Alps to
Bavaria

Land at Zurich and transfer to Baur au Lac, which has stood in its own private park on the shore of Lake Zurich since 1844 and has been run by the same family for seven generations.

The evening walks the city: Bahnhofstrasse, one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world, then down to the lake with the Alps beyond it.

Through the Altstadt to the Grossmünster, the twin-towered cathedral where the Swiss Reformation began, and across to the Fraumünster for Chagall’s stained glass, which is worth going out of your way for. Finish at Lindenhof above the river. Dinner is Swiss: rösti, Zürcher Geschnetzeltes, cheese and chocolate.

North to the Rheinfall, the largest waterfall in Europe — 150 metres wide, 23 metres high, and running up to 700,000 litres a second in summer. A boat takes you right into the spray beneath the falls, which is louder and wetter than any photograph suggests.

Then Stein am Rhein, a medieval town on the river whose half-timbered houses carry painted facades across their entire fronts. It is one of the most complete small towns in Switzerland.

Back to Zurich, with free time on Bahnhofstrasse.

A forty-five minute train to Lucerne, and a transfer to the Mandarin Oriental Palace on the lakefront — a Belle Époque landmark of 1906, and the only international luxury hotel in the city.

The afternoon walks Lucerne: the Kapellbrücke, the oldest covered wooden bridge in Europe, with its 17th-century painted panels under the roof, and the octagonal Water Tower that has stood beside it for over seven hundred years.

Then the old town and its painted facades; the Lion Monument, carved into a sandstone cliff for the Swiss Guards who died in the French Revolution and described by Mark Twain as the saddest piece of stone in the world; the Jesuit Church, the first large baroque church in Switzerland; and the lake promenade. Dinner beside the water.

The Golden Round Trip, and it is the classic for good reason: an 80-minute boat across Lake Lucerne to Alpnachstad, then the ascent of Pilatus on the steepest cogwheel railway in the world — a gradient of 48 per cent, which has to be experienced to be believed.

From the 2,128-metre summit the view runs across 73 peaks, the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau among them. Walk the summit ridge, and take lunch at the mountain restaurant.

The descent is by cable car, followed by a cruise back across the lake with the Alps reflected in it.

A train from Lucerne into Bavaria, four to five hours through Swiss landscape and into the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.

Check in at the Bayerischer Hof, a grand hotel that operates more like a small city — restaurants, bars, a private cinema and its own theatre — run by the same family for four generations since 1897.

The afternoon is Munich: Marienplatz and the Neues Rathaus with its Glockenspiel; the Frauenkirche, whose twin domes are the city’s symbol; and the Viktualienmarkt. Dinner is Bavarian — pretzels, weißwurst, schnitzel and Munich beer.

A private day into the Bavarian countryside to Neuschwanstein, Ludwig II’s romantic vision of medieval knighthood against the Alps — and the castle Disney borrowed.

Skip-the-line tickets include a guided tour of interiors considerably stranger and more theatrical than the exterior lets on. The walk up is about 1.5 kilometres and steep, and the Marienbrücke over the gorge gives the view everyone knows.

Then Hohenschwangau, where Ludwig grew up, and the Alpine villages and lakes around it. Back to Munich.

A high-speed ICE north, roughly four hours from Bavaria to the capital, and a transfer to the Adlon Kempinski on Unter den Linden beside the Brandenburg Gate.

The afternoon covers the essentials: the Brandenburg Gate; the Reichstag with Norman Foster’s glass dome; Unter den Linden; Museum Island, a UNESCO site with five world-class museums; the Berlin Cathedral; and Alexanderplatz.

Dinner in a traditional Berlin restaurant.

A day given to the twentieth century. The Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse keeps a section of wall, the death strip and a memorial to those killed crossing it. The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving stretch, painted by artists from around the world.

The afternoon takes in Checkpoint Charlie; the Topography of Terror on the site of the Gestapo headquarters; and the Holocaust Memorial, whose 2,711 stelae only work when you walk into them. The DDR Museum is an optional addition for an interactive look at life in the East.

Dinner in a traditional Berlin restaurant.

The morning is Charlottenburg Palace, the largest in Berlin, built for the first Queen of Prussia; then Kurfürstendamm and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, deliberately left broken.

The afternoon is a food walk: currywurst, döner, pretzels, schnitzel, German cakes and local beer.

A farewell dinner closes the journey.

Breakfast at the Adlon and, if the flight allows, a final walk to the Brandenburg Gate. Private transfer to Berlin Brandenburg Airport.