Travel to Switzerland: 14 Clever Tips for A Family Vacation

Let me tell you a micro-story…. We took a road trip from Spain up to Switzerland with our kids. When we reached the Swiss border, after a long day of driving, we saw a Burger King attached to a rest stop. It seemed like a great place to stop and grab some lunch before heading on to our destination city.

What ended up happening was a bit of sticker shock. Maybe even more than a bit. LOL!! Our typical bill for six of us to eat at Burger King would be roughly 50 euros or so- and that includes 4 large meals, 2 kids meals, an extra side of nuggets and maybe a little ice cream. 

Our bill for JUST four large meals and two kids meals in Switzerland came out to be 116 euros!!! I think we talked about how wildly expensive that was for the rest of the trip! 

On the bright side, grocery store prices seemed fairly comparable to what we had at home. We ended up using our Airbnb’s kitchen quite a bit- but the view made it worth it!

There were multiple times that the cost of things in Switzerland was way higher than we expected. (Even though we were already prepped a bit for high prices.)

I’ve written an entire Switzerland on a Budget tips post to help you stretch every dollar while in Switzerland that should be posted quite soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that one- or join our newsletter to see it as soon as it comes out. *wink wink*

Switzerland has an amazing toll pass where you can pay 45 euros (or CHF 40) for a standard car or camper van, and it’s good for an entire year.

It is almost certainly going to be worth it if you’re driving through the country. If you’re planning to take scenic drives to some of the more unique places to visit in Switzerland, that might also make it worthwhile. 

We just happened to be driving into Switzerland from the France side of the country. We had planned our family vacation in Switzerland in a small ski-resort town called Crans-Montana. Since we only had a little bit of driving to do, we probably didn’t NEED the toll pass. But we were VERY happy to buy it for the peace of mind in our travel budget!

If you’ve ever driven in or through France, you probably know the tolls on French roads can get SUPER expensive, very quickly! A toll pass would have been a huge blessing to our family travel budget in France!! (I actually have a whole post about driving tips for France, if you’re visiting there soon.)

You can probably use Google Maps to see the roads you’ll be driving on and get a rough idea of what the tolls might cost to determine if a toll pass is worth it to you. It was great for us to have it and know that we were never going to pay more than that first 40 bucks, no matter what.

 Since we’re on the subject, these next two Switzerland tips are all about driving in Switzerland.

First of all, I want to prep you in advance for the narrow roads. If you’ve ever driven in the mountains, you probably know what to expect in Switzerland. 

But if not, or if it’s been a while, here’s a quick refresher. There are a LOT of hills and mountains in this country. In fact, most of the tourist cities in Switzerland are mountainy. 

So it helps to be prepared for narrow roads, sometimes going down to one lane, and almost always on an incline or decline. (You’ll be driving up or down a lot of hills.)

I could have (and maybe should have) put this information up in the previous Switzerland tip. But for those of you just skimming through the main points, I wanted this tip to stand out. It’s important no matter where to go in Switzerland.

In general, cars travelling uphill have priority. BUT larger motor vehicles going downhill (such as big trucks, lorries and buses) have priority over lighter vehicles like cars.

How to handle this when you’re driving on a mountain road: 

If a big truck or bus is coming down towards you and the road ahead looks narrow, just pull as far to the side as possible to let them pass you safely. Once the road is clear, you can continue on up the hill or mountain.

If two cars are going in opposite directions, the car going uphill has priority over the car going down. That’s it! (You can get more details in this Switzerland Traffic Guide here.)

Now, I know these last couple of ‘driving in Switzerland tips’ might seem intimidating. And if you’re like me, you might be having second thoughts. 

But our family found Switzerland to be the best country for family vacation in Europe so far, and we are SO GLAD we visited! The next few tips will probably show you why…

The people are really friendly and speak English almost everywhere. Regardless of where you decide to take your family vacation in Switzerland, you will find friendly, helpful people. 

You can order in restaurants, check out groceries or buy travel trinkets, all without worrying about a language barrier.

Even if people don’t quite understand you, they are kind and helpful and typically don’t mind waiting for you to type things into your Google Translate app. 

You’re also likely to find people willing to chit chat with you in shops and restaurants. You can ask questions about the town, get their opinions on food or activity choices, and otherwise just be friendly with one another!

That being said, I do like to add a helpful infographic to these tips posts to include a few common phrases in the local language. It might be fun to step outside your comfort zone and ask for the bathroom in a new language!

In Switzerland, the official languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh.

Here’s a quick reference guide in German, but you can find my French guide in my Tips for Visiting Southern France post, too!

If you’re planning a Switzerland family vacation, you probably already know this: Switzerland is a GREAT place for scenic pictures! If you look at any list of top 10 things to do in Switzerland, you’ll see gorgeous scenery and unbelievable views! (We’ll talk about the best way to decide what to do in Switzerland a couple of tips down, don’t worry.)

Even though I was fully prepared for all of the beautiful things to see in Switzerland, my camera was not. I actually had a decent mobile phone (not an iphone, unfortunately) and usually love the photos I take when we’re traveling in Europe with kids!

But during our trip to Switzerland, my mobile phone just could not come close to capturing the beauty of Switzerland vacation spots. 

Luckily, I had already invested in a small drone to fly over the lavender fields in Provence. It was a bucket list vacation for me, and you can read about that in my Provence Lavender Fields blog post. 

But my drone was REALLY helpful for capturing great footage on this trip! Not only did I get to fly over the best tourist places in Switzerland, but I got to use it in some of the more unique places to visit in Switzerland, too!

I personally chose this smaller DJI mini drone from Amazon, because you don’t need a lot of paperwork or permissions due to its small size (under 250 grams). You can read more about drone requirements in the EU here, if that sounds interesting to you.

Another thing we invested in for this trip was my husband’s camera. He purchased an Olympus Tough TG-6 Action Camera. It’s a small digital camera that takes FANTASTIC photos. It’s actually great for my husband who is clumsy and has shaky hands. (And it’s great because I’m actually in more of our photos now!)

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Some of the pictures he took during our Switzerland family vacation are our all time favorites! 

I’m at high risk for developing Alzheimer’s when I’m older, so photos and videos are very important to our family. In fact, one of the reasons we started this blog was to create a lovely keepsake of all of our family travel memories.

That being said, we also hope to invest in a decent Go-Pro style camera before our next big trip. (If you have any suggestions for a great one, please comment below for us!)