Before your Alp adventure, get your Swiss Francs at Nour Exchange and the difference* will cover the cost of some Swiss adventures!

The Hammetschwand Elevator

Perched on the side of Mt. Bürgenstock is the tallest outdoor elevator in Europe, carrying passengers to the top in less than a minute, it is designed to carry visitors to a view almost 4000 feet above Lake Lucerne. Once made from substandard materials of the day, the elevator took three minutes to rise to the same level that it now reaches in one-third the time and built upon a modern framework with advanced engineering and materials, despite that it may look a little to the contrary.

Using Nour Exchange to convert to Swiss Francs will yield an amount saved that will cover the cost of the entrance fee / elevator lift. For more information, check the information sheet for this attraction.

Berggasthaus Aescher Wildkirchli

Clearly a difficult location to get to, choices are limited to either a steep hike or cable car, but has been around for around 170 years. Some less-than-obvious features of this location is that it uses only rainwater, as there is nowhere to pump to or from, and the weekends bring hikers and live music. No only a pub, it is just down the path from the Wildkirchli caves, inhabited by Neanderthals 40,000 years ago.

The Wasserauen-Ebenalp cable car costs 27 CHF per person for a roundtrip, and the savings you’ll enjoy from using Nour to change into Swiss Francs will cover the cost of one visitor round-trip to this site. Visit the Berggasthaus Aescher Wildkirchli website for more info.

CERN Hadron Collider

The world’s largest and most expensive physics lab, and home to the Large Hadron Collider, a tubed-ring 27 km in circumference.

The collider tunnel contains two adjacent and parallel beam pipes, but which travel in opposite directions around the ring. They intersect at four points which is where the particle collisions occur. 1,232 magnets keep beams on their desired circular path, while an additional 392 magnets are used to keep the beams focused, with even stronger magnets close to intersection points to maximize accuracy where the two beams cross, with yet other magnets used to correct imperfections in the field geometry. Approximately ten thousand magnets are used, with a mass of over twenty-seven tonnes, and ninety-six tonnes of superfluid helium-4 is needed to keep the magnets at their operating temperature of −271.25 °C. The CERN site draws roughly 200MW of electrical power from France’s electrical grid, which, for comparison, is about one-third the energy consumption of the city of Geneva.

An additional humanity-changing event occurred at this lab. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at CERN, proposed the HTTP protocol, and used across existing telecom networks, began the internet we know today. Berners-Lee is also credited with designing the first web browser. Today, the WWW is regarded as an afterthought at CERN, with only small references to it in their public exhibits.

CERN has two exhibitions open to the public, the Globe of Science and Innovation and the Microcosm exhibit, offered Monday through Saturday in English and French, with individual tours open fifteen days in advance and fill up quickly. The individual tour involves a visit to where you can watch scientists at work.

Travelling by train from the central Geneva railway station, Gare Cornavin, take #18 to the CERN entrance. Tram tickets cost CHF3.00 and entrance into CERN is free.

Using Nour to exchange Swiss Francs will easily cover the cost of transportation to and from CERN. Visit the CERN site for more information and areas available for exploration.

Schilthorn Piz Gloria

The restaurant at Piz Gloria claims some of the most spectacular views in the world. Additionally, the filming location for a scene in the 1963 James Bond book-turned-movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a hideaway set in the mountains for one of Bond’s most notorious villians, “Ernst Blofeld”.

The restaurant rotates slowly offering a view of the 200 mountains surrounding the peak. Yelp reviews suggest that the view ranks higher in satisfaction than the food. Accessible by a cable car which departs Mürren, it takes approximately thirty-two minutes but offers views of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains, which have been named UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Einsteinhaus

Albert Einstein lived in the apartment at Kramgasse No. 49 between 1903 and 1905, but it was in these short years he would make some of his most important breakthroughs, working at the Swiss patent office, publishing the Annus Mirabilis which became the foundational documents for his research. The small apartment has remained as it was when Einstein kept it, with period furniture and housewares and is open to visitors.

* Based on a typical trip to Switzerland for two adults for six nights including food, entertainment, local travel, ave. $1,500 CDN.