A pasta counter near the station where the fillings change by the morning.
Food & drinks
Koen's favourite
Koen's favourite
Discover Switzerland
Every destination, every pace. Find your kind of slow.
Locals' secrets
A different few, every week.
Steam and coal smoke drifting up a mountainside above Lake Brienz.
Water carved this corridor stone by stone, and it hasn't stopped since.
A steel walkway ends in open air, forty-five metres above the valley.
At the Top of Europe: A mighty glacier, permanent snow and, on clear days, France.
Two railways climb from opposite valleys and meet at 2,061 metres, under a wall of rock and ice.
A lake that holds the Wetterhorn twice: once in the sky, once on its surface.
Cowbells drift across the ridge while the Eiger holds still against the sky.
A ridge where two valleys divide, ice fields close enough to study.
Spruce trees blur past in near silence, eleven kilometres of packed snow beneath the sledge.
A funicular climbing 735 vertical meters, and two lakes appear at once.
Nature
Koen's favourite
Koen's favourite
A restaurant with a turret and a terrace, and a two-lake view from the table.
A river runs beneath the mountain, cold and constant, whatever season waits outside.
Ibex on the ridge, the Eiger on the horizon.
Slow strokes, flat water, and Ringgenberg's cliffs sliding past at eye level.
Lauterbrunnen
Lobhornhütte
Take a hike and enjoy marvelous views of the Eiger, the Monk and the Jungfrau from the other side of the valley
Lauterbrunnen
Trümmelbachfälle
Lauterbrunnen
Schilthorn
Walk in the footsteps of James Bond
Four white towers watching the Aare slide out of the lake.
A summer house dressed as a castle, with a park to match its ambition.
Watch surfers ride a standing wave in the middle of town, created by a wooden gate from 1818.
An octagonal tower has watched over Thun's rooftops since 1330.
This restaurant is a request stop on the Wengernalpbahn, where the train pauses only if someone raises a hand.
The path ends at a railing, and after that there is only air.
Nine benches, one waterfall, and nowhere else to be.
A finish line built into rock, where speed became a tradition.
Grass, lake wind, and the spot where three cantons once swore an oath.
High above the lake, the air smells of hay and quiet water.
Bells mark the hour above the rock where legend says Tell once leapt to shore.
Four lakes catch the light on the climb to the Jochpass, then the trail drops into monastery quiet.
Six hundred years of stone, and the whole city laid out below.
A castle above the rooftops, reached by funicular through the trees.
Food & drinks
Koen's favourite
Koen's favourite
Lucerne
Hohle Gasse
This is the path where William Tell shot the tyrant Gessler through the heart with an extra arrow. The journey itself is definitely the destination, as it is, in fact, just a stone-paved path. There is also a chapel here.
Locals' Secret
Lucerne
Höllgrotten
Brass bands echo off medieval facades at five in the morning, and the city does not sleep until Ash Wednesday.
Sixty-seven painted panels above the water, each one a reminder that nobody crosses this river forever.
A circle of painted snow that has not stopped falling since 1881.
A pasta counter near the station where the fillings change by the morning.
Food & drinks
Koen's favourite
Koen's favourite
Gelato eaten with the lake for company.
Touching the locomotives was always allowed.
A dying lion cut into rock, and a hush visitors keep without being told to.
Lucerne
Glacier garden
Applause fading into the stillness of the lake outside.
Brass and folk tunes drifting across still water as the light over Pilatus turns from gold to grey.
Water so still even the rowers call it the lake of the gods.
Bare feet, lake, sand, and the Alps standing quietly across the water.
An Erard piano still stands where Wagner once composed, the lake close enough to hear.
The same bell has called pilgrims up this ridge since 1385.
The mountain opens its roof once the wind takes over.
The lake shrinks to a ribbon of light before the gondola even reaches the top.
Hammocks strung above the water, and a sky over Pilatus that turns gold before the last boat leaves.
Pale rose stucco and a silence that outlasts the crowds on Kapellbrücke.
Speed through the forest by day, sleep among its branches by night.
In the glass cabin of the Hammetschwand lift, you ascend 153 meters vertically in less than a minute.
The oldest wooden bridge in Europe, and it's most beautiful when no one else is there.
A paddle steamer across water so still it mirrors the mountains.
Take the world's steepest cogwheel railway and disappear into the clouds.
A lakeside castle with gardens where time moves differently.
A mineral bath on a mountain. Below you, a sea of clouds. Above you, nothing.
A cliff walk above the lake that Audrey Hepburn called home.
Painted facades, fountain squares, and bread shops that haven't changed in decades.
A lakeside village where the roses bloom and the ferry arrives on time, always.
Lungern
Schmetterlingspfad
Lungern
Obwaldner Höhenweg, Stage 3/6
Lungern
Bärgmandlipfad Giswil
Lungern
Obwaldner Höhenweg, Stage 4/6
Enjoy an incredible panorama on the ridge hiking trail from Klingenstock to Fronalpstock
Cows graze below the treeline; above it, thirteen lakes come into view.
A mineral bath on a mountain. Below you, a sea of clouds. Above you, nothing.
St-gallen
Säntis
Lausanne
Parc de l'Hermitage
Lausanne
Lausanne Cathedral
Locals' Secret
Lausanne
Le Vestibule
Two weeks each July when jazz drifts across Lake Geneva after dark.
A Parisian banker built it. A king bought it. The Swiss turned it into a museum.
Ride to 2,978 metres and glaciers close in from every side.
St-moritz
Piz Nair
St-moritz
Stazersee
St-moritz
Zuoz
Wind on the ramparts, Lake Maggiore somewhere far below.
Sunlight finds the frescoes before it finds the square.
An unique sideways chair swings open onto Lake Maggiore, with nothing between the seat and the air.
A village with no road in, held between water and mountain.
Old terraces of olive trees, planted back after the frost that took them.
A red funicular climbs through chestnut woods to a summit where the lake opens in every direction.
Lake water reaches the promenade edge while century-old plane trees hold the shade.
Voted Switzerland's most beautiful village. The boat ride there is half the magic.
Fifteen minutes by funicular, and Lugano's lake spreads out in full sun.
All of Switzerland in miniature. Delightfully odd and somehow moving.
A neighbourhood bar with gluten-free pizza worth seeking out. Hard to find, easy to stay.
The Matterhorn arrives twice here, once overhead, once in the lake below.
The marmots' whistle carries before their bodies show themselves.
Snow gentians open for two months a year and close for the rest of it.
Thirty-eight four-thousanders rise into view and none of them belong to just one country.
At 3,089 metres, the Matterhorn finally meets its equals.
The reflection of the Matterhorn in Riffelsee is worth waking up early for.
Zermatt
Gornergrat railway
Thirty minutes upward through a landscape that gets more impossible with every meter.
Zermatt
Old village center
Wooden chalets from the 1500s, blackened by centuries of sun. No cars. Just silence.
Five lakes, five colours, one mountain that keeps showing up in all of them.
The locals' mountain. Less crowded, more authentic, same stunning view.
Zermatt
Glacier Paradise
Europe's highest cable car station. The ice cave feels like another planet.
Zermatt
Vispa river walk
Follow the river through the village. Let the sound of water replace your thoughts.
Zermatt
Findeln
A hamlet above Zermatt with restaurants that serve raclette with a Matterhorn view.