We wanted something a little bit different when we went on our honeymoon. We were fed up with the standard European beach resort full of other English people. However, we were also somewhat limited in budget; we didn’t have three grand to blow on a mega holiday after paying for the wedding.

We flew from Birmingham airport early on a June morning direct to Zurich. The flight proved to be a good start – it was economy but basically a business flight and offered decent food, leather seats etc. We landed on time at the airport but didn’t need to collect our bags – these would be transferred directly to our hotel. The rail station is actually underneath the airport and our itinerary provided by Crystal told us we needed to get a train from there to Zurich HB (the main station). This was just 5 minutes away. We went down the escalator and after a couple of minutes the train arrived. Not like your average British train: this was a clean, quiet, double-decker train. We stamped our rail-pass and got on. We’d paid a £35 supplement to travel 1st class, but there was really very little between them on this train (NB this 1st class pass is now included as standard).

The hotel was called the Bellevue au Lac. We were given a room on the 4th floor with a balcony overlooking the lake – fantastic view! The food here was excellent – 4 course meals every night and a good continental-style breakfast. We had 3 nights here, and we were ideally located for exploring surrounding places. The nearest big towns are Thun and Interlaken. Both were very nice although Interlaken was crawling with tourists. We spend another day in Bern, the capital of Switzerland, which was just 30 minute train journey from Thun. This is very nice city, and much smaller than most capitals.

The transfer to our next resort – Zermatt – involved quite a long train journey. However, we were able to arrange luggage transfer locally so we didn’t have to carry our bags around. This was quite a blessing for us as I suffer from M.E. and don’t have very much energy.

We spend a lot of the time in Zermatt travelling up the different mountains by rack-railway or cable car. The area is very popular with hikers although we didn’t do much walking because of my M.E. The views are spectacular but a coat is recommended in the highest places where there was plenty of snow! However, if you are not into serious walking you eventually get the feeling that once you’ve seen one mountain you have seen them all. We were there for 4 nights and I think this was probably enough.

St Moritz was perhaps the most disappointing of the three places. Although very pretty it was definitely aimed more at the winter season. With hindsight we might have been better choosing Davos as our final resort (there was a choice of the 2). The hotel – the Laudinella – was clean and comfortable but the food was a rather mediocre buffet-style affair.

In summary this was an excellent holiday for the money. It cost about £650 each (including flight supplements) for 10 nights half-board. This included all the train transfers and the Glacier Express. This compares very favourably with a stay in a single resort. For example, a 7 night holiday in the Bellevue au Lac would cost £500.