For a small, charming alpine village, I suggest Wilderswil, just a rail stop from Interlaken. The pleasures of Zurich Switzerland's largest city is surprisingly compact, with a wealth of churches, museums, and cobbled streets. More than half of Zurich's 41 museums are free, from the wide-ranging Swiss National Museum, with treasures from prehistory to the present, to the tightly focused Beyer Museum of Time and the Museum Strauhof, strong on James Joyce artifacts and memorabilia. Zurich's premier magnet is the Old Town, a maze of medieval streets on both sides of the Limmat River. For delicious, inexpensive fare, try Au Jardin, the rooftop restaurant of the main Migros department store.
Beer halls serve up great ambience with their reasonably priced meals.
My favorite is Kropf, where you can dig into sauerkraut, local lake fish, sausages, and so on in the company of dancing damsels and other lavishly painted figures frolicking on the walls and ceiling. All rights reserved.