The Alps

The best of the Alpine destinations of Switzerland

Berner Oberland - People come to Switzerland for the mighty, snow-covered peaks of the Swiss Alps—and there's no better place to see them than the Berner Oberland region, with great skiing and hiking, postcard mountain villages, thrilling cable car rides, and a series of storied peaks culminating in the Queen of the Alps, the legendary 13,642-foot peak of the Jungfrau, home to Europe's highest train station...

The Glacier Express - One of Europe's most scenic and thrilling train rides, a panoramic journey that soars over drop-dead vistas across 291 bridges, plunges through mountain tunnels, and climbs over passes as high as 6,700-feet between Zermatt and St. Moritz...

Zermatt - No cars are allowed on the boutique-lined streets of this tiny Swis ski village, just electric minibus and horse-drawn carriages. There are 60 lifts and cable-cars which skim up the surrounding slopes to bring summer hikers and winter skiers to their trailheads, and though it's surrounded by three dozen mountains that top 13,000 feet, Zermatt's view is dominated by the most photogenic Alp of them all: the thin, snaggle-toothed peak of the Matterhorn...

Leysin - This laid-back village and in a French-speaking corner of the Swiss Alps gateway to several ski areas in the Vaudoise Alps that suffr a mere fraction of the crowds that clog the lift lines in chichi resorts like Zermatt, St. Moritz, and Verbier. My favorite: Glacier 3000, a snow-covered sea of ice at 10,000 feet open for year-round skiing and snowboarding...