Visiting Zurich with a baby

After taking our baby on three domestic airplane trips, he got his first passport stamp when we took him to Zurich, Switzerland when he was about six months old. In most ways, traveling internationally with him was not significantly different than the domestic trips we’d taken previously. We found Zurich to be incredibly baby-friendly, from navigating around the city on public transit to the people we encountered in stores and restaurants.

Here are some things to consider if you’re planning to visit Zurich with a baby.

Transportation

Getting from the airport to the city center

If you’re flying into Zurich, you have a few options of getting from Zurich Airport (ZRH) to the city. When it was just the two of us, we traveled carry-on only and would take the public transit most of the time. We now have a little traveler who requires things like a stroller, travel crib, and a cooler. Because of this, we opted to arrange a private transport from the airport to the hotel. We booked the below transportation through Viator.

We requested a car seat for our baby, which the transport company had already installed in the van when they arrived at the airport to pick us up. The driver was communicative, friendly, and it was a smooth ride from the airport to our hotel. If you’d rather take public transportation, Zurich’s public transit system does have a train that goes from Zurich Airport to Hauptbahnhof, Zurich’s main train station. From there, you should be able to find a train line that will take you to a stop near your hotel.

Getting around Zurich

Zurich has a tremendous public transit system. For our entire stay in the city, we only took public transportation. Zurich is not a very large city, so it was easy for us to get anywhere we wanted to go from our hotel. We always brought our stroller for the baby, and every train station had ramps and/or elevators, which made it very easy for us. If we did take the stairs, our travel stroller (the Joolz Aer+) folds up easily with one hand and has a built-in carrying strap so stairs weren’t a problem.

For the most part, people were extremely courteous letting us on and off the train with the baby in the stroller. People often let us get on the train first when they saw us waiting on the train platform.

Because Zurich is a smaller city, we were able to walk a lot between many of the main sights around the city. The streets in Zurich were pretty stroller-friendly and easy to navigate. In the Old Town, the streets are cobblestone and some have steep hills, but it wasn’t too much of a trek.

You can rent a car if you’d like, but you’ll probably spend time looking for parking when you could be out enjoying all that Zurich has to offer.

Getting from Zurich to the airport

If you’re able to navigate the train with all your luggage, public transit is an option to get back to Zurich Airport for your return flight home. To return to the airport, we booked another transport through Viator.

Again we requested a car seat for our baby, which was in the van when they arrived at our hotel. The company contacted us a few days prior to our booking to confirm the time and communicated leading up to their arrival. The driver arrived at the agreed-upon time, met us in the lobby, and helped load all of our bags in the car.

Things to do in Zurich with a baby

Pretty much everything we did in Zurich was baby-friendly, with a few notes.

If you’re planning to visit the FIFA museum, babies get free entry. We arrived with our stroller as we had been roaming around the city all day. Once we purchased our tickets, we were informed that we could not bring our stroller or our diaper backpack into the museum. They had a small locker room downstairs where we could have stored our stroller & backpack, but it only took cash (Swiss Francs) and we didn’t have any. They were allowing people to leave their strollers in the lobby off to the side, so that’s what we did. We then wore our baby around the museum in the Baby Bjorn Carrier.

Zurich is also known for its churches. We were able to bring our baby into several churches in his stroller. One thing to note if you do want to visit the Chagall windows at Fraumünster Church. There are only stairs (no ramp) into the room where the windows are, so you will need to carry your stroller up the stairs or leave it off to the side while admiring the stained glass.

Eating out with a baby

We are not foodies, so every place we went out to eat in Zurich was very casual. All of the restaurants we visited were welcoming and accommodating of our baby.

Which hotels in Zurich are good for a baby?

Many European hotels have occupancy limits, so make sure you are including your baby in your count when searching for rooms. When we searched on Marriott’s website with two adults and a baby, the Renaissance Zurich Tower Hotel, the Sheraton Zurich Hotel, the Kameha Grand Zurich, and the Courtyard Zurich North all appeared as options for a group that size. For Hilton, the Ambassador Hotel Zurich, the Hilton Zurich Airport, and the Hilton Garden Inn Zurich Limmattal all came up as options when I searched for two adults and a baby.

We stayed at the Courtyard Zurich North, and they had a pack & play set up in our room when we arrived because we’d noted the baby on our reservation. Because we travel with our Guava Lotus Crib, we didn’t need it, so the hotel promptly removed it from our room.

Is Zurich a good place to visit with a baby?

We would absolutely say yes. We saw tons of people with babies and toddlers all around the city and had such a smooth trip. Public transportation was easy to navigate, even while pushing a baby in a stroller, and we didn’t have to change any of our activity plans because we weren’t able to handle the sights with a baby.

We’d recommend bringing both a stroller and a baby carrier to account for some of the restrictions on locations and the older streets.

We are so glad that we have been able to travel with our baby and look forward to finding more family-friendly destinations in the future!