnels stacked inside mountainsides and, most famously, the Landwasser Viaduct curving straight into a cliff face near Filisur.

Photographers and slow travellers usually prefer the regional option: you can get off at Filisur, walk to the viaduct viewpoint and catch a later train, which is impossible on a through panoramic service with sealed windows.

Stage four — St. Moritz and the Engadin

St. Moritz is a high-altitude resort town with a glossy winter reputation, but the summer Engadin is a different and quieter place: a chain of lakes on a broad plateau, larch forests, and light that photographers travel a long way for. Base yourself in St. Moritz, Pontresina or one of the Sils and Silvaplana villages depending on how much nightlife you want, which is to say very little in the latter.

• Muottas Muragl — a funicular to a terrace overlooking the whole lake chain; the classic Engadin panorama and an easy sunset trip.
• Diavolezza — a cable car facing the Bernina massif and the Morteratsch glacier.
• Morteratsch glacier trail — a mostly level valley walk from the station, with markers showing where the ice reached in past decades.
• Lake Sils and Lake Silvaplana — flat shoreline paths, a small passenger boat in season, and consistent winds that make Silvaplana a windsurfing centre.

Pacing and practicalities

From St. Moritz the return to Zurich via Chur takes roughly half a day, which makes a neat ending. Ticketing for the whole traverse is covered in guide 05, and if you are starting rather than finishing in the northeast, begin with guide 01.