Hunt for Easter in Switzerland

Easter weekend is a favourite time for families and couples to get away, thanks to the four-day weekend.

With the growth in budget flights, more and more Brits are choosing to take their Easter holiday abroad, and one place that is worth an Easter visit is Switzerland.

The Swiss are keen on celebrating the holiday, and mark it with a number of processions which are quite a sight and, more enticingly for the kids, the country's biggest Easter egg hunt.

Taking place on Sunday April 16th, egg hunters can snoop around the streets of St Gallen's Old Town, in the search for 4,000 eggs.

Sleuths need to gather between one and ten of the plastic eggs sashayed away in nooks and crannies, and the more they find, the more chocolate they win at the end of the hunt.

There is the added treasure of 25 'golden eggs', hidden away in the Collegiate Church District, and finding one of these will bag you a special hunt prize.

However, it is indeed the taking part and not the winning that counts, and even those who return empty-handed will be treated to a feast of traditional boiled eggs, coffee and cake at the post-hunt party in the Market Square.

Finally, those who cannot get enough of eggs can take a tour around the Allerlei Eier (All Kinds of Eggs) exhibition in St Gallen's Natural History Museum.

Of course, Easter is about far more than eggs, and the traditional Good Friday procession on April 14th in Mendrisio is an emotional experience.

Spectators can observe a procession of children carrying antique lanterns through the streets, between statues surrounded by objects connected with the Passion, such as candles, ladders, nails and whips, to the sound of funeral music.
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