The Rhine Falls and Stein am Rhein, half a day.

The Rhine Falls

Not the tallest waterfall in Europe, but the most powerful: 150 m wide, 23 m high, and in summer around 600 cubic metres of water per second going over the edge. The noise and the spray are the point — photographs consistently fail to convey it.

Boats run to the rock in the middle of the falls, which you can climb for a viewpoint surrounded on all sides by moving water. It is the single best thing to do there and takes about half an hour. Tickets are bought on the day, at the falls.

Both banks have viewing platforms and they are quite different: Schloss Laufen on the south side puts you directly above the drop, while the Neuhausen side gives the wide view. With a driver you can see both, which is awkward otherwise — they are a bridge and a walk apart.

Stein am Rhein

Twenty minutes upriver, and one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Switzerland. The Rathausplatz is lined with houses whose facades are painted floor to roof with sixteenth-century frescoes, each one named — the White Eagle, the Red Ox, the Sun.

It is small, walkable in an hour, and sits on the Rhine where it leaves Lake Constance. Almost nobody on a standard tour goes there, which is precisely why it is worth doing.

Why this works as a half day

The falls are close enough to Zürich that a half day is genuinely unhurried: forty minutes out, a couple of hours at the falls including the boat, twenty minutes to Stein am Rhein, an hour there, and back. It is the tour we suggest most often to people who have one spare afternoon and want to spend it well.

It also works as a stop on the way to or from the airport — if you have a late flight and a free morning, we can collect you, do the falls and drop you at ZRH rather than leave you sitting in a departure hall.