Swiss Train Restaurant Car

Departs from Gare de Cornavin, Geneva

Best routes Geneva → Zürich, Bern, Lausanne east

Ticket Standard — no upgrade needed

Tip by @dave

Here's a really useful tip for travelling by train in Switzerland. Don't book first class. Buy a standard ticket — but don't go to your seat. Walk straight to the restaurant car.

If you're lucky, and you usually are, a white tablecloth table awaits you with a waiter. Sit down, open your laptop, order a coffee, and stay there for the whole trip. What you spend on food and drink will probably come to around the same price as a first class ticket — but this is legitimately nicer. Proper coffee, wine if you want it, a table to yourself with the Alps or the forest going past the window.

"Share a bottle of wine with a friend or a stranger. Watch Switzerland go by. Nobody seems to know this is an option, which is why the car is usually half empty and completely calm."

Play a game. Watch a movie on your laptop. Have a long lunch. The restaurant car is one of the great underused pleasures of Swiss train travel — a proper dining room moving through one of the most beautiful countries in the world at 200km/h, and almost entirely to yourself.

Swiss train restaurant car — white tablecloth tables, Lake Geneva and Alps through the window

White tablecloth. Alps out the window. Standard ticket.

White tablecloth table, coffee, laptop, forest rushing past the window — Swiss restaurant car

A bottle of white wine and two glasses on the white tablecloth, Swiss restaurant car

Laptop open watching a film, glass of rosé on the white tablecloth, Swiss restaurant car

Restaurant car sign on the side of the train at the platform — you can't miss it

Noughts and crosses on the back of a receipt — what you do in the restaurant car when you have time

The tip

Buy a standard ticket — no upgrade, no first class
Board the train, skip your seat, walk to the restaurant car
Sit down and stay. You can be there the whole journey.
Order coffee, wine, food — whatever you want. The bill roughly equals a first class upgrade anyway.
The car is usually half empty. Nobody knows this exists.
Best on longer routes: Geneva → Zürich is the classic

← Cornavin