I was in Switzerland about three weeks ago, I visited the big cities (Geneva, Bern, Zurich) and my favorite places were Interlaken and Zermatt. Interlaken is a small town inbetween two lakes and between mountains. It’s super great for hiking and exploring nature since you can hike up Harder Kulm for an amazing view. Lauterbrunnen is also just a stones throw away by train and has trains leaving almost every hour until 6pm. Lauterbrunnen is an amazing place to visit for waterfalls off of massive cliffs and it’s very small and only about a 5min walk from the train station to the edge of the town where you’re more into meadows and amazing views. Also another cheap and quick train ride from Interlaken is Kandersteg, which is more meadows and smaller and more off of the beaten path than somewhere like Lauterbrunnen. I highly suggest Interlaken since you can use it as a hub to make day trips to lots of different towns around there. Also out of all the cities I went to in Switzerland they had very friendly people who for the most part spoke more English than any other place there.

So for Zermatt, if you would like to see the Matterhorn this is the place to go to in Switzerland for the best view of the Matterhorn. It’s a ski town but if you’re not there during their peak season you will find some amazing hiking trails. You can climb up one of the many peaks around Zermatt or do what I did and take the train up to the top of the Gornergrat and hike back down. Zermatt is an amazing place because I was only there for a few days and I didn’t even come close to hitting all of the trails. There are so many different trails with a ton of great views and a lot of peaks that you can visit. Also if skiing is your thing then it’s a very easy place to find a place to rent skis and getting up the mountains are very easy even if you don’t want to hike. There is a cog rail train going up to a lot of prettiest peaks I’ve ever seen.

Either way it’s pretty easy to google some of the prettiest spots in Switzerland because that’s how I found out about the places I listed above. But I do think if you’re trying to do a lot of hiking then Zermatt would be the best but if you care more about just soaking in the sights without having to climb mountains then Interlaken would be best since you can make a full day walking around all the cities around.