Tirano

This was the longest travelling day of our trip, once which Andrew in particular had looked forward to for some time as it included the Bernina Express.

Early up and packed and loaded ourselves up and walked the ten minutes to the train station and grabbed a quick coffee at the train station cafe. Train was switched from one platform to the other, and we picked this up, which illustrated that our Italian was getting better.

The train was supposed to be a direct train from Bellano to Tirano, but with major rail works in place the train only went as far and Sondrio and then it was a replacement bus, at Sondrio station there were zero signs to help us complete the transfer and it was almost by luck we found that going under the train lines brought us out to a bus station and onto our replacement bus….it was tight as it had taken us a few minutes to find this bus!!! But this wasn’t the closest run connect we had that day…more to follow on that later!!!

We arrived in the small Italian village of Tirano, right at the Swiss border and at the foot of the Alps. It was a pretty cool little place, but everything revolved around the two train stations….one which was Swiss and the other Italian one. Plenty of touristy places to eat and we tried our luck in one, the food being good, but hugely overpriced. There was a bit of a wait with not much to do whilst we waited on our “red” train.

We had reserved seats and with hindsight we probably would have been better using the local trains but we had opted for the panoramic carriage. As we set of in the express, it was evident fairly early on that “express” was a truly optimistic term as this was the slowest train we had been on ever. The scenery was superb, but after a while it all kind of blended into one. It was the most picturesque train journey we had been on but four hours was a long journey and as we approached Chur, it was clear that the always reliable Swiss trains that we heard so much about, were not as reliable as they were made out to be. The express was over 20 mins late getting into Chur and with our connecting train to Zurich leaving in just 10 mins it was down to a bit of a sprint to find the correct platform and jump on the train to Zurich. We made it after a bit of a run and as we walked through the train we lost Michelle behind us….only for her to catch up later and tell us that the automatic doors had closed on the back pack and she was stuck in the doors….much to the amusement of the fellow travellers. Once one lady had stopped laughing and helped Michelle get free only then could she join us in first class.

We were pretty tired as the sun was setting and we arrived in Zurich train station…it was massive and appeared to also be in the middle of a shopping centre too!!! We couldn’t find an exit and despite walking for a good few minutes, struggled to get outside. When eventually we did manage to see daylight and get out bearings the short five minute walk turned into a 15 min hike through the busy city. Trying to find our ridiculously expensive accommodation for the one night that we were in Switzerland. To give an indication of the prices we were facing our phones buzzed reminding us that even sending a text in Switzerland was going to cost us £2.50

Eventually we found our “not for profit” accommodation above a nightclub and comedy venue. The inside was sparse and the theme the place seemed to be going for was “prison”…..we were all sharing one room and as we eventually got the codes and entered the room our worst fears were realised……Read more