Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Ever have the perfect day for the activity you planned? Today was it for us! Beautiful weather, cloudless skies, 25 to 30 C temps, no wind, and the most awesome train journeys that were as on time as you’d expect Swiss trains to be.

Our first train of the day was from from Zurich to Chur, with the first part going along the edge of Lake Zurich. Why Chur? Because we couldn’t get accommodation in St Moritz, even booking 3 months out. It’s 8 hours on the Glacier Express from St Moritz to Zermatt, but only 6 hours from Chur to Zermatt—close enough. We had a couple of hours’ wait in Chur before we got on the Glacier Express. They had a massive food truck thing happening but we chose to eat (schnitzel of course!) at a small local restaurant in a side street. It was a HOT day.

Chur

Schnitzel

Around 2pm, we boarded the magical Glacier Express to Zermatt, arriving at 8:15pm and catching glimpses of the Matterhorn before the sun set after 9pm. I took HEAPS of photos, but will only post a few here. Some have reflections from the train windows, so apologies for that. No filters—the greens were that green and the blues were that blue. The main river we followed was the Rhine, with the Rhone in the latter parts. (Note: Despite its name, the Glacier Express is actually one of the slowest trains in Europe, with a maximum speed of around 24 mph [40 kmh]. It’s not cheap, and if you’re using a Eurail Pass, you will still have to book and pay for seat reservations, which are a fraction of the normal fare. You can book seat reservations about 60-90 days ahead, and will need to do so. If there are only two of you, try to get the seats for 2 facing each other.)

Glacier Express – engine

Views from the Glacier Express

Zermatt is a car-less town and the train station is quite literally in the main street. Only small electric vehicles authorised to travel on its streets can come into town. Which means it’s a super friendly town for pedestrians. There are some high-end shops here (e.g. Rolex), and I would expect that getting accommodation is difficult. We booked 3 months ahead, but there wasn’t a big range available, even that far out. We had trouble finding somewhere to eat after our arrival—everything was full and we got stuck in a little corner of a restaurant that took pity on us (it was a VERY ordinary, but expensive, meal too!). It was cool here, much cooler than Zurich, and was about the only time we wore warmer clothes.

Matterhorn at Zermatt

Some final observations about Switzerland, after only 2 and a bit days here:

• Everything is very clean – the streets, the towns, the cafes, the buses, the trains
• Everything is VERY expensive (food, accommodation, even a coffee)
• Everything runs on time – don’t be one minute late or your train will have left!
• Catch the train from the airport to the centre of Zurich—it’s much cheaper than getting a taxi from the airport (about CHF7 compared to about CHF 60-70 for a taxi). In both cases it takes 10-15 mins. If you need to get a taxi to your accommodation in town, get one from the train station as it will likely be much cheaper. Or jump on a tram or bus if you don’t have a lot of luggage.
• If you have luggage or ski gear you need to get from place A to place B within Switzerland, I can highly recommend Jaisli Mobility Services (https://www.jaisli-mobility-services.ch/index), who took our luggage to Zermatt so we didn’t have to deal with it on the trains, particularly the Glacier Express, which only has limited luggage carrying capacity. It wasn’t cheap, but it meant we didn’t have to worry about luggage for the few hours we were in Chur (they do have luggage storage at the station there) or on the Glacier Express. It was waiting for us in our room in Zermatt!