Private Day Trip to Blausee, Thun & Bern : Turquoise Lake, Medieval Castle & UNESCO Old Town | Mercedes Van from Montreux

Your driver-guide picks you up directly at your address in Montreux and heads northeast into the Bernese Oberland, a landscape of forests, lakes and mountain horizons that most visitors only see from a train window.

The first stop changes that entirely. Blausee is a small natural lake fed by underground springs deep in the Bernese forests, its water so clear and so intensely turquoise that it looks almost unreal. There are no crowds here, no noise, just the reflections of fir trees in water that seems lit from below. Your entrance ticket is included. Take as long as you need.

From Blausee, the circuit descends toward Thun, where a 12th-century castle rises sharply above the old town with the peaks of the Bernese Oberland filling the skyline behind it. A natural photo stop that frames the landscape perfectly before the day moves on to the city.

That city is Bern, federal capital of Switzerland and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983. Your driver-guide brings you into the historic heart of the city, where 6 kilometres of medieval arcaded walkways make up one of the best-preserved old towns in Europe. At the centre of it all stands the Zytglogge, the 15th-century astronomical clock tower that has been marking the hours above Bern for over five centuries.

The afternoon continues on foot to the bear park on the banks of the Aar, where Bern’s emblematic bears roam in a naturalistic riverside enclosure. From there, the route climbs to the Rosengarten, a rose garden perched above the old town with a panoramic view over the rooftops of Bern and the sweeping bend of the Aar below. One of the finest urban viewpoints in Switzerland, and a quiet place to end the day before the drive back to Montreux.