Trip Entries
Today’s the day! Myself and my wife (Dana) have been planning a trip to Switzerland and Paris from our island Mauritius for the last couple of months.
Previously in February we’ve been to Bali and Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur and we’ve enjoyed it tremendously as a way to disconnect from our day to day activities. I particularly enjoyed Bali and it’s zen-like atmosphere.
For our adventure in Bali, we opted for a guided trip which Shamal Travels in Mauritius organised to perfection for us. For the Kuala Lumpur trip, we decided to hack it on our own and figure it out as we go. This was something we did on purpose as we wanted to get more confident planning and moving around a foreign country on our own.
With our Kuala Lumpur trip a success, it was now time to graduate to a fully self-organised trip. Enter Switzerland and Paris!
Our Itinerary
The trip starts of course in Mauritius where we are boarding Saudi Airlines to Jeddah first. This is going to be a 7 hours flight where we’ll be reaching Jeddah at 22:30. We then have an eye-watering 11 hours layover in Jeddah Airport.
Since my parents will be traveling as well with us, we’ve decided to book an airport lounge: Jeddah Plaza Lounge for relaxing and enjoying some drinks and food while we wait overnight for our next flight at 09:00 in the morning.
At 9AM we take our second flight to our first destination in Switzerland: Geneva! We’ll be reaching there at around 14:30.
Where we’ll be staying at in Switzerland
In Switzerland, we’ve decided to setup base camp in 3 different places for our stay from 06th September to 15th September:
- Geneva (7 Sep to 10 Sep) - VisionApartments Geneva
- Grindelwald (10 Sep to 13 Sep) - Eiger Lodge
- Zurich (13 Sep to 15 Sep) - Ibis Style Hotel
We’ve on purpose chosen hotels close to train stations since we’ll be using the Swiss Travel Pass for all our travels during our stay.
How we’ll be travelling
For those who do not know, the Swiss Travel Pass allows you to have unlimited travel on the Swiss public transport which includes trains, trams, buses and boats as well as free/discounted access to museums and attractions.
Once we reach the Geneva airport, we’ll grab the train to Gare Cornavin and head to our hotel which should be a 10 minutes ride.
A couple of minutes walk, around 200m and we should reach our hotel. More on that in a later post!
Paris
On the 15th of September, we’ll be leaving Switzerland to Paris from Zurich HB via the Lyria TGV for a 4 hour ride.
We’ll be in Paris until the 19th of September where we take our flight back to Mauritius again via Jeddah.
What’s Next?
I’ll be posting in more details about about day to day in Switzerland and Paris along with pictures for now, until the next blog post!