Product Description

Much more detailed and complete than its major competitor, Frommer's Switzerland has everything you'll need to experience the best of this gorgeous corner of the Alps. You'll find great places to stay for every taste and budget, including grand hotels, luxury ski resorts, intimate inns, and affordable chalets, plus the latest on dining, from fresh lake trout and hearty farmer's plates to fondue bourguignonne. You'll rely on our complete sightseeing guide, from cosmopolitan cities to charming alpine villages—with all the best outdoor adventures, shopping, and nightlife. Don't leave home without it!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131743 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 497 pages

Download Description
In addition to the allure of its cosmopolitan cities, alpine villages, and incredible skiing and hiking, Switzerland is home of the annual June ARTBASEL, the biggest art fair of its kind, called "The Olympics of the Art World" by the International Herald Tribune.

From the Back Cover
Frommer's. The best trips start here.

Experience a place the way the locals do.
Enjoy the best it has to offer.

• Including detailed walking tours to guide you through the cobblestone streets of Zurich, Bern, Geneva, and Lucerne.

• Outspoken opinions on what's worth your time and what's not.

• Exact prices, so you can plan the perfect trip whatever your budget.

• Off-the-beaten-path experiences and undiscovered gems, plus new takes on top attractions.

Find great deals and book your trip at Frommers.com

About the Author
An experienced team of veteran travel writers, Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince have produced numerous titles for Frommer’s, including best-selling guides to Italy, France, the Caribbean, England, Germany, and Portugal. Porter is also a noted Hollywood biographer, author of such recent releases as Brando Unzipped and Jacko: His Rise and Fall which documents the saga of Michael Jackson in a way that London’s Guardian and Observer defined as “dangerously addictive.” Four of Porter’s recent biographies have been serialized in major newspapers of the U.K., including The Sunday Times and The Mail on Sunday, and collectively, they’ve earned at least six awards from literary foundations in the U.S. Porter is also a widely respected film critic, entertainment columnist, and radio commentator, with broadcasts heard in all 50 states. Prince, formerly of The New York Times’ Paris bureau, is president of Blood Moon Productions (www.BloodMoonProductions.com) and other media-related firms.

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Choice if you are Heading to Switzerland
This is the only book I bought for my trip to Switzerland, and I was able to get by very well with it. I visted Zurich, Lucerne, Lugano, Bern, Interlaken, Zermatt, Montreaux, Lausanne, and Geneva, and found the book to have all the information I needed for each city.

The format is easy to use, with listings of hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, bars, nightclubs, etc., for each city, and the book includes info on virtually every city and town in Switzerland that a tourist could want to see. For major cities, the book even has maps showing where hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions are located, as well as more detailed maps of proposed "walking tours."

There are no photos of Switzerland in this book, except on the front and back cover. Although the lack of photos doesn't bother me, if you want photos of Switzerland in your guide book, I would suggest the DK Eyewitness guide.

Good But There are Better
I have been to Switzerland many times. Recently I sat down with my daughter who has worked at a hotel at Interlaken in Switzerland during her years in Business Administration at McGill - up to last summer - and we went over the Switzerland guides to see how they ranked, and what was currently the best guide in our humble opinions. We are not experts but have certain requirements and preferences. It helps if one can get a feel for the area in advance of a trip, and generally that is helped by good maps and color photos. So those guides do better in our review. We like to make reservations by internet and telephone and just use the Guide as a "guide".

Generally it costs more to publish a book with color photos so when all else is reasonably equal, one feels that they get better value with a guide with photos. Also we wanted to see if the ambiance at certain hotels and resorts was accurately portrayed in the text based on our knowledge. So those aspects of the guides determine our ranking. Incidentally all the books are excellent. When we did our review the new DK Eyewitness guide was not yet available, but in any case it will be short, under 400 pages.

For the Swiss guides we separated the guides into three groups, 5, 4, and 3 stars.

5 Stars (this group has nice color photos plus maps and text).

A. Green Guide to Switzerland published February 2001 by Michelin, 395 pages, $14., ranked 24,380 on Amazon.com, 0.64" x 9.4" x 4.7", lots of photos, maps, text, accurate portrayal of areas. Gives a nice idea of what you will find. Goes right down to small villages in detail even though it is just 395 pages. First choice.

B. Lonely Planet Switzerland published July 2003, 335 pages, $ 14., ranked 29,913 on Amazon.com, .69" x 6.42" x 6.5". Solid effort, lots of good photos and descriptions.

4 Stars (this group mainly text and maps).

C. Rough Guide to Switzerland published June 2003, 704 pages, $13.27, ranked 30,209 on Amazon.com, 1.08" x 7.8" x 6.38". Solid effort lots of things to see and do and best "text and maps only" books.

D. Frommer's Switzerland published February 2003, 512 pages, $15.39, ranked 47,638 on Amazon.com, 1.1" x 8.5" x 5.08". Similar to Rough Guide but shorter.

E. Fodor's Guide to Switzerland 42 edition, published December 2002, 448 pages, $14.7, ranked highest in group on Amazon.com at 3,172, 1.2" x 8.98" x 5.01". The smallest in the group, do not know why it is so popular?.

3 Stars

F. Michelin Red Guide published in 2004, 563 pages but in four languages: Italian, French, German and English so English sections are just a fraction of the book.

Good, but lacking some detail
Just visited Switzerland this past April 2003 and used this guide to get around from Fribourg to Geneva, Zurich, Bern, Montreaux and Gruyeres.

This guide provides a lot of useful travel details like AMEX offices in Switzerland and directions by car, train and plane to cities in Switzerland.

In general the guide is good and the walking tours reccommended are well done. I personally followed some of them and they are up to date.

The only part lacking in the guide is the fact that the maps require more detail. I had to use the visitor's maps available at the tourist office to get around with more detail.

The restaurant options may be outdated in some cases as my Fribourg friend pointed out, but this is a good guide to take along with a more detailed city map.

It has good background information on the places visited, but I would reccommend another guide or a map to be really complete.