Day trips by car from Zermatt / St. Niklaus

a) Lausanne, Montreux, Chillon Castle and Sion (with their twin castles)

b) St.Niklaus is not a good base to do anything else than the Zermatt Region;
but I think you have booked your chalet and rental car already....
...so for Interlaken it's about 2 hours each way (including a drive with your car on a car train through the Lötschberg Tunnel) and Interlaken is only the hub to visit the mountains above (like Jungfraujoch/Schilthorn/Grindelwald and Wengen). And as you have your share of mountains around Zermatt I would skip that idea. Depending on your interest visit Bern or Lucerne instead.
...Lugano is in my eyes no option, stay longer in the Zermatt Region (or visit Saas Fee and the nearby water dam of Mattmark)

Anyway in my eyes you should have made your homework even earlier, because in late April as you will travel there is still snow on the higher parts (like Zermatt) but not enough snow for good skiing.

Hi Onyx,

You are right - this wasn't our best planned holiday. We were supposed to go in December but couldn't because of a family emergency. The car rental and chalet people said they couldn't refund but we could use them again. Easter break was the only time we could get holidays, so kind of stuck with Zermatt in April. That said, we are not so fussed about the lack of snow.

Thanks for the suggestions in (a) - they sound great.

As for (b), you are right, not so keen on taking the car on the train etc. If you don't mind, could I ask you why Lugano is not an option - is it because of the distance or the place itself ? How about the castles of Bellinzona ?

Thanks a lot for taking out the time - appreciate that.

Cheers

First of all it is not a big hassle to use the car train; it will cost you about 54 swiss francs (round-trip) and the drive is only about 15 min through the Lötschberg Tunnel as there is no street going over this mountain:

http://bls.ch/e/autoverlad/goppenstein.php

About Lugano. Yes, distance is my first concern, also I'm not sure which route you should take to reach this part starting in St.Niklaus (every destination in the italian part, so it's the same for Bellinzona) but also traditionaly on the easter weekend Ticino (the italian speaking canton) will be packed with northern tourists and especially on the 21st the streets back to the northern part of the country will be packed with people returning home after the easter weekend to get back to work on tuesday.

So in my opinion the better two days to do your day trips will anyway be the 19th and 20th.

Another suggestion if you really like to get a bit of the "South Side" you might try Stresa in Italy. It's much closer and also in my opinion, any bigger town on the shore of one of the lakes down there looks similar.

Thank you so much for your response and for taking out the time :)

If we were to go to Oeschinensee, will we still have to take the car train through the Lötschberg Tunnel ?

Also, when I search for the directions from St. Niklaus to Interlaken on Google, it shows a route that goes through Fiersch, Innertkirchen, and Meringen saying it is 139 Kms and will take 2 hours 14 minutes. Is that an underestimation on google's part ?

Once again, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it :)

Yes on your first question. Everything in the Canton of Bern is only reachable through the Lötschberg Tunnel.

To your google search, that's right but only in summertime as this is a way over the Grimsel Pass Route which I don't think will be open.

Another destination (if you like spa) might be Leukerbad, which is in Valais.