Subject: 107 (+2 later today) international flight segments since July 6, 1985 and counting...
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009 3:40 PM
Bonjour/bonsoir et guten morgen/abend und buongiorno/buona sera,
Today was a "sightseeing from trains day". Not to say that yesterday wasn't, but today was even more so!
The forecast was for rain, so I was not expecting much mountain sightseeing, but when I woke up this morning it was a blue sky over St. Moritz!!
That was completely unexpected and it threw me off -- now I didn't know what to do! I had a big breakfast and checked out of the hotel by 9:30, then went to the train station and got on the train to Chur -- it was standing there on platform #1 and I didn't feel like carrying my bag downstairs to go to any other platform.
So back to 2 hours of gorgeous mountain scenery, all repeated from yesterday. Still, today was another day :)
The trains in this region of Switzerland have sliding windows, and yesterday I had my window open for most of the journey. I wanted to do the same today but there was an elderly couple who kept insisting that everyone keep their windows shut. Well, there were 3 of us in that coach taking pictures left and right... so we were still opening the windows whenever we wanted to! Majority rules! The compromise was to shut the windows inside tunnels, which was fine with me!
Anyway, I dont really know how many more pictures I took on that ride, the total count from today was almost 500!
I got off the train at Reichenau-Tamins, which was about 1/2 hour before reaching Chur. Happy to get off the train (that elderly couple's complaints about the open windows were really getting on my nerves, becoming almost as annoying to me as my opening the windows was to them). The next train I took was to Disentis/Muster, and this time I was the only one in the whole coach! I opened 2 of the windows (1 on each side) and kept them open, partly out of spite but the scenery here was also fantastic! Most of this ride has a river running next to the train tracks, and of course mountains on all sides with plenty of scenic bridges and tunnels!
Disentis is a BEAUTIFUL town, with mountains all around and a deep valley below! Unfortunately I didn't stay there long, but definitely want to come back here on another trip!!! My next train was from Disentis-Andermatt...
A short journey of about 30 minutes or so, but again more of the same gorgeous scenery! This time there was a family of 5 tourists from Toronto in my coach, and we were happily leaving the windows open and clicking photos on both sides of the train. The only bad part about this train (and the next one) was that my Eurail pass was not valid -- when the conductor came around he said he can give me a 25% discount because of my pass, and that came to 20 CHF for this trip and 45 CHF for the next train...
Andermatt-Visp.
More of the same: Gorgeous weather, gorgeous scenery, gorgeous empty train coach!
The train pulled into Visp (gateway to Zermatt, which is where I had been last time) just a couple minutes before 5:57 PM. I remember that time because THAT was when the next train was scheduled to leave for Zurich, and I had to run downstairs and upstairs to the other platform to catch that one!
I didn't catch it; the train was late due to "technical problem with the locomotive". At first the time said 5 minutes late, then that kept going up to 10, 15, etc... I gave up and went into a Coop store for my dinner sandwich to-go (no lunch today, was busy catching trains). When I came back to the platform the sign was showing "40" minutes late... 6:37 PM.
I got on the train at 6:37 and ate my dinner, then fell asleep listening to my music and woke up at Bern. By now it had finally started to rain outside! This train was supposed to go to Zurich airport, but before reaching Zurich there was an announcement that the journey will end in Zurich Hbf (main city station). So I had to transfer to the final train of the day for the short ride from Zurich Hbf - Zurich Flughafen.
Now I'm at my regular airport hotel (got upgraded to executive room AGAIN). It's 12:40 AM right now and I should leave the hotel at 5 AM for my 7 AM flight to London! So I'm debating whether or not to sleep! The bed looks mighty comfy right now...
As for the pictures, like I said there are TOO MANY to edit/upload! So far I'm down to 893 pictures, and still haven't finished going through all the ones from yesterday. So, needless to say they won't be on the website for a while! I'll send a note out when they're up.
So until September from Chile,
Adios,
-yo.
View from my hotel room in St. Moritz again:
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Train from St. Moritz to Reichenau-Tamins: (pictures #57-59 are the 108-years old Landwasser Viaduct, a UNESCO world heritage site -- under renovation right now)
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Train from Reichenau-Tamins to Disentis/Muster:
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Train from Disentis/Muster to Andermatt:
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Train from Andermatt to Visp:
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| Jul 4 | Contents | Jul 6 |