Rapperswil; Saturday, 22 April, 2023

I was up relatively early so that I could head down to the station and catch the train back round to Pfäffikon, mostly so I could get some better views of my main destination of the day the island of Ufenau located in the lake. At just over 1 million square foot the island is the largest island in Switzerland, but when you actually round that up to a useful measurement it shows that you could fit more than 12.5 Ufenau’s just into Hyde Park in London – so whilst it’s the largest island in Switzerland that says more about how few islands the landlocked country has.

From Pfäffikon station I walked down to the landing stage to pick up the ferry that had just come over from Rapperswil to Insel Ufenau and then onto Pfäffikon to pick me up before doing the journey in reverse. Along with a handful of other people we all disembarked at Ufenau and headed onto the island to explore.

Part of the reason for going via Pfäffikon was to get a better view of the island from land, but also it meant that I only needed to fill about 90 minutes before the next ferry off of the island – which turned out to be almost the perfect amount of time.

The island is still owned by the Einsiedeln Abbey which is located a little further up the bank of Lake Zurich. Due to it’s religious past its not surprising that the island is home to religious buildings, with a church and a separate chapel accounting for about half the structures on the island.

I had a slow walk around the edge of the island on the visitor path. If I’d walked at normal walking pace it would probably have only taken me about 15 minutes to see the whole island, so I made sure I stopped regularly to take photos to slow down the time I was taking. Towards the end of the walk I also took the opportunity to visit the church of St Peter and Paul and the neighbouring chapel of St Martin. Even doing things slowly I still had about 5 minutes to spare when I got back to the landing stage before the boat arrived.

Rather than the Ufenau shuttle that I had caught out to the island earlier this boat was one of the scheduled services that run the length of the lower lake from Rapperswil to Zurich and on arrival in Rapperswil it was due to wait just 10 minutes before heading back out and up to Zurich again. I decided that as the weather was quite pleasant, and I fancied a relaxed lunch, that I’d stay on the boat and head up the lake – taking advantage of it being covered by the day ticket that I’d brought. I did cheat a little and purchased an upgrade to 1st class which gained me access to the much nicer restaurant located on the sun deck which made the journey that bit more relaxed.

The journey up the lake took two hours to complete, after which I had a short walk from the ferry harbour in the city centre over to Stadelhofen station where I caught the train back to Rapperswil in a considerably shorter 30 minutes, albeit with slight less stunning views.

Back in Rapperswil I had a longer wander around the old town centre including heading up into the castle complex and down to the end of the town as a small spit of land sticks out into the lake to take in the views at dusk up the lake.

I wandered back via a Co-op supermarket picking up some stuff for dinner as eating out multiple nights in Switzerland gets expensive very quickly, before having dinner in my room.