This Basque city is known for pintxos—and it's not San Sebastian
Sitting at the smart, horseshoe bar of El Toloño, veteran head chef Josu Armiño is letting me into a secret. 'We've got something that I think other places don't have, and that's the simplicity of the way we use ingredients,' he says, sporting pristine chef's whites and a slightly mischievous smile. 'For me, the most important thing is the quality of the produce we have here.'
In the Basque capital of Vitoria-Gasteiz, El Toloño is one of the most locally revered pintxos bars — and for good reason. 'It's not about creating things with foams and all that,' Josu goes on to explain. 'It's about simplicity and building on the traditions of our grandparents' cooking,' he says. 'We add a touch of glamour and a bit more warmth and personality, but it's always on a base of traditional cooking. And I think that's the secret of what we do here in Vitoria and in the Basque country.' 'It's not about creating things with foams and all that,' explains chef Josu Armiño, who runs El Toloño. 'It's about simplicity and building on the traditions of our grandparents' cooking,' he says. Photograph by Markel Redondo
Sitting under a neoclassical, 19th-century colonnade on the edge of Vitoria's pedestrianised main square, Plaza de la Virgen Blanca, award-winning El Toloño is a key stop for locals out for a poteo — the pintxos equivalent of a pub crawl. It's a Basque tradition I'm here to try for myself. On El Toloño's bar counter, each delicate pintxo certainly looks like it'll live up to Josu's description.
I decide to start with the gilda. Arguably the most famous of all Basque pintxos, it's made up of a Cantabrian anchovy skewered onto a cocktail stick between a plump, green manzanilla olive and a pickled green guindilla pepper. The gilda was named after Rita Hayworth's character in the eponymous 1946 film noir, which, at the time of its release, was considered so risque that it was banned by Spain's Francoist regime. Conceived as a homage to her punchy character, the gilda's combination of slightly bitter, fruity olive, salty anchovy and spicy guindilla is anything but subtle.
It's the perfect opener to awaken my palate — especially when paired with a glass of txakoli, the Basque Country's signature dry yet refreshingly fruity white wine. Josu pours it from a great height with a theatrical flourish, as is tradition. By the time I've finished, the bar, with its elegant mix of slate-toned walls and black-and-white floor tiles, has filled up with middle-aged men in puffer jackets and smartly dressed businesswomen. Their lively chatter mingles with the clanking of beer glasses and coffee cups. Arguably the most famous of all Basque pintxos, it's made up of a Cantabrian anchovy skewered onto a cocktail stick between a plump, green manzanilla olive and a pickled green guindilla pepper. Photograph by Alamy, Hemis The award-winning El Toloño is a key stop for a poteo — the pintxos equivalent of a pub crawl. Find the local favourite under a neoclassical, 19th-century colonnade on the edge of Vitoria's main square, Plaza de la Virgen Blanca. Photograph by Markel Redondo
Despite its popularity, there's still nowhere near the amount of elbow jostling you'll find in many bars in nearby San Sebastián or even Bilbao, both an hour's drive north to the coast. While glamorous San Sebastián may have risen to stardom thanks to its pintxos and fine dining culture, not to mention its superb beachside location, those in the know will tell you that Vitoria is the secret jewel in the Basque Country's culinary crown. Its inland location means that it benefits from both easy access to seafood from the Bay of Biscay and exceptional beef, vegetables and fruit from the countryside. It's been the Basque capital since 1980, when many of Spain's regional boundaries were drawn up in the aftermath of the Franco dictatorship. Yet its tourism profile has suffered from the fact that it has neither a coastal location nor international airport.
In the spirit of the poteo, I take a short walk from El Toloño past the belle époque townhouses and tram tracks that flow down Vitoria's tree-lined avenues. My next stop is PerretxiCo, another bar that's won numerous awards in the Basque Country's pintxos competitions. These annual events see bars vie with one another in an effort to create the tastiest and most innovative pintxos. One previous winner I'm intrigued to try is PerretxiCo's La Vacuna, which translates as 'the vaccine'.
It's a beef meatball of sorts, encased in a shell of crisp batter and topped with flying-fish roe. The dish arrives at my table alongside a small plastic syringe filled with a beefy jus, which I'm instructed to inject into the meatball. I do as I'm told, and find the intense, almost Bovril-like gravy adds a deliciously comforting warmth to the mix of crispy outer coating and finely textured minced meat. While San Sebastián may have risen to stardom thanks to its pintxos and fine dining culture, those in the know will tell you that Vitoria is the secret jewel in the Basque Country's culinary crown.
Taking a quick break from the kitchen in his black chef's apron, PerretxiCo's head chef Josean Merino tells me that La Vacuna was invented during the pandemic, 'to add a touch of humour'. It's also about balance. Josean says: 'I always say that a pintxo is one of the most complicated dishes to prepare, because you have to concentrate everything into one or two bites and get an almost surgical balance between the textures and flavours.'
As the sound of church bells marks the hour, I leave PerretxiCo to head into the steep, narrow, medieval streets of Vitoria's Old Quarter, high on a hilltop. Not far from the magnificent, 13th-century gothic cathedral and elegant, neoclassical palacios and plazas, I find El Portalón, one of the city's most famous restaurants. Set in a large, half-timbered house that was once a 15th-century staging post and inn, El Portalón also offers its own prize-winning pintxos. One of its signature dishes is the octopus carpaccio — tender slices of octopus lightly dusted with sweet paprika, served with dried red peppers on a small piece of rustic, home-baked farmhouse bread. I put in my order and pull up a chair in the cobbled entrance yard, originally used as the building's stables.
'Going out to eat is a big part of life here in Vitoria,' says El Portalón's manager and head chef Alberto Ortiz de Zárate, a youthful looking 50-year-old who comes to say hello. He first joined his father as a commis chef in El Portalón's kitchen some 18 years ago. 'People appreciate good food and don't mind paying a little extra for it, so restaurants can spend more on the best produce, resulting in a higher-quality range of dishes,' he says, trying to put his finger on what makes Vitoria's food scene — and that of the broader Basque Country — so special. 'It's a cultural act — spending time at the table with friends and family, and enjoying it. It's not just about the food. It's about being with the people you care about — spending less time on your mobile phone and more time appreciating life.' Bilbao is the nearest airport to Vitoria-Gasteiz. Buses run regularly from Bilbao city centre to Vitoria and take about an hour. Stay at the smart, centrally located NH Canciller Ayala hotel, less than a 10-minute walk from the medieval Old Quarter. From €120 (£103), B&B.
This story was created with the support of the Vitoria Gasteiz Tourist Board and The Spanish Tourist Office. Published in the June 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Atlantic
What John le Carré Learned in Corfu
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Many of my most memorable reading experiences are conflated with incongruous settings. I first picked up Slaughterhouse-Five in Venice, on the recommendation of a fellow backpacker. I read Death in Venice, however, in Amsterdam, where the canals thinly evoked Thomas Mann's pestilent waterways. And if you ask me about San Sebastián, the lovely Basque seaside town, I'll flash back to the mind-blowing middle section of Cloud Atlas, which is set in postapocalyptic Hawaii. For authors, too, a place can serve as more of a catalyst than a setting. They go somewhere on holiday and end up learning something about their characters—or themselves. This is what happened to John le Carré in Corfu, and it's why, for this week's installment of The Atlantic 's literary-travel series, ' The Writer's Way,' Honor Jones chose to investigate le Carré's 600-page masterpiece, A Perfect Spy, by traveling to a place that takes up only a few pages in the novel. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's Books section: 'If you wanted to write about le Carré and travel, you could go almost anywhere,' Jones explains: 'Vienna or Bern or Kenya or Cornwall would make the list long before Corfu.' But consider the predicament of le Carré's protagonist, Magnus, an MI6 agent who has betrayed his country to the Communist Czechs and is lying low in Greece under cover of a family vacation. 'If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places,' Jones writes. 'You ignore the booked flight to Washington and the train ticket to Paris because you know they're false leads. You look where the trail is colder.' Le Carré himself had a chance encounter in Corfu that made its way into A Perfect Spy, in a scene that opens up a central theme of the novel—the legacy of a father (Magnus's but also le Carré's) who was a monstrous, charismatic narcissist. It was on the Greek island that le Carré ran into a man who'd worked for his father, a globe-trotting con artist. 'We was all bent, son,' the former henchman told him. 'But your dad was very, very bent.' Because great novels are rarely on the nose, le Carré sets a fictionalized version of this encounter in England. Corfu instead becomes the place where Magnus's Czech contact, the mysterious Axel, tries to entice the Brit to join him behind the Iron Curtain. The island, for centuries beset by repeated invasions and then an onslaught of tourism, holds broader thematic significance for Jones: 'Corfu is a good place to think about influence and identity, about how so many disparate fragments can cohere into a whole.' As it happens, I'm going to stop in Bern next week on a European rail vacation. The Swiss city takes up many more pages in A Perfect Spy than Corfu does; it's where Magnus, as a very young man, first meets Axel. But I've already read the novel, so I'll pack a different one. Inspired by The Atlantic 's new list of staffers' recommendations for must-read books, I'm going to finally dig into Hernan Diaz's Trust, which is set primarily in New York. So although I'll be in Europe, I'll probably be thinking of home. Chasing le Carré in Corfu By Honor Jones If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places. What to Read Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow Bellow's thinly veiled 2000 roman à clef about his friendship with the star academic Allan Bloom—the philosopher who wrote the best-selling jeremiad The Closing of the American Mind —is a tender portrait of its subject. But Bellow's novel is as much about the institutional culture that shaped Bloom. It is a paean to academia as an enterprise that works to sort ideas that are base and quotidian from those that are noble and timeless, and its titular character embodies this faith in the professoriate as a kind of secular priesthood. Abe Ravelstein is a study in contradictions. Devoted to a life of the mind, he approaches reading the classics as a kind of soul-craft, and he's preoccupied with the wisdom of ancient philosophers, poets, and statesmen; yet he also nurtures an irrepressible fondness for modern luxuries such as Armani suits, Cuban cigars, and 'solid-gold Montblanc pens.' The irony of Ravelstein is that its protagonist's celebrity is a symptom of the same commodification of knowledge that is eroding the things he most holds dear. Read 25 years later, the novel is an artifact of its time: The diminishment of the university's purpose that Bellow witnessed feels much more advanced today. — Out Next Week 📚 Flashout, by Alexis Soloski 📚 Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East From Truman to Trump, by Daniel E. Zoughbie Your Weekend Read When It Feels Good to Root for a Bad Guy By David Sims The local sheriff in Eddington, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), is the film's Bickle, though his final showdown is a far more absurd spectacle than the one in Taxi Driver. Aster's film is frightening, yes—but it's a dark and lacerating comedy first and foremost, playing out the power fantasies that fueled many an online conspiracy theory in the pandemic's early days (and still do now). And although Cross may not be as crushingly lonely as Bickle, he does share the character's escalating sense of paranoia. By plunging the viewer into this chaotic inner world, Aster illustrates the dissonant appeal of being enmeshed in the perspective of, and maybe even rooting for, an individual committed to their belief in justice—even if that commitment can border on sordid.
National Geographic
6 days ago
- National Geographic
How the province of Girona became one of Spain's gastronomy stars
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). High on a Catalan hilltop just beyond the city of Girona's medieval old town, the maître d' at the Roca brothers' newly opened restaurant, Esperit Roca, draws back a heavy curtain and ushers me into a cavernous, domed wine cellar. There's a sense of theatre as the haunting aria from Handel's The Triumph of Time and Truth oratorio announces my arrival and I'm guided past a city's worth of wine racks into a high-ceilinged, industrial-chic dining room that's been stylishly converted from a 19th-century fortress. Esperit Roca is the latest restaurant from chef Joan Roca and his brothers, sommelier Josep and pastry chef Jordi, whose three Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca has twice been awarded the number one spot on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list. A selection of exquisitely presented amuse-bouches is a sign of great things to come. The eight-course tasting menu includes a dish called 'cigala artemisa' — an elegant combination of tenderly grilled langoustine enveloped in a warm blanket of sauce made with vanilla oil, gently browned butter and artemisia, a bitter, aromatic herb that's also known as white wormwood. 'That dish is about our geographic location,' Joan tells me. 'We make a liqueur from the artemisia, which grows freely around here, and use it as a base for the sauce to convey that herbal, slightly bitter idea of our landscape. And at the same time, the sauce is also very much like a French beurre blanc. We're just on the other side of the Pyrenees from France here, so there's a lot of influence from French cooking.' Esprit Roca is the latest restaurant from chef Joan Roca and his brothers, sommelier Josep and pastry chef Jordi. The eight-course tasting menu includes a dish called 'cigala artemisa' — a combination of tenderly grilled langoustine enveloped in a warm sauce made with vanilla oil, browned butter and artemisia, a bitter, aromatic herb. With the French border to the north and Barcelona around an hour's drive to the south, the province of Girona takes in both the lush, amazingly fertile winemaking region of the Empordà and the rugged, pine-clad coast of the Costa Brava. The Catalan writer Josep Pla famously said that 'a country's cuisine is its landscape in a pot', and it's an adage that's certainly true in this area. I've been visiting for over 20 years and it's hard to find bad food — it's invariably good wherever you go. As with the Catalans' French neighbours, food here is much more than simply something to snatch hurriedly in order to refuel — it's an important part of day-to-day life. And dining out isn't just reserved for special occasions. 'This region has been a bit like a sponge,' says Joan, 'absorbing the culinary influences of lots of different cultures. Iberians and Romans, Arabs and Jews have all passed through here and there's a very powerful connection with food.' The Roca brothers helped put the province on the world's gastronomic map, but they weren't the first to do so. About an hour's drive north east of Girona city, the small town of Roses was where Ferran Adrià — the chef widely credited with having invented molecular gastronomy — opened his groundbreaking three Michelin-star restaurant, El Bulli, which went on to win the title of The World's Best Restaurant five times between 2002 and 2009, before it closed in 2011. The province of Girona now has no fewer than 15 Michelin-starred restaurants — and they have a total of 20 between them. Not bad for a region with a population of only around 750,000. Twenty years on, the province of Girona now has no fewer than 15 Michelin-starred restaurants — and they have a total of 20 stars between them. Not bad for a region with a population of only around 750,000 people. It's perhaps little surprise that the wider area of Catalonia has been designated 2025's World Region of Gastronomy. But fine dining is only one part of the story around here. Roadsides are regularly punctuated with smartly converted country farmhouses where you can tuck into traditional Catalan dishes such as hearty, saffron-laden fish stews and punchy rabbit casseroles. And my next stop is a case in point. I head out east from Girona city towards the coast, through the wide, open fields of the Empordà, ablaze with radiant yellow rapeseed and laced with poppies, the petrol-blue Pyrenees hazy in the distance. Half an hour later, I arrive at the tiny, walled medieval village of Ullastret. Here, the Cateura brothers — David, Enric and Gerard — run Restaurant Ibèric, which their father Tomàs originally opened with four tables in 1978. As I sit in the traditional dining room, a warm, toasty aroma wafts up from my dish of exceptional-looking langoustines. I scoop out the sweet, supple flesh from their shells and find they taste as good as they smell. They've been roasted over hot open coals in the restaurant's specially imported Italian oven, David explains. 'Originally, everyone in Catalonia cooked on coals over an open fire,' he says. 'It keeps the food moist and succulent and it was a technique widely used across the Mediterranean. Modern gas and electricity give a much stronger, more intense heat, so it can dry the food out.' David's father was one of many other local restaurateurs in the area who opened restaurants in response to the tourist boom of the 1970s, when visitors began discovering the Costa Brava's unspoilt beaches and coves. Decades on, Ibèric's menu still features the same traditional recipes. 'We're presenting classic cooking that dates back years,' David tells me. 'Until the 1960s and 1970s, people lived off the land here, in country farmhouses, using pigs and hens that they'd reared themselves, as well as homegrown vegetables. Because we're close to the sea, you ended up not just with good meat produce, but fish and seafood too.' Then, once tourism arrived and people like David's father started opening their restaurants, they were cooking the food that their mothers had prepared, he explains. 'So in a way, what we're doing — even now — is preserving the traditions from our grandparents or even before.' "This region has been a bit like a sponge, absorbing the culinary influences of lots of different cultures. Iberians and Romans, Arabs and Jews have all passed through here and there's a very powerful connection with food," says Joan. Most small towns around these parts still have their own superb food markets, but one of the most impressive is Girona's Mercat del Lleó. Photograph by Getty Images Most small towns around these parts still have their own superb food markets, but one of the most impressive is Girona's Mercat del Lleó, which is where I meet Gina Guillén of Girona Food Tours for an action-packed, three-hour exploration of the city. Less than 10 minutes' walk from the steep, narrow, cobbled streets of Girona's old town — famously used as a filming location for Game of Thrones — the market is like a smaller, less touristy version of Barcelona's famous Boqueria. Purposeful-looking chefs and shopping trolley-wielding grannies are busy eyeing up stalls selling everything from the plump red tomatoes used in pan con tomate (bread with tomato) to superb-looking hams and homemade sausages hanging high up on hooks, sparkling fish glistening on ice and pert olives in every shade of green. At cheese stall La Formatgeria, owner Eduardo Orozco invites me to try dainty slices of madurat de sora — a firm but tender and tangy goat's cheese that's the colour of ivory — from the nearby Garrotxa region, just north west of the city. Alongside the cheese, he offers me a mix of walnuts and dried apricots as well as an organic homemade pear and wine jam. It's a glorious combination and once again, as Eduardo explains, it's all about the land. 'Our produce reflects the richness of the soil and the land that we have here,' he tells me. 'The quality of the soil has a big impact on the grass where the animals graze, so in turn you get top-quality milk, butter and cheese.' Leaving the market, Gina takes me on a fascinating walk through the old town, regaling me with tales of medieval merchants, pioneering Jewish physicians and noblemen's feuds. The streets are packed with restaurants, including several from the new generation of chefs, many of whom have trained at El Celler de Can Roca. The newly Michelin-starred Divinum is one, as is the more low-key serve cutting-edge culinary creations, often in stylish interiors, but whether you choose fine dining or more traditional cooking, it's the food that will always take centre stage. Where to eat in Girona Restaurant Ibèric Serving dishes from Girona's Empordà region, Ibèric's seafood favourites include saffron-laced fish stew, grilled Palamós prawns and anchovies from nearby L'Escala. Regulars travel from Barcelona and beyond for the signature fideos a la bogavante — lobster noodle casserole. Mains around €25 (£22). Casa Marieta You won't find any gels or foams at this stalwart on Girona's Placa de la Independència. What you will find is great-value, traditional Catalan cuisine. Join locals tucking into dishes like duck with pears, Catalan-style broad beans or chicken with prawns. Two courses from €20 (£17). La Taverna del Ma Expect spectacular sea views and super-fresh seafood including lobster, prawns, oysters, langoustine and ray at this spot overlooking the beach in the smart resort of S'Agaró. The salmon tartare with avocado is exceptional. Two courses from €60 (£50). Esperit Roca If you want to get a taste of the Roca brothers' legendary El Celler de Can Roca but can't wait two years for a table, this new, Michelin-starred venue north of Girona city offers the 'greatest hits' from El Celler. Try 'turbot trilogy', featuring grilled turbot fin, turbot loin and turbot carpaccio, along with 'toda la gamba' ('all of the prawn'), which focuses on the part that diners often discard: a crispy prawn head in a silky fish velouté. Eight-course tasting menus from €139 (£115). To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
National Geographic
7 days ago
- National Geographic
How to spend the perfect day in Switzerland's underrated financial capital
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). Switzerland's largest city, straddling the Limmat River and facing the pristine shores of Lake Zurich, has long been best known for its financial clout and Swiss efficiency. But these days its cultural scene is also booming, with everything from 'blackout' dining concepts to fashion co-ops set beneath railway arches. Here's how best to take in the city in just 14 hours. 7am: Swim at sunrise at Seebad Utoquai The combination of the lake's glassy water and this swimming club has made such an impression on locals that it's kept them rising at dawn for more than 130 years. The Seebad's two-floor wooden bathhouse debuted in 1890 with curtained changing rooms, ladders directly into the lake and diving boards, and it's been eulogised ever since by bathers and those who'd rather soak up the sun on the timber terraces. Alternatively, Frauenbad at Stadthausquai is an art nouveau cabana exclusively for women's swimming (both April to October only). In the lidos along the Limmat River, bathers don swimwear produced from upcycled plastic found in the city's waterways. 8am: Breakfast at the Odeon A home for the city's gay community long before the first Swiss laws legalising same-sex relationships were passed in 1942, Cafe Odeon is a Viennese-style coffee house par excellence. Expect to see eggs served in a wide variety of styles, including, as this is Zurich, in the form of truffle omelettes with a side of Champagne. 10am: Go to a gallery Zurich is home to around 50 museums and around double the number of art galleries. Certainly the most generous with the big names is the Kunsthaus. Plenty of highlights on display come from the likes of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, while Switzerland is represented by Alberto Giacometti and the world's largest collection of Dada, the absurd counterculture art movement born nearby at cafe-gallery Cabaret Voltaire on Spiegelgasse. 12pm: Explore under the bridges The railway arches of the city's Industriequartier once housed hundreds of stonemasons and mechanics. These days, they survive as Im Viadukt, a future-focused co-op of fashion shops, restaurants, venues and a food market replete with bars and takeaway counters. This is where to go for a classic Swiss lunch, whether you're looking for Alpine picnic supplies (typically cheese, pickles and breads) or some bratwurst. 3pm: Get a chocolate fix There's an extraordinary array of chocolate ateliers in Zurich, but among the best are Läderach, Max Chocolatier and truffle-specialist Sprüngli on Bahnhofstrasse. These days, macarons are the speciality, while ruffled chocolate nests and bite-sized batons come topped with gold-leaf. 5pm: Time for a sky-high cocktail It's worth seeing the city and all of its church spires from the rooftops. One of the best viewpoints is at 1838, an exquisite destination bar atop the Mandarin Oriental Savoy that snuggles up to the Fraumünster and overlooks Paradeplatz, a square that's perenially popular with locals. On a clear day, the entire lake and the Alps to the south can also be seen on the horizon. An Aperol spritz or Eichhof lager will help temper any giddiness. 7pm: Eat in the dark Switzerland helped pioneer many life-changers — wristwatches, the world wide web, instant coffee. It's also the home of the first restaurant in the dark. The blackout dining concept was created in 1999 by a non-profit foundation and born to create jobs for the city's visually impaired people. The focus isn't just the surprise three- or four-course menu (it could be spätzle, lake fish, Swiss beef), but on fostering conversations. 10pm: Go bar-hopping If anywhere has an edge in Zurich, it's Langstrasse, a long street of late-night bars and clubs in the heart of the red-light district. Resistant to change, it's the city at its most unbuttoned, with Bar 63 and Ole Ole the most popular venues. For something classier, albeit with negronis on tap, try Bar Sacchi in trendy Lochergut. Getting there & around British Airways, EasyJet, Edelweiss Air and Swiss fly to Zurich from UK airports including Edinburgh, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester and Stansted. The fastest train route from London St Pancras International to Zurich takes 6hr55m, involving a change of stations in flight time: 1h45m. It's easy to explore Zurich's attractions on foot or by using the efficient, safe and clean public transport system. You can get a tram, train, bus or ferry at most times of day with ease. A 24-hour travelcard for use in central Zurich costs CHF9.20 (£8.30). Trams and buses run from 6am to 1am. When to go Zurich is worth visiting year-round. Winter and early spring see cold days with snow-daubed hills and ice skating — with average temperatures around 4-6C — while summer ushers in averages of 25-28C, which means open lidos and the bulk of the city's festivals. Autumn, cooler at around 15C, is for the Zurich Wine Festival, held every October with tastings, masterclasses and networking sessions. Where to stay 25hrs Hotel Langstrasse. Doubles from CHF152 (£140). La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich. Doubles from CHF540 (£490). More info Planet Switzerland. £16.99 How to do it Switzerland Travel Centre offers two nights in Zurich in a three-star hotel, including a 72-hour Zurich Card for transport and discounts, from £230 per person, B&B. Excludes flights. This story was created with the support of Zurich Tourism Published in the July/August 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
