Five enjoyable days – Alps, Bern, Lausanne, Zürich
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Just got back home from an enjoyable trip and thought I would start writing my trip report. It will probably take a few postings to complete but let me get started. I offer the highest praise for this forum as many of the tips I gathered here were invaluable.
We departed Newark, (in the US) on April 7. United Airlines gave us some anxiety by delaying the flight nearly 90 minutes but thankfully we finally departed. Passing through immigration and customs was very quick. Following tips, I had reserved a Travelers WiFi device that I picked up at the service desk. A word about this device: it works very well indeed but it drains it’s internal battery very quickly so you must carry a spare battery pack when traveling around with it. The connectivity speed was excellent and I did not have to turn on data roaming on my phone at all.
The other thing that came in invaluable was the SBB app. I used it extensively in planning the trip to get an idea of travel times. I also used it extensively while traveling as well.
We had bought our Swiss Travel Pass from Rail Europe who are the SBB agents in the US. Unlike the print at home version, these passes looked like little booklets. I used booking.com to do all the hotel reservations.
We took a local train (it was on one of the new Stadler RABe 511 multiple units) from the airport to Zürich Hauptbahnhof and paused a bit to get some lunch from the Migros takeaway. Migros is a popular Swiss supermarket chain. These Migros take-aways proved to be very useful for packing picnic lunches and can be highly recommended.
We then caught our train to Chur (Intercity hauled by an Re420) and enjoyed our ride. The tip here is to sit on the left side of the train so you can get a beautiful view of Zürichsee and Walensee. My thirteen year old daughter who has never really experienced a long train ride in her life found this first journey to be a revelation. She told me that this was the only way she wanted to travel hence forth!
I had reserved a room at the Post Hotel in Chur (located on Poststrasse). It was a very short walk from the station. The room was very pleasant and cheerful. Even though wife and daughter were tired, I got them moving and we went back to the station and caught a Rhätische Bahn train to Filisur. The journey was spectacular and I got to ride over the Landwasser viaduct (was on my bucket list!).We spent a pleasant hour at the Filisur station and enjoyed beer (for myself and wife) and an ice cream for my daughter at the station buffet. This is one of the most photogenic places I have ever visited and the view of the Album valley is spectacular. We caught the next train back to Chur. We had dinner at the Cappelerhof Restaurant (Italian) based on the recommendation of the hotel proprietor. It turned out to be exactly what we wanted.
We had to keep the window open as it was surprisingly warm – unfortunately some revels made a lot of noise in the night as they were walking around outside the hotel. More to come in the next installment (our ride on the Glacier Express).
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