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 Lake Zurich Cruise

During my 2 days stay in Zurich in July 2016, I found Lake Zurich Cruise to be the most enchanting and delightful.  Natural beauty at its best, It is a  perfect combination of picturesque villages, clear blue sky and high mountain pasture field with beautiful houses. Just sitting on a cruise ship deck and watching endless calm water with a vast backdrop of stout Swiss Alps mountains as Zurich city marina receded was a breathtaking experience. 

Lake Zurich surrounding area offers many activities like swimming, hiking, beachside activities, zoo, shopping, restaurants and many other family activities. Read all about them here 

Cost with Zurich Card

I showed my 24 hour Zurich card and paid 5 CHF for ‘short round trip’ 1.5 hours long at cruise dock’s ticket counter without any prior reservation. Boat cruise costs only 5 CHF if you hold a 24 hour or 72 hours Zurich card. There are many other cruise options that start from the same place but may cost little more, but I took the thrifty one:). Other Lake Zurich Cruises.

Zurich Card

Zurich can be purchased for 24 hours for 24CHF  or for 72 hours for 48CHF. It provides free unrestricted travel anywhere in Zurich city and vicinity on train, tram, bus and boat transportation. Click for more info on zurichcard here. Airport/city transfer was so convenient and as per their website, you can travel to local mountains for free as well. This card essentially comes with 7 zones and you can upgrade to other non-covered zones. That will be something I might look into in my next Zurich trip :).  Click here for city map zone. 

Cruise and timings

It is a pleasant 90-minute cruise from Zurich Burkliplatz and makes 9 stops along the way starting with Zurichhorn.  It continued on to Erlenbach (see photo below) and turned around to opposite shore. The cruise starts at every 10 and 40 minutes of an hour and you can access timings here. 

How to get there for lake Zurich Cruise

Lake Zurich Cruises start from Zürich Bürkliplatz. The Boat docks are short 3-minute walk from the tram stop and 10-minute walk from nearest train station Bahnhofstrasse. Bahnhofstrasse is considered a shopper’s paradise with many restaurants. Tram number 8, 2, 9,11,5 and 15 takes you straight to Burkliplatz from where it is 1 t0 3 minutes by foot. You can also take bus No. 161, 165 or N15. See my pocket version of lake Zurich Cruise.  One word of caution for trams. before boarding a tram, make sure it’s going in the direction of Burkliplatz and not opposite :). I did that and happened to get a sightseeing tour of more Zurich than needed on that day. 

Rapperswil and other cruises

There are longer duration cruises, medium round trip of 3 hour to Richterswil, long round trip of 4 hour to Rapperswil and upper lake round trip of 7 hour to Schmerikon. You can actually leave cruise at Rapperswil and take a train back to city.  I found info here to be useful. Rapperswil is known as Rose city of Switzerland. I will definitely go and visit Rapperswil’s rose garden in my next trip to Zurich. 

Cruise Docks and Marina

Before boarding the cruise, I took a stroll along the cruise dock shore watching swans swimming, large Ferris wheel, bustling side street and all this surrounded by mountains. It was a moment to seize and cherish.

 

 

Food and drinks were available to purchase onboard.

 

 

Small Towns

Cruise boat stops at around 9 small villages where one can get off and take a stroll around town. As the boat comes on an average every 30 minutes, you can take the next cruise boat. I really did not think of that idea at that time :).

With each boat stop, we get to see houses in town more closely.

 

 

 

Beautiful Towns along the way

 

 

Cruise Approaching back to the dockyard

 

Lake Zurich Promenade

By the cruise dockyard, there is a nice stretch of promenade and you can stroll along the lake shoreline and explore marina. You can visit Chinese garden which is around 10-minute tram ride south of dockyard and there is a  4 CHF entry fee.  

Link for Chinese garden here

I explored the area very well for a couple of hours and walked across the street to Limmat river marina that you see in the picture above and did some window shopping 🙂 @ Bahnhofstrasse.

Thank you and Let me know

I hope this post on lake Zurich cruise has inspired some of you to make it on your no. 1 thing to do while in Zurich.  Looking forward to any feedback or if there are any questions, let me know in comments section. I would love to hear from you so connect with me via my social icons below. Feel free to share this with others and on Pinterest. You can connect with me on my Instagram account @modlotus for updates on my blog posts and do tag me of your trip to Lake Zurich.

Check out current events near Lake Zurich here 

Official Zurich travel website here 

Found “my Switzerland” website  on the Swiss tourism very helpful  link here 

Read all about my Winter trip from Zurich to Mt. Rigi here.

Happy Reading!! and Wish you all a pleasant and safe summer

 

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