best way to get to Murren from paris

Hi, what would be the best way to travel to Murren in Switzerland from Paris. From Murren we will be going to Venice also by train. Is it best to buy a eurail pass or is it best to book just a one way trip direct ticket with the train line. What would be cheaper? What is a SparSchiene ticket? Is it best to book our tickets before we go?

Any help would be great.

Thanks

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%26gt;%26gt;%26gt; Hi, what would be the best way to travel to Murren in Switzerland from Paris. %26lt;%26lt;%26lt;

There is NO best way to get from Paris to Murren. Would you settle for the least bad way?

%26gt;%26gt;%26gt; is it best to book just a one way trip direct ticket %26lt;%26lt;%26lt;

There is NO direct route from Paris to Murren.

The least bad least indirect way would be to take the direct TGV from Paris to Bern. That takes about 5 hours. So far, so good. And now the fun begins...

From Bern you would go by train to Interlaken. Then you change for a train to Lauterbrunnen. Then you change for a bus to Stechelberg. Then you change for the cable-car to Murren.

At least that%26#39;s the best that the official Swiss rail site says you can do.

The entire trip can be done in a little under 8 hours if you don%26#39;t miss any connections.

There is one other little snag. There are not very many direct trains from Paris to Bern, and the only one that really works leaves Paris at 07:44.

One tiny bit of good news here. That train gets into Bern at 12:44 and there are enough connections from Bern to Murren that you cold stop, draw breath, and have lunch in Bern. I think you could afford up to two hours at least before the frequency of trains etc. to take you the rest of the way begins to drop off.

There is really only one later possibility leaving Paris. If you took the TGV that leaves Paris for Lausanne at 13:04, and changed in Lausanne for a train to Bern, you could be in Bern by 18:56. The problem here is that the frequency of connections from Bern to Murren drops off drastically in the evening so you would leave Bern at 21:09 and, after the same baroque exercise - only this time in the dark - you would get to Murren at 23:20. Not good...

Your trip to Venice is equally complicated. The best routing I could find was Murren to Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen to Interlaken (does any of this sound familiar?) to Spiez to Milan to Venice, with changes at each of those intermediate stops. The entire trip would take about 8.5 hours - again assuming you didn%26#39;t miss a single connection.

One possible itinerary would have you leaving Murren at 08:40 and arriving in Venice at 17:08. Again there are enough trains from Milan to Venice that you could break your journey here to regroup. It takes about 5 hours to get from Murren to Milan.

So much for that...

Costwise I cannot imagine that any railpass that would let you travel in France, Switzerland and Italy would cost less than point-to-point tickets for this route. Depending on the date you are travelling, second class tickets from Paris to Bern will cost between 30€ and 75€, first class tickets between 55€ and 120€. The reason for the wide spread is that SNCF (French railwways) has deep discounts for advance purchase ttickets, but at busy travel times these do not last long. So your travel date is crucial. You can book up to 90 days in advance, and you want to do so as soon as possiblr within that time frame.

Your tickets for all your train and bus and cablecar hopping probably don%26#39;t need to be booked in advance. In fact they probably can%26#39;t be. (I just had a thought. You will need to make sure that you have enough time in Bern to buy tickets from Bern to Murren and from Murren to Spiez, for your trip to Venice. But we already figured out that there was no need for you to rush to catch the first available train to Interlaken.)

You will need reservations on the trains from Spiez to Milan and from Milan to Venice. Although there will probably not be any discounts available to you here, you might want to go ahead ad purchase them online in advance just for peace of mind.

One little thing occurs to me. I hope you are not planning to make either of these trips on a peak holiday travel weekend. That could make the whole thing even hairier - if that is possible....

SparSchiene - I suspect this should probably be SparScheine. %26quot;Spar%26quot; in German means saving, Schein is a certificate, so I would guess that it refers to some kind of discount or pass for which you may (or may not) be eligible. If you could give me a URL for the web page where you saw it I might be able to be more help...

You need to go to these sites to figure out timetables and, as far as you can, fares:

www.voyages-sncf.com (French)

www.sbb.ch (Swiss)

www.trenitalia.it (Italian)

All these sites have English language options.

I think that about covers it.

Good luck!

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Thanks irishRovr for your reply!

We will be travelling on the 26th Sep 06, 2 adults and 2 children from Paris to Murren.

If we were to go from Paris to Bern, could the tickets just be bought in paris at the station without any hassel? Once in Bern could we could get a swiss pass where then the children will travel for free and could this be bought at the station in Bern and take us to Murren?

Could we go to Zurich instead of Bern and catch a train to Interlaken Ost and then change trains to Lauterbrunnen Valley?

Unfortunately I can%26#39;t remember which site I saw SparSchiene on.

I appreciate your help.

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How many children, and what ages? It may affect ticket pricing, etc.

Assuming the train to Bern is not fully booked, you can buy your tickets to Bern at the station up to a few minutes before departure. However, you will pay full price for your tickets and you *may* not be able to get seats together - or even in the same compartment - if the train is fairly full.

The same goes for your tickets from Spiez (or wherever - there are different possible itineraries) to Venice.

I cannot answer your question about the Swiss pass. I%26#39;m not familiar with the regulations covering it. That question would be better asked on the appropriate Swiss forum.

In theory you could travel via Zurich. However there is a limited number of direct trains, and even the fastest takes at least an hour longer than it takes to get to Bern. I do not know how going via Zurich would affect your travel times within Switzerland.

At this point I think you need to start doiing some hard research yourself as to timetables. Remember that you are unfamiliar with the places you are passing through, so what maty be an adequate transfer time for someone who knows the system, it may not be for you. Also children will slow you down when making transfers.