Vacations

Not for nothing that Switzerland is known to be paradise on earth. And in true sense going to paradise is never easy not cheap.

Switzerland is rated as the most expensive country in the world to visit. Since it’s so expensive to visit, most of the people skip this destination for the later. Planning a swiss holiday seemed daunting, having a strong currency and high taxes, and being a mecca for rich banks, international organizations, wealthy residents, and tax shelters.

But what’s fun if you cant visit the most expensive destination in budget. And that’s what we, TheTravelTotes love to do, travel in budget but uncompromisingly.

For the detailed itinerary of Switzerland please click here.

In the this blog, we will take you through the detailed expenses we incurred for the entire trip from the Flight Tickets to the souvenirs.


Fight Tickets: This is the part which takes the maximum of your budget and needs to be detailed out. Hence we would be coming up with a detailed blog on the same very soon, as this needs a special attention. But for now, in a nutshell, we booked the tickets almost 3 months in advance and after a lot of checking and being flexible with dates and our port of entry & exit. We always have a preference for a stopover flight. But in this case we were lucky enough to get a direct flight at a good price.

Our quick hacks for efficient flight bookings, click here.

>Return Ticket for 2 via Swiss/Lufthansa : Rs 73890 / 940 Euro

Visa/Insurance: With VFS Global, the visa process is very simple and is not tedious at all. At the same time buying an insurance is extremely important and easy, which you can buy from any of your local insurance providers.

>Schengen Visa for 2 : Rs 12000 & Insurance for 2 : Rs 2117


Stay: For the detailed description on picking up Airbnb as preferred staying option please click here. Similarly we picked up our preferred option of Airbnb for the majority of our stay, which is for Geneva & Interlaken. For the last leg, we got a brilliant deal at a renowned hotel in Zurich just next to city centre, hence we chose that. But it is imperative you research in detail for the accommodation that you look to pick up, in regard to location, distance from city centre, nearby transportation, included meals, etc. Swizerland has amazing network of transportation, hence even if you are slightly away from the city centre, it would be easy to travel.

>Geneva 1 Night: Rs 8693 ; Interlaken 4 Nights: Rs 34802 ; Zurich 3 Nights: Rs 47424


Meal/Food: This part of the expense is ignored by lot of us and in the end, this could accumulate as the major contributor to your overall trip expenses. Hence, its important to plan the same wisely in advance. Switzerland doesn’t have many local delicacies which needs to be tried, so it makes more sense that you can carry your own ready to eat meals/breakfast or buy from the local supermarkets, which are equally economical. But carrying your own ready to eat meals will make sense only if you are staying in an Airbnb which mostly gives access to the kitchen.

For our trip we had carried ready to eat meals which we mostly had for dinner, snacks such as wafers, biscuits to be had on the move, maggi if we are back early. But few of these things you can to away from carrying from your home town as most of them are easily available at the local supermarts, Coop & Migros, as it can help you in travelling light. We used to buy frozen yoghurt, ready to drink coffee, nutri bars, fruits etc from Coop or Migros. This would take care of your breakfast and dinner, for lunch we used to have it at some local café/restaurant. Mostly we used to stop buy in evening to have coffee and some snacks. Also, Switzerland as a country sleeps early, hence you would not find that great a nightlife not will you miss much by having wine and dinner at your Airbnb. But at times post our dinner, we used to step out for a stroll.

>10 Ready to Eat Meals: Rs 900 ; 10 RTE Breakfast: Rs 500 ; 8 Maggi Cuppa: Rs 360 ; Waffers/Biscuits: Rs 500 ; Frozen Yoghurt: Rs 600 ; Fruits: Rs 500 ; 12 Meals/Lunch at local cafes: Rs 18000 ; 12 RTD Emmi Coffee: 2160 ; 12 Coffee/Snacks: Rs 6000


Chocolates: If in Switzerland, you cannot not have chocolates. Here you would find one of the best variety of chocolate, if not the best. Few of the best chocolate brands hail from Swiss. Hence, please don’t hold yourselves back in spending or keeping aside some money for this worthwhile spend. But it is important to buy them from the places where you can get good deals and 2 of them have best of the deals are Coop & Migros, two of the most famous local supermarkets. We had loads of it & bought loads to carry them back home.

>10 Lindt Bars: Rs 2160 ; 5 Assorted Lindt: Rs 2880 ; 3 Toblerone Bars: Rs 1296 ; 10 Coop/Migros local chocolate bars: Rs 720 : 4 Fresh Chocolate Bars: Rs 1000


Souvenirs/Shopping: Buying souvenirs or picking up some local stuff if a part we love doing as these are memorabilia that everyone want to take and collect. But in Swiss be mindful that shopping from brands is extremely expensive, even though you will find best of them. Hence, we restricted our selves to mostly souvenirs & shopping small stuff as swiss knife etc

>Spent: Rs 10000

Given below is the total breakup for 2 of us