I took yesterday off from blogging. Sorry about that, but I was tired, and we were travelling on the glacier express which is the train so famous and well photographed it didn’t need much more from me.
Today we picked up the Bernina express train running from Chur to Tirano in Italy. In my view (controversial) it’s a better train journey from the glacier express. This is especially true because they give you a little metal tube replica of the train (shown in the header picture) which contains chocolates. Anybody who gives me chocolate gets my vote.
The weather closed in as we went over the high pass but improved again as we descended on the Italian side.
Descending from the mountains on the Italian side we passed through the famous spiral. Four railways, steep gradient could be a significant problem, both upwards and downwards. One way to get round the problem is to create a spiral which lets you lose quite a lot of height in comparatively little space. What it means for us as passengers that we get to see the front of the train going past our windows at the back, which is fun, if a little odd.
From Toronto, we took a bus journey across the border into Italy and then back into Switzerland to arrive at our Lakeside hotel in Lugano, where we stay for two nights. Tomorrow we take a gentle boat cruise on Lake Lugano. More photos to follow then. Signing off. Good night John boy
TimOnTheTrain 