Munich Airport to Lech Zürs am Arlberg

You drop into the back seat at Terminal 1 or 2, and within minutes the airport is behind you and the road is pointing southwest, toward the wall of the Arlberg where Lech and Zürs sit under some of the most reliable snow in the Alps. The run from Munich Airport to Lech and Zürs is about 230km and 2h 45min door to door, from around €400 for a car - and it ends at your chalet in the village, not at a station down the valley.

Munich Airport sits northeast of the city, so the drive starts by skirting Munich on the ring, then settles onto the A96 westbound through the Allgäu past Memmingen toward Lindau and Lake Constance. You cross into Austria near Bregenz and pick up the A14 Rheintalautobahn, running south down the Rhine valley past Feldkirch to Bludenz. There the S16 climbs east up the Klostertal, and near Stuben the road branches onto the Flexenstrasse - the gallery road cantilevered along the cliff - which lifts you the final stretch up to Zürs at 1,720m and over to Lech. Zürs comes first; Lech sits a few minutes beyond, a little lower and larger.

Lech Zürs am Arlberg is the quieter, more genteel side of the Arlberg. It shares the same lift network as St Anton down the mountain - Ski Arlberg is the largest connected ski area in Austria, over 300km of runs on one pass - but the mood is different: no roaring main-street après, a village that caps daily skier numbers to keep the pistes uncrowded, and one of the most dependable snow records of any inhabited place in the Alps. The signature circuit is Der Weisse Ring, a 22km loop around Lech, Oberlech, Zürs and Zug that you can ski in a day and race once a year. Lech has drawn returning winter guests for generations, European royalty among them, and it wears that quietly. If you are still weighing which airport to fly into, our guide to reaching Austria's best ski resorts from Munich Airport lays the Arlberg options out side by side.

One practical note. This is a cross-border run, from Germany into Austria near Bregenz, but an easy one: both countries are in the Schengen Area, so there is no routine passport control, and both are in the EU customs union, so nothing is checked at the line - carry a passport or ID card in case of a spot-check and that is the extent of it. The A14 and S16 need an Austrian motorway vignette, which most carriers fold into the fare, and the Flexenstrasse itself is toll-free - this route branches onto the Flexen before the separately tolled Arlberg road tunnel, so no tunnel charge applies. In deep winter the Flexen Pass can shut for short spells while avalanche crews work, and Lech keeps a car-free hamlet, Oberlech, reached by gondola above the village - your driver knows the reachable drop points and times the run around any pass closure.