A Luxury Alpine Train Journey Through Switzerland

Located near the alpine passes in one of Switzerland’s most beautiful regions, Gstaad is a small village known for its high-profile guests, luxury hotels and high-end restaurants. The crisp mountain air, soaring peaks and lush alpine scenery make this a wonderful place to explore the great outdoors. Don your walking boots and discover the 300km of hiking trails, or sit back and relax in one of the cable cars that wind their way through moors, valleys and gorges.

In the village itself you’ll find boutiques, art galleries and shops as well as picture-perfect chalets fitted with charming wooden shutters and window boxes overflowing with flowers. Gourmet restaurants abound along with those focusing on more traditional Swiss cuisine and there are plenty of places to stop and drink in coffees and aperitifs as well as the spectacular views.

The farmers in the Swiss mountains move up to higher altitudes with their cows during the summer months, heading to the best pastures, which cannot be reached during winter. Many of them live in different alpine huts during summer, where they can take care of the cows. Instead of bringing the fresh milk down to the dairy in the valley every morning, the farmers themselves produce cheese in their huts.

You'll head out early in the morning to an alpine hut and unlock the secrets of cheese production using the freshest milk from local cows. You can even lend a hand yourself, before sitting down to enjoy a traditional breakfast with the farmer.

Take a cable car to up to Glacier 3000, for a ride over the glacier by the Snow Bus and a walk along an ice track to the spectacular Peak Walk by Tissot, the first and only suspension bridge to connect two mountain peaks. You can also have lunch at Refuge l'Espace, a cliffside restaurant with incredible views.

The Jungfraujoch is an alpine viewing point located in between the well-known mountains Mönch and Jungfrau. From Grindelwald, take the cog train to Europe's highest train station, at an impressive 3,454m where spectacular views across the surrounding mountains await. Together with your private mountain guide, you'll then hike across the glacier to the Mönchsjoch hut, before returning and taking the train back to Grindelwald.

Board the GoldenPass train and enjoy a scenic journey through breathtaking alpine scenery.

Zermatt is a fairytale village in every sense. Traditional alpine architecture abounds with wooden shutters adorning windows and pine lodges stretching up the valley side. With a ban of combustion engines in town, horse-drawn carriages can be seen trotting along the avenues while others choose to hop on bicycles to make their way around. Dominating the valley is the Matterhorn its emblematic, triangular peak composed of four sheer sides facing north, south, east and west. The mountain is solitary in its great size, dominating the distant skyline long before the first summit in 1865. For those who are not experts at scaling these great heights, there are a couple of railway and cable car facilities that travel part way up the 4,478m (14,692 foot) ascent.

The steep Gornergrat Railway is the highest open-air railway in Europe, offering fantastic sweeping views of Zermatt. After the Riffelberg stop, where there's an amazing view of the Matterhorn, you can see Monte Rosa and its glacier. Enjoy the breathtaking panorama of the numerous tongues of ice and the Valais. The excursion can be rounded off by the ascent first to Hohtälli, then to Stockhorn in two successive cable cars. If you don't suffer from vertigo, walk from Gornergrat to Hohtälli, following a narrow mountain path for truly breathtaking views.

The pyramid of the Matterhorn dominates the centre of Zermatt, situated in the Nikolaital Valley. The mountain has strongly influenced the development of this old village, which was 'discovered' a century ago by the British and launched as a resort in 1855 by the Seilers, a family of hotel-keepers. Zermatt is renowned as an important mountaineering centre, with a dozen peaks over 4000m within easy access of the resort. It's popular with visitors of all nationalities and the resort is traffic-free, with the exception of small electric vehicles and horse-drawn carriages and sleighs.

The Gorner gorge, a short walk from Zermatt, is a place of exceptional natural beauty. The wooden walkways leading between the towering cliffs provide a dramatic insight into the power of nature. Since the last ice age, the waters of the Gornervispe have carved an ever deeper chasm. Access for tourists was created back in 1886 and 1887. The rock, greenish serpentinite, is about 220 million years old.

Board the world-famous Glacier Express train for one of the world's most panoramic rail journeys. Crossing hundreds of bridges and passing through dozens of tunnels, today you'll undertake the first half of the trip to Andermatt, a journey of a little under four hours, travelling on the Mattertal line and Furka section of the route.

Enjoy an evening in the Alpine village of Andermatt. The village’s narrow streets are lined with traditional chalets and up the Ursern Valley you'll find the Devil’s Bridge, which spans the sheer Schöllenen Gorge.

Enjoy a particularly scenic half of the Glacier Express line, travelling east through the mountains from Andermatt to St. Moritz and crossing the famous Landwasser Viaduct en route on a journey that takes five hours.

With backdrops of breath-taking forests blanketed in snow, and dramatic peaks cutting into cobalt skies, lakeside St. Moritz is as picturesque an alpine destination as you could imagine. In the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden, it's the original alpine playground, attracting royalty and the rich for over 150 years, and is more than equipped to cater for the rarefied crowds both in the winter and sun-drenched summers.

Enjoy a private stand-up paddleboarding lesson on one of the beautiful Engadine lakes.

One of the most spectacular ways to cross the Alps, the Bernina Express from St. Moritz to Tirano links up regions with different languages and cultures on a wonderfully scenic route that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sharing more of its border with Italy than Switzerland, Italian is the only official language in Ticino, and great swathes of culture, culinary tradition and history are shared with neighbouring Lombardy and Piedmont. As well as forest-covered mountains, water defines the region, the canton taking its name from the Ticino River that flows southwest into the Po, and centred around the two great transfrontier lakes – Lugano and Maggiore – with their deep blue waters fringed by colourful towns and snow-capped peaks. The city of Lugano itself has picturesque boulevards lined with palm trees and stunning views of the Alps, and, as with sophisticated Locarno by Maggiore, is a great base from which to explore the region. There are some 4000km of hiking trails snaking out across the mountains, wild swimming in the beautiful Valle Verzasca, boating, mountain biking and rustic villages to discover. The Italian cities of Como and Varese are easily reachable too.

Enjoy a full-day tour to the region's most beautiful valleys, such as Valle Bavona, Valle Verzasca and Valle Maggia. Bavona Valley, which branches off from the Maggia Valley, is characterised by its wilderness and rustic villages, while Verzasca runs with incredible clear emerald water and Maggia is dotted with small picturesque stone houses, vineyards and dairy farms.

Historic Bellinzona, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is an inevitable point of passage for trans-Alpine traffic taking the routes through St Gothard, Lukmanier or San Bernardino on the Italian side of the Alps. It has gone from being a thousand-year-long stronghold defending Tessin to being the canton's administrative capital. The castle has three castles, two of which - Castelgrande and Castello di Montebello - were once joined by walls that can still be seen, give an idea of the fortified buildings that once protected the city.