Customer Reviews

Rick Steves' Switzerland 2006

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The book does not mention the city of Solothurn just 20 miles north of Bern. This city is packed with sights on a small space: Monolithic late baroque/early classical cathedral built by Vatican architect Gaetano Pisoni, very ornate early baroque Jesuit church, baroque Vauban type city fortification, medieval city gates, clock tower older than in Bern, colorfull renaissance fountains, Europe's second biggest collection of medieval armours and an interesting art museum with paintings from Hodler (Wilhelm Tell), Cuno Amiet and Frank Buchser who portrayed famous Americans such as John August Sutter (art museum Solothurn), General Lee, General Sherman, President Andrew Johnson (art museum Bern and Basel). Close to the city at the end of a gorge is a very authentic hermitage (Einsidelei). In fall the chairlift up to the Weissenstein offers stunning views of the Alps.
The book otherwise gives a fair picture of Switzerland omitting some other places of interest (that I admit require more special interest) such as Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds with their watch museums, the monastery cities of Einsiedeln and Sankt Gallen. North of Zurich are a couple sights too, Kyburg castle, Chartreuse of Ittingen, the Rhine fall (biggest water fall in Europe and very impressive because you can walk up to it as close as to a Yosemite waterfall). In the children zoo in Rapperswil you can pet and feed rhinos, giraffes and ride elephants. Close to Basel is another roman city 'Augusta Raurica' that demonstrates roman live north of the Alps. Hidden in the village of Seewen south of Basel is the Automatic Music Instrument Museum. Self playing Grand Pianos and entire Orchestrons from the 19th century play music recorded 100 years ago. I do not totally share the authors preference of the Berner Oberland over Zermatt or the Wallis / Valais in general. Hiking beneath the Matterhorn or hiking up to the Hoernli hut (2 hrs from Schwarzsee station)from where the Matterhorn climb starts is as impressive or even more exciting than hiking beneath the Eiger north face in the Berner Oberland. Also keep in mind that if you hike anywhere in the Wallis and especially in places like Zermatt or Saas Fee you are surrounded by a multitude of peaks reaching over 4000m, whereas in the Berner Oberland you are often on prealpine terrain facing the Alps only to the south and looking at prealpine lower mountains to the north. The south Alps frequently have better weather too. For kids the Briger Bad (hot spring river pool near Brig) is fun (closed in winter), other hot spring pools are in Leukerbad.
In bigger cities in Switzerland stay in chain hotels close to downtown shopping areas, if you have money and like it old choose Romantik hotels.

I bought this book because I am planning a trip to Geneva--but Geneva is completely omitted from the book! It is not even listed in the index. Buying this book was a waste of time and money for me.

I'm a Rick Steves fan. In our yearly vacations to Europe, his books were always the most accurate, detailed and useful.
But this one is really different, as if there is some (political? commercial?) agenda behind it - for example -
- Gimmelwald as the center of the Bernese Oberland alps? Are you insane? A vilage with two BB and no restaurants... Is someone reviewing these books?
- And Grindelwald (there) is only mentioned as a side comment while it is the largest resort in that area.
Not even mentioning that Geneva is poorly covered (not interesting...). And these are only the items I've seen until now.
If you are going to Switzerland, specially if focusing on the Bernese Oberland, do yourself a favor and don't buy this book. Don't even read it because you will only get confused, specially if you used to believe Rick Steves.

This is the first Rick Steves travel book I have purchased, and I am very dissapointed. Several friends who travel frequently highly reccomended Rick Steves so I purchased this book without looking into it carefully. I am planning a trip to Geneva and was shocked to discover that there is nothing about Geneva in this book. It isn't even listed in the Index and in the chapter on Lake Geneva the only mention is "Skip the big, dull city of Geneva". How can he call this a guide to Switzerland without anything at all about a major city? To be fair, his generic advice about packing, language guides are fine but they can be found in any guidebook and I found the advertsing for his luggage and tours annoying. I will not have time to travel beyond Geneva so I can not judge his advice for other areas of the country, but for me this book is basically useless.

As usual, Rick Steves provides solid suggestions for restaurants, hotels, and sights, and much of his information is dependable. I was disappointed, however, by his rather condescending attitude toward Zurich, where I recently spent a week on business. The city is lovely, and there are a lot of inexpensive options that don't involve spending a lot of money in this generally pricey city. One of the "must visit" restaurants he recommended turned out to be mediocre and very expensive and he has very little on the Kunsthaus, one of the best museums in Europe. If you want a book with a more balanced view of Switzerland, I recommend Frommer's or Lonely Planet.

I like Rick Steves's approach to travel, and much of this book is helpful. BUT: He purposely, and dismissively, leaves out the entire city of Geneva, calling it "boring." Well, when you're basing your trip in Geneva, that's not really news you can use. I think Steves's success has gone to his head -- this level of opinionated advice is useless at best, irresponsible at worst. If you want a comprehensive guide to Switzerland, try Fodor's.

Rick does not cover the 3rd largest city in the country. Basel. e-mailed Rick and was told "not enough staff " to cover. Plenty of staff to cover all the ski areas oh well one learns- Check the book before you buy it.

We just finished a train trip through Switzerland and we found Rick's book indispensible. The info he provided was very detailed and actionable. For example, we were lost in Lugano and we did not know where the bus station was. We asked the train station workers, but nobody spoke English. But luckily, the EXACT location of the bus station was described in the book. His description of Glacier Express and Bernina Express was better than the offical guide and made the journey much more enjoyable. I also liked the humor in the book. For example, the Bernina bus ride was described as "scenic but not relaxing." Yes, the scenary was beautiful, but we enjoyed the skill of the bus driver even more: the road was so narrow with so many curves... and at one point we entered a one lane tunnel with another bus coming from the opposite direction trying to cross at the same time! Other guides (DK, Insights) were more "politically correct", but we really benefited from the more opinionated but honest assessment. For example, we have to agree with Rick on Geneva: Interlaken was much more fun. And the book focused on ways to save money: the location of the supermarkets (Migro and COOP) are marked on his maps. The restaurants he recommended were great and reasonably priced. BTW: Rick really enjoyed Gimmelwald, but in April the whole town was like a little like a ghost-town because the people were busy farming out of town. But in Gimmelwald we did see authentic Swiss culture, the scenary was gorgeous, and the nearby town of Murren (also described in his book) was like heaven on Earth: no cars, few tourists, inexpensive, and authentic. And the obscure military museum (Furigen Fortress) was awesome: it was one of the highlight of our trip. The instruction of how to get there was appropriately detailed (hint: it is not frequented by tourists, and all the brochures were in German only, and at one point we thought we were lost until we realize: Yes, this is the tennis court that Rick described! So we knew we were on thr right track). The maps were awesome. Rick, thanks for your great book.

I travel exclusively with Rick Steve's books and they have never let me down. However, the more famous Rick becomes the more aged his books seem to get. This one no longer even has the date on it so it is not updated as often as his other books. Still the best European travel books around if you travel solo.

I bought this so that I could plan an independent trip for my husband and me. In spite of Switzerland's small size, I couldn't sort out a good trip for us using only this guide -- it wasn't so much the itinerary and the purchase of the train pass (pages 10-11, an excellent plan!) as it was choosing and reserving the hotels. Many of the towns in Switzerland do not have the big chains my husband and I have come to depend on (Holiday Inn Express, Marriott with their 24-hour-cancellation policies) and will not hold a room for you without receiving non-refundable payment. The hotel options in this guide didn't appeal to us.

So I ended up booking a Cosmos trip that dropped us off in Interlaken for one week ("Interlaken Extension"). This allowed us the comfort of transportation and pre-booked hotels, with a week for independent exploration. "Rick Steves' Switzerland" was useful both during the Cosmos leg (even though our tour director had encyclopedic knowledge) and during our independent week when we were in the Berner Oberland which the guide devotes 59 pages to. It was most useful for sorting out our excursions to Jungfrau and Shilthorn and for figuring out "What's What in the Berner Oberland." (134-135)

We visited Gimmelwald, which this guide lists six places for sleeping and calls a "good home-base option." (162-164) I certainly did think this was a most charming area and my husband was thrilled to be walking the same "zigzag street" he has seen Rick walk (twenty times at least) on reruns of his TV show. Although Gimmelwald is Steves "home base in the Berner Obeland," let me caution you about staying here for more than one day or two at the most. A week in this bucolic setting might make those who feel at home in big cities go stark-raving mad. (If your sole purpose is to hike the trails or to ski this area in winter, then Gimmelwald would probably be a good choice no matter how long you're going to be here.) If you're more of a city person, and you're staying more than two nights, then stay in Interlaken! This guide lists only nine places for sleeping in Interlaken, although Interlaken is many times larger than Gimmelwald and has many hotels and other lodgings. (Metropole looked nice but expensive; Best Western appeared to be a dive; there were many huge, classy-looking Victorian hotels that must've cost a Swiss bank account. If I went again, I'd scrutinize tripadvisor for ideas. I'm not going to mention where we stayed because to print the name is to advertise for them and I wouldn't recommend that hotel!) Interlaken has a variety of places to eat and also has a food Co-op and a Migros (this guide mentions both under "Cheap Eats"). We ate at Migros a few times, I liked it, and it ain't "cheap," but it's one of the most cost-effective ways of getting nutrition aside from loading up at Co-op and having picnics (we did this a few times, too). Interlaken is also a good home-base because of the two train stations (Ost and West) for zipping you in either direction without having to use a cable car, cable train or another train line to get you to Bern, Lucerne or Meiringen (a village that isn't mentioned in this guide).

Perhaps Meiringen should be mentioned. On our walk through the nearby Aare Gorge (Aareschlucht), we met Israelis who were staying at The Hotel Victoria in this town who raved about the food. (We took their advice, ate lunch at Hotel Victoria and it WAS wonderful.) Sherlock Holmes fans already know about Reichenbach Falls above this town. We took the cable railway halfway up and hiked a forest trail to the top. There is also the small Glacier Gorge Rosenlaui nearby. (You have to go to another source: myswitzerland.com to get this information.)

About Zermatt and the Matterhorn: "Be warned that Zermatt is a one-mountain town. If you have time for only one mountainous region on your trip, I'd suggest the more interesting Berner Oberland over Zermatt. Many visitors find Zermatt touristy and overrated, especially considering its inconvenient location (at the end of a long dead-end valley in the southwest corner of the country)." (190) If I were editing the next edition of this guide, I'd definitely rewrite this bit! Instead, I might suggest that when taking a trip to Switzerland, plan on a minimum of 10 days so that you can be sure to have time to go up to Gornergrat with it's breathtaking view of Matterhorn and Rothorn. (If you're an American, the flight over is expensive, grueling and a shock to one's biorhythms. Try for 10 days; two weeks even better.) Would you really want to visit Switzerland and miss The Matterhorn? (This guide is right about a couple of things, though: Zermatt IS a tourist trap, and the weather can be "iffy." Try to go in July, go early in the morning, and keep an eye on the weather forecast.) Our lodgings were in Taesch, (a tiny town that is omitted from this guide) a short, easy train ride from Zermatt. (I won't be mentioning the name of our hotel in Taesch, either.)

I especially liked this guide for the "walks." Zurich Walk (45), the Bern Walk (100), Lugano Center (264) and other village/city walks. We often spotted tourists in large villages, holding this guide open on "the walks," with pages clearly highlighted in yellow marker. A couple of times, people approached us because we had this guide and we briefly chatted about our respective U.S. States, where they'd been, where they were headed.

In spite of the omission of some villages, I still like this guide. But I would tap several other resources for a more rounded experience.