Switzerland has plenty of beautiful places to offers to the admirers of nature and impressive magnificent infrastructures, and depending upon your mood, weather and your time constraints, you can choose to go to almost any of these wonderful locations, because, Switzerland won't disappoint you.
Rapperswil-Jona is one such small beautiful town which you can visit and spend a day or a half to explore the place. You can visit this place by Rail, Road, or Water, all the mediums of transport have attractive sceneries to offer during the journey to the town. It is also known as the town of Roses, because of its three designated Rose parks. In the canton of St.Gallen, Rapperswil-Jona is a combination of two different municipalities - Rapperswil and Jona, and is a popular excursion destination on the right bank of Lake Zurich. If you are traveller and just visiting the town as a stop over, then I think some of the below listed spots will be good ones to feel the vibes of this attractive place.
Now First thing First: How to reach this town?
- By Train: Depending upon which direction you are coming from, you will find train connection from any place you are at, however, if I consider you are coming from Zurich, then you can get lot of options every few minutes from Zurich main station (Zurich Hauptbanhof, or often called as Zurich HB), to Rapperswil SG, like train number S2, S5, S15 etc.
Tickets prices depends upon the type of ticket you take, like options for residents are, they can take zone wise time bounded tickets, normal tickets with Half Cards, etc, and if you are a tourists, you can reach out the Tourist information for travel packages, which I will suggest to definitely consider, as that will save you on the cost.
If you have a smartphone, please consider install the app "SBB" on you mobile, which can help you find any travel connections, including the Ferry connections.
- By Ferry/Ship: Travelling by ship will surely take 3 times more time than train or car, but on the same hand, the experience of joy too is many more times than other means.
You can use the similar SSB app as stated above, and in the filters, you can choose the ship option and uncheck other mediums, which will give your the result as shown in the adjacent image for ferry options.
On the board, you can go around to different areas ofd the ship depending upon the class of ticket you bought, i.e. 1st class or 2nd class, though there is no less fun with the 2nd class ticket as well, but with 1st class, you may get some additional access to some more classy areas. But trust me, you wont miss any fun with the 2nd class ticket as well.
You can also enjoy and relish some drinks and snacks in the Restaurant in the ship, and the prices are not much different than the prices of the items on land. Of course I mean, the usual cafes, or restaurants.
- By Car: You can also travel by car and the duration of travel is usually not very different than the train travel. Personally I really enjoy the drive in the country, and I don't miss any opportunity to drive across places like Rapperswil. The best part is, you can choose a route through the mountains, country side, instead of motorway, and the definitely you will cherish the journey.
You don't need to own a car to cherish a road trip in Switzerland, there are plenty of options to choose from with variety of plans which suits your pocket. There are good international rental car providers like Sixt, Hertz etc, from where you can hire a daily rental cars, and with another vendor called Mobility, from where you can also take the car of your choice and budget based on hourly rental basis: Click here to see more details on Click and Drive offer from Mobility Car sharing.
For more details on car rentals in Switzerland, you can read the article: How to rent a car in Switzerland
Before we go further, I would like to share a short Youtube video with an aerial view of this beautiful place. I shot this using a DJI mini 2 drone from the Rapperwil-Jona harbour (Hafen) and may give you a reason to visit this place and spend some good moments.
If you like the video, please don't forget to press the below Youtube subscribe button for my channel
There is actually a lot you can do in this small town, however, from an eye of a usual tourist, I would like to share some of my recommendations in this article to help you find out on the Things you can do in Rapperswil-Jona.
"Do you feel incomplete somewhere inside, even when you are surrounded with all what you wanted? You need to Travel and Explore ."
— Anonymous
If you are travelling to Zurich city, and have some additional time, then I will suggest that you take a Ferry from Zurich-Bürkliplatz to Rapperswil-Jona, because it for sure offers more wonderful experience than travelling by train. Of course you won't regret the train or car travel too.
Things you can do in Rapperswil-Jona:
- Rapperswil-Jona Harbor:
If you reach the town by Ferry, and its a sunny day, I bet the harbour won't let you lose its sight before you spend some time walking around at the place, cherishing the cheers outside the restaurants along the harbour. Or watching the beautiful lake sitting on a bench at the banks of the lake and sipping a drink or licking over a melting ice cream. I personally enjoy spending time here before I walk further inside the town.
- Schloss Rapperswil and Polish Museum:
Jump into the history with the courtyards and towers of medieval castle visible from far in the town. If you like to look at the things from the past and how world lived like hundreds of years back, you will surely have a good time visiting the castle. You might want to look at this link for some more details on the castle, entry ticket - if applicable, and for eg. Polish Museum, which is on the second floor of the Castle, the timings and some pictures if you want to see if you would want to visit the castle. You can also look in more details on the Polish Museum on this link.
- Rose Garden - From where it is known as The Town of Roses:
There are more than 16000 roses in the Capuchin monastery and in Schanz, which is a rose garden especially for the Blinds, with rose of specific fragrances. Rapperswil gets its another name as "The Town of Roses" from these rose gardens, and is indeed a beautiful reason.
But keep in mind that the maximum you can cherish these roses is during the season when all these flowers blossoms, because otherwise you may not be able to experience this bundle of joy. You can also read the names of the roses on the guided panels along the roses, which will surely surprise you when you will find out that there is such vast variety of roses that exists. You can visit this link to see some more details about the rose garden.
There are, no doubt more places than listed here, which you can visit in the town, but I have tried to key of the places which I have always found pretty interesting to look at. Indeed my take will always be to count the moments you can spend at any place, than to count the places you can or visit.
