Breakfast in Zurich, lunch on an Italian lake.
The longest day we run, and the one that changes country twice.
This is the long one, and it only works if that is accepted at the outset rather than discovered somewhere south of the pass. Your private driver leaves early, climbs through the Alps, and comes down the far side into a country where the light is different and lunch takes two hours because two hours is how long lunch takes there. What the driving buys is a lake with villages stacked along both shores, a boat between them, and a return over the mountains with the evening behind you.
- Duration
- The longest day on our list by a clear margin, and the only one where the drive is genuinely part of the experience rather than the price of it.
- Pickup
- Very early from your Zurich hotel, because everything good about this day depends on being on the water before the afternoon.
- Group size
- Your household, with one private driver, across two borders, with nobody else’s schedule attached to yours.
- Season
- Late spring and early autumn are the honest recommendation. High summer is warm, crowded on the shore roads, and best answered by taking to the boat earlier.
Guests ask for this day for one reason, which is that the idea of having breakfast in a German speaking city and lunch on an Italian lake is irresistible, and they are right that it is. What we add to the idea is the timing, because a day like this is won or lost in the first two hours and in the decision about whether to spend the middle of it on a road or on the water.
Written about this day
This is the far end of the day trips from Zurich. If a lake without a border is what you are really after, Lake Lucerne by private boat is an hour away instead of most of a morning.