One week left

 

We left Wengen this morning (we're still going through all our photos from Switzerland). It's a tiny little village in the Swiss Alps. Above is a short video of the train ride down out of the valley. And below is the view from our room. 

We'll have a bunch of pictures from here to post, but we're moving around a lot of places in the last two weeks of our trip. Which is very different than what we were doing last month. For September Vanessa was working, so we stayed at a few places for a week or two each. 

For the month we were “staying put” in Italy, from Assisi to Lucca we took 4 different trains. They were all local “regional” trains that ran regularly, didn't take reservations, there's no first class. You just show up, get a ticket and hop on.

From Lucca we went up to Milan, and then across to Switzerland. For this part of our trip we're going to a lot more places, doing more sightseeing, and so there's a lot more trains. In the last week, from Lucca to Geneva we've traveled on 13 different trains, including a high speed train in Italy, and a scenic trip over the Alps.

Fortunately most of these trains have been in Switzerland, which has an amazing train system, even in the smallest villages up in the mountains.

Our 3 trains in Italy were all delayed by at least 5 minutes, and one was 45 minutes late (and completely packed, standing room only). Of the 10 different trains we've been in in Switzerland, I think one left a minute late. Usually we've only had 4-6 minutes to make connections between one and the next, and it's never been a problem. Everything is where it is, when it's supposed to be. And even if we had missed a train, there's another one 20-30 minutes later. If you buy ahead, for 40 Swiss Francs you can get a day pass and travel on just about any train in the country, and easily travel from one side of the country to the other.

And look at these neat trays they have in 1st class.

During this time we also took a tram, a subway, and a trolley in Milan, which were all very nice (and on time!). And in Wengen we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain. This part of Switzerland is all mountains and valleys and you can travel across practically the entire region by taking cable cars or gondolas up one mountain and then down the other side to another town and then up the next, etc.

Here's the view looking down in the valley from the top of the local mountain.