• 5 Dinner (D)
• 13 Breakfast (B)

• Business class coach with extended leg room
• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays

• Lucerne: Join your Travel Director and fellow travellers for your dinner served with wine.
• Zermatt: Enjoy dinner at a local restaurant in Zermatt with your fellow travellers and Travel Director.
• Zurich: Raise your glass and enjoy a delicious dinner featuring Swiss classics at a local restaurant.

• Lake Geneva: Visit Chillon Castle with the Head of Collections to discover the artefacts, treasures and history of the chateau.
• Bellinzona: Explore the stunning town of Bellinzona with your Local Specialist. Julie will passionately share with you her insights into the three marvellous castles, and her personal stories about how she fell in love with this city and decided to move to the area.

Explore Lucerne’s historic heart with your Travel Director, crossing the Chapel Bridge and admiring the frescoed facades lining the River Reuss. Visit the Baroque Jesuit Church and pause before the Lion Monument, the poignant sandstone sculpture commemorating Swiss Guards who fell in 1792.

Along cobbled lanes and arcaded squares, discover how medieval trade, guild life and lake-side geography shaped the city. Timbered houses, lake breezes and distant peaks create a quintessential Swiss mood—ideal for photographs and quiet moments by the water.

Discover Switzerland’s capital in the company of a local expert, strolling beneath UNESCO-listed arcades to the Cathedral of St. Vincent, the seat of the city’s Reformation heritage. See the Zytglogge medieval clock tower, the Federal Palace, and the whimsical Ogre Fountain as flowers spill from stone troughs.

Hear stories spanning bear pits and princely power to Einstein’s Bern years. Sandstone arcades, copper roofs and the Aare’s emerald loop reveal a city that balances political gravitas with village charm.

Walk the steep main street of medieval Gruyères, passing wooden balconies and shuttered inns as you approach its 13th-century castle. Your Travel Director’s orientation highlights Alpine traditions behind the region’s famed cheese and the town’s role as a fortified outpost.

From the ramparts and terraced viewpoints, survey rich pastureland where dairy farms still punctuate the green. The blend of rustic flavors, Savoyard history and mountain air gives Gruyères its enduring, quietly noble character.

Step across the drawbridge into Chillon Castle, a lakeside stronghold once held by the Dukes of Savoy. Explore courtyards, great halls and vaulted cellars carved from the islet’s bedrock, where light from the lake shimmers against ancient stone.

In the dungeon, find the pillar associated with Bonivard—whose imprisonment inspired Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon.” Frescoes, flagstoned passages and lapping waves set a dramatic stage for centuries of frontier politics and poetry.

Stroll the flower-lined quays of Montreux along one of Switzerland’s most scenic waterfronts. Your Travel Director points out elegant Belle Époque facades and the gentle, almost Mediterranean microclimate that nurtures palms and cypresses beside the Alps.

As the Lake Geneva shoreline arcs towards distant Savoy peaks, enjoy moments to pause for photos and reflection. This polished resort town blends lake breezes, music heritage and mountain horizons into a leisurely, lakeside mood.

See the emblematic Jet d’Eau and Geneva’s Floral Clock set within manicured lakeside gardens before boarding your boat. From first-class seats, glide the mirror-bright waters of the so-called “King of Lakes”, with quays, villas and distant vineyards drifting by.

The cruise reveals how Geneva’s humanitarian heart and watchmaking finesse grew around this grand natural harbor. Watch for sailboats tacking across the rade and the Alps paling into evening hues along the horizon.

Visit Martigny to view its remarkably preserved Roman amphitheatre, set in a broad oval beneath Valais mountains. Stand before curving tiers and imagine spectacles staged here when the town guarded the routes over Alpine passes.

Stonework, inscriptions and the site’s strategic setting speak to an era when Rome’s influence reached deep into the valleys. Your orientation uncovers this crossroads of history where river, trade and empire once converged.

Meet Switzerland’s gentle icons at Barryland, the museum and kennels dedicated to St. Bernard rescue dogs. Learn how the breed’s legend grew from the Great St. Bernard Hospice, where monks and dogs braved misty mountain passes to aid travelers in peril.

Watch the dogs at play and explore exhibits tracing training, Alpine survival tales and the story of Barry, the legendary rescue dog. It’s a warm encounter that reveals the bond between people, animals and the high Alps.

Explore Sion’s medieval core with views up to Valère Basilica and Tourbillon Castle, fortress-churches poised on twin rocky knolls. In the lanes below, see the cathedral and Old Town Hall fronting quiet squares.

Hear how these commanding sites controlled the Rhône Valley and safeguarded trade. Weathered stones, vineyards and mountain light create a setting where ecclesiastical power and Alpine lifeways long intertwined.

Ride the Matterhorn Gotthard Railway up the Matter Valley to car-free Zermatt, where chalets cluster beneath serrated peaks. On arrival, join an orientation that threads cobbled lanes and wooden barns, with viewpoints framing the pyramid of the Matterhorn.

Hear about mountaineering lore and the village’s transformation from shepherd hamlet to famed resort. From the Church Bridge, watch evening light graze glacier-scarred rock as bells and stream song mingle in the air.

Enter Bellinzona’s UNESCO-listed strongholds—Castelgrande, Montebello and Sasso Corbaro—with a Local Specialist who unpacks their role commanding the Ticino valley. Pass under portcullises into cool courtyards and along crenellated walls.

From the ramparts, tiled rooftops and palm-dotted hills spread below as you hear stories of dukes, merchants and Swiss Confederates. Stonework, fresco fragments and mountain views converge in a vivid tableau of borderland power.

Take in chic St. Moritz with a guided orientation through its elegant spa quarter and along the glacial lake. Belle Époque hotels, designer boutiques and Engadine houses with sgraffito décor reveal why this high-valley town became a byword for Alpine style.

Learn how mineral springs, winter sports and high-altitude sunshine shaped its reputation. Mountain air, larch forests and granite ridges set a pure, crystalline backdrop to the scene.

Use your included pass to ride cable cars, funiculars and chairlifts into the Upper Engadine’s big skies. From summits like Muottas Muragl or Piz Nair, trace a chain of sapphire lakes and pale granite to distant Bernina peaks.

Alpine paths, marmot whistles and crisp air invite unhurried exploration. This flexible access lets you curate the day—photography, short hikes or café terraces with a view—on some of Switzerland’s most storied slopes.

Travel a signature stretch of the Glacier Express, crossing the graceful arches of the Landwasser Viaduct as forested ravines fall away below. Panoramic windows frame looping tunnels, high meadows and streams flashing beside the line.

This segment is operated by a regional train fully powered by hydroelectricity, marrying classic Alpine engineering with modern sustainability. Settle into the rhythm of the rails as the scenery shifts from crags to broad valleys.

Explore the village whose name means “many fountains,” set in a glacial trough ringed by cliffs and meadows. Lift your gaze to Staubbach Falls, where water free-falls nearly 300 meters and dissolves into silvery spray above the valley floor.

Hear about the valley’s famed “72 waterfalls” and geological story as limestone walls, timber chalets and cowbells complete the Bernese Oberland idyll. It’s a natural amphitheater tailor-made for wide-angle photos.

Join your Travel Director to explore Grindelwald, the “glacier village” tucked under the formidable Eiger north face. Wood-clad chalets, flowered balconies and alpine pastures create a classic Swiss mountain scene.

Learn how farming, mountaineering routes and railway links shaped this valley community. Peaks loom above shop-lined lanes, setting the tone for optional high-alpine adventures you can pursue from the village.

Visit the Jobin Centre in lakeside Brienz to trace the region’s 19th-century rise as a hub of Swiss woodcarving. Watch artisans shape leaves, animals and ornament until grain becomes lifelike feathers and fur.

Displays and live craft reveal how alpine motifs, patience and fine tools produce depth and texture in linden and walnut. It’s a hands-on look at a cherished decorative art rooted in village tradition.

See Zurich’s essentials on a guided orientation, from the twin towers of the Grossmunster to the Fraumunster with its celebrated stained glass. Stroll the elegant Bahnhofstrasse, where watch boutiques and chocolatiers front the River Limmat.

Stories of guild power, the Reformation and modern finance reveal a city balancing medieval foundations with cosmopolitan polish. Lake views, church bells and café terraces add a relaxed urban cadence.

Visit a family-run estate on the terraced slopes above Lake Geneva for a guided tasting of regional wines. Learn about low-input viticulture, waste reduction and how grape by-products are repurposed on the farm.

Settle in for a farm-to-table dinner featuring local produce and creamy alpine cheeses, with vineyard rows stepping down towards the water. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER experience supports responsible consumption and production while showcasing the flavors of the Vaud.

Gather with your Travel Director and fellow travelers for a convivial dinner with wine at a local Lucerne restaurant. Sample regional classics—perhaps rosti, market-fresh salads and alpine cheeses—while toasts set an easy, celebratory tone.

Stories of Swiss traditions, upcoming highlights and shared curiosities break the ice. The warm, wood-and-stone ambiance and meet your Travel Director moment help the group connect before the alpine journey unfolds.

Cruise Lake Maggiore to Isola Bella, landing beside the Borromeo family’s baroque palace. Tour ornate salons and the shell-grotto before wandering the tiered Italianate gardens, where white peacocks strut among citrus and camphor trees.

Views to the pre-Alps and lakefront villas make this a photogenic interlude across the border in Italy. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour and subject to availability and weather.

Ascend by a sequence of lifts to Matterhorn Glacier Paradise at 3,883 m, Europe’s highest cableway station. Step onto the terrace for close-quarter views of four-thousand-metre peaks and glacier fields stretching across three countries.

Cold, crystalline air and high-alpine silence heighten the drama of snow and sky. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour, and weather dependent.

Ride the cogwheel railway via Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch – Top of Europe at 3,454 m. Walk ice-smooth passages of the Ice Palace and rise by lift to the Sphinx Observation Deck above the Aletsch Glacier’s sweeping curves.

Dazzling snowfields, thin air and saw-toothed ridges deliver peak Swiss drama. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour, and subject to weather.

Board the famed Bernina line for a high-alpine ride past the Morteratsch Glacier, the graceful curve of the Montebello viewpoint and the milky waters of Lago Bianco. Viaducts, spirals and stark granite slopes showcase world-class mountain engineering.

From glacier tongues to sun-warmed Italian valleys, the route captures the Alps in cinematic sequence. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour, and weather dependent.

Ride the open-top Cabrio cable car, partly powered by solar energy, to the crest of Mount Stanserhorn for panoramic views over Lake Lucerne and alpine ridgelines. Step onto the breezy upper deck as blue lakes, meadowed slopes and distant German and French horizons unfold in clear weather.

Wander well-marked summit paths, keeping an eye out for marmots, and hear a ranger’s conservation talk about flora and wildlife. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER experience highlights sustainable high-mountain access while letting you pause for photos and reflection amid the serenity of Central Switzerland.

Insight Vacations