May 2019 wondrous trip in Switzerland
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Once again our utmost thanks to MySwissAlps.com for help in planning our trip.
A quick summary is below and possibly in the future I will give more details of our wondrous trip.
Upon return from Switzerland we have upgraded our bucket list and have told our family and friends that the one place you must visit before that final day is Switzerland and it really does not matter which cities or towns you visit as they are All beautiful or at least the ones we visited.
I will give a couple of negatives we did find which did not affect overall the beautiful trip that we had but I figured readers may want to know what we thought could have been improved and a safety note for readers as foreigners sometimes can be caught in circumstances they do not anticipate.
The beautiful towns/cites visited first in no particular order. — Lucerne, Zurich, Lauterbrunnen,Lugano, the Fribourg region, First, Grindenwald, Gimmenwald , Chur, Interlaken, Brig, Bellinzona, Arosa, Bern, Lauterbrunnen, Raperswil etc. Our favorites were First, Lauterbrunnen , Arosa and Lugano.
Exciting trains included the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express Bus and Train.
As stated, everywhere we went was beautiful with the Beautiful Alps surrounding the Beautiful Lakes. Every where was extremely clean although one negative (especially around the train stations) was a lot of graffitti . (especially Bern) However in speaking with the locals it appears that a lot of this graffiti are young people expressing themselves.. We did get used to the graffiti but at the onset were surprised to see the amount. .
We had the Swiss Travel Pass and it was excellent . Second class travel is absolutely fine with clean trains and trains that are 99% on time with a very smooth ride. The freedom of going any where at any time was great although one important negative readers should know and was a freak occurrence is that some specialty trains in the alps for certain areas are not covered by the Swiss Travel Pass. We were aware of this before we took our trip but were unaware that in the middle of a trip a train could turn into a “specialty train”,
Although our circumstance –an unplanned hike down to Wengen ended up being an experience caught on video tape and we arrived safely —it was a little scary during the hike.
Let it be said we showed our Swiss Travel Pass to the conductor and continued on this train not knowing that it the middle of the route it “became a specialty train” requiring another few hundred francs to continue on the route which we were unaware of and we thought was unfair.(We thought the conductor should have told us that when she first saw our Swiss Travel Pass upon boarding the train)
The conductor would not back down and effectively threw us off the train and said we could hike down to Wengen and it would only take an hour or so.(made it sound like it was an easy hike and we thought that is exactly what should have been)
There was a lot of snow on the trail and slippery and deep at points and overall could be considered dangerous for amateurs like ourselves. We made it safely to Wengen in about two and one half hours but we think the conductor should have given more details about the hike down.
I would not want other people in the future to fall into this scenario and that is why I bring it up. I do not think anything was intentional on anybody’s part but maybe the conductor when she first saw our swiss travel pass and allowed us on the train should have told us that “the train turns into a specialty train in the middle of run.
Like I said this was a very unusual thing to happen but I bring it up to make other travellers aware .
The hotels we stayed in were clean and staff very friendly. The Swiss people were very nice and helpful.
The travel on the train with numerous lakes and mountains passing us by was just unexpected and train travel would be recommended..
The food in Switzerland was wonderful but restaurants could be very expensive although we knew that Switzerland is generally expensive. We did utilize the Coop supermarkets frequently and they were well supplied with everything you would need and extremely clean like everything in Switzerland.
Wifi was very good in the hotels and the three prong adapter worked but also a two pronger may have been adequate also.
However I can summarize everything up in one word —Scenery – you may not find anywhere else in the world .—– The cable cars and lifts were just amazing also as well as all the hiking we did.
Thank you again for all your help in planning our trip.
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