“Remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime.” (Edward Whymper)
This post continues the account of my trip to Switzerland, covering my time in the Swiss Alps and the return home.
Day 6 – Monday 23rd March 2026 – Interlaken to Zermatt via Lauterbrunnen and Wengen
When I awoke, my weather forecast app said that it was raining and freezing cold, so I resigned myself to catching a bus to Interlaken Ost from where I wished to depart. However, when I stepped outside I discovered that it was a beautiful crisp sunny morning, so I decided to walk to Interlaken Ost by following the Aare river. Along the route I encountered people walking their dogs and children going to school.
When I told my son that I was visiting Switzerland, his only suggestion was that I should visit the Lauterbrunnen valley. My son is a great fan of J. R. R. Tolkien, who visited Switzerland in 1911, and supposedly based Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings on the Lauterbrunnen valley. So that is where I decided to go that morning. I was catching the 09:04 train to Lauterbrunnen and at Interlaken Ost I had to be careful to get in the correct part of the train as only half of it was going to Lauterbrunnen.
The train takes only just over 20 minutes to get to Lauterbrunnen, and there is a cross-platform change to a connecting train to take you onwards. Rather than changing onto this connecting train, which had a lot of passengers with skis heading off to the slopes for the day, I left the station at Lauterbrunnen and walked along the valley floor. After a short time I came near to the foot of the Staubbach Falls, where a wispy stream of water cascades down the near vertical mountainside.
J. R. R. Tolkien produced his own painting of Rivendell to illustrate an early edition of The Hobbit. This seems to have been based on his recollections or sketches of the Lauterbrunnen valley, when he had been there many years earlier. However, from the valley floor, I was not quite getting the view depicted in his painting – I concluded that I needed more elevation to look down the valley. I decided to do this by catching the connecting train at Lauterbrunnen up to the village of Wengen. I had conflicting information about whether my Interrail pass was valid, or gave a discount, on the train to Wengen, and the app would not allow me to add a journey to Wengen into my pass. However, when I enquired in the ticket office at Lauterbrunnen, a helpful woman there assured me that my pass would be valid, even without adding Wengen as a destination, as long as I had a valid pass for that day. So, I boarded the next train to Wengen and on it my pass was scanned by the ticket inspector without comment.
When I got off in Wengen, I followed a trail to find a viewpoint near a church which gave good views down the Lauterbrunnen valley. From this point you could see the similarity with Tolkien’s painting of Rivendell. While I was in Wengen, I bought a postcard of the Lauterbrunnen valley to send home and posted it at Wengen post office. From Wengen, you could take a succession of trains to go all the way up the Jungfrau. However, Interrail is definitely not valid on these and the prices are eye-wateringly expensive, even by Swiss standards.
From Wengen I was going to go to Zermatt, which involved catching five trains, the connections for which ranged from four to eleven minutes. In any other country, this would be considered madness, but in Switzerland you are confident that the connections will be made and even if they are not, there will probably be another train along in 30 minutes. I retraced my steps of that morning to return to Interlaken Ost, changing at Lauterbrunnen. From Interlaken, I again followed the shore of the Thunersee to change at Spiez. What I had not factored into to my confident expectations, was that the train I was catching from Spiez to Visp, through the 35km long Lötschberg Base Tunnel was a Deutsche Bahn train that had originated in Dortmund early that morning. Being Deutsche Bahn, that train had to be the one that was running late. It was four minutes late into Visp, which, given that I was at the wrong end of a long train for the connecting passageway for the train to Zermatt, meant that the connection was only just made. Upon leaving Visp, the train operated by Matterhorn Gothard Bahn started climbing steeply, parts of this line use a rack and pinion system to get up the steeper gradients. Soon we had climbed to an altitude where snow was lying on the ground and this continued all the way to Zermatt.
The train arrived in Zermatt at 14:17 and I went straight from the station to leave my bag at the hotel. As usual, I apologised in German for my poor German, only to be told by the Portugese receptionist that she too spoke better English than German. It was a beautifully sunny afternoon in Zermatt and there were clear views of the Matterhorn from the centre of town.
I wasted no time, and after leaving my bag, set off immediately for a walk. After passing a queue of skiers waiting for the ski lifts to take them to the top of the slopes, I found a snow covered track leading out of town. I followed this as far as I could, encountering nobody else apart from a couple of cows. When the track came close to a ski slope it became steeper and more icy, such that I judged it unwise to carry on further without trekking poles. So I turned round and came back the way I had come. The slippery conditions meant that the descent took much longer than the ascent. When I got back to the bottom by the ski lift, most skiers seemed to be packing up for the day and were queuing up for electric buses to take them back. In Zermatt, only electric cars and buses are allowed. The only permitted petrol driven vehicles are those of the emergency services and some construction trucks.
In the centre of Zermatt is the Matterhorn Museum. This is largely underground and tells the story of the mountain, the attempts to climb it and the local economy that developed servicing mountaineers. In earlier days, locals would congregate in the centre of Zermatt, touting for business as mountain guides. There were usually far more guides available for hire than customers looking to hire them, and being selected would earn enough for the guide to live for the next few weeks. The museum also describes in detail the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper in 1865. On the descent four of Whymper’s party plunged to their deaths when, after a fall by one of them, the rope linking the whole group broke (but some accounts suggest that the rope was cut to save the remaining three members). The museum contains part of the rope that broke, but it questions why so thin a rope was being used for this purpose.
That evening I dined in an Italian restaurant, where I had carrot and orange soup to start with, followed by a pizza.
Day 7 – Tuesday 24th March 2026 – Zermatt to St Moritz
The Glacier Express runs all the way from Zermatt to St Moritz. Although the journey is covered by an Interrail pass, there is a hefty reservation fee to pay on top, so my original idea was just to mirror the route of the Glacier Express, using a number of connecting local trains. However, when I came to plan this option in detail, I found that I would not be able to complete the journey in daylight at the time of year that I was travelling, which would have been a shame since the attraction of this route is the scenery. (In retrospect, I could perhaps have solved the problem by starting in Brig, but this would have reduced my time in Zermatt.) There were two Glacier Express departures that day – I chose the earlier one, at 07:52, to give me more time to explore St Moritz. I was having a hotel breakfast in Zermatt – fortunately, they started serving it at 7am and the offering was fairly basic, so I had no difficulty in making the train on time.
My carriage was only half-full on departure from Zermatt, but quite a few more people got on at Brig. As Zermatt is at the end of the line from Visp, the first hour of the journey was just the reverse of the journey up to Zermatt that I had taken the previous day. When the ticket inspector came round, a surprisingly large number of passengers did not have the correct tickets for their journey – many just seemed to have a reservation, but either no, or an incorrect, underlying ticket. They were charged an astronomical amount for their mistake – much more than it would have cost them to buy a Swiss Saver Day Pass, which is normally available until the day before you want to travel.
On the Glacier Express you are provided with earphones and at regular intervals there is commentary about the places that you are passing. Virtually all the passengers on the train were obviously tourists (although thankfully there were no tour groups in my carriage) and most of them succumbed to the offer of being plied with overpriced food and drink throughout their journey. However, a man got on at Brig and sat opposite me. He just bought a ticket on the train for one stop to Andermatt, and immediately got out his laptop and worked head down throughout, not admiring the scenery.
As the train climbs using several spirals towards Andermatt the scenery becomes more dramatic and there is a long stretch in the Furka Base Tunnel. After Andermatt the steepness literally ratchets up and the train climbs to the Oberalp pass, which at 2033m is the highest point on the route. Here there was deep snow as far as the eye could see, but in summer I believe there is a lake close to the pass.
From the highest point there is a steep descent and we soon came out of the snow to travel along the Rhine Gorge formed by the Vorderrhein. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the train to take many decent photos of the Rhine Gorge. The train stopped at Chur, where a few passengers got off and the engine was swapped to enable the train to change direction.
From Chur, the train retraced its route for a short time, before deviating at the confluence of Vorderrhein with the Hinterrhein. We then followed the Hinterrhein uphill, soon reaching the snow again, before branching to follow the Albula river. This is crossed on the high Landwasser viaduct. The section of the route from Chur has no rack and pinion system, so height is gained through multiple spirals and loops, some of which are in tunnels.
Chur and St Moritz are both in Grisons canton, as it is known in French. It is Graubünden (Grey Leagues) in German. It is the only canton in Switzerland to have three official languages: German, Italian and Romansch, and the only one to have Romansch as an official language. The village of Disentis/Mustér, where the train stopped before Chur is majority Romansch speaking. In St Moritz over 20% of the population have Italian as their main language.
The Glacier Express arrived at St Moritz on time at 15:37. The station is by the lake shore, but the main town of St Moritz is at a higher level away from the lake. To get to the town from the station you first walk through an underground car park, which has parking spaces reserved for women (presumably to enable them to feel safer by parking next to the exit). Then there is a series of linked escalators to take you up the hill into St Moritz proper. In this regard it reminded me of Siena in Italy, which has a similar arrangement of escalators from the station. Although St Moritz, at 1,822m, is 200m metres higher than Zermatt, it did not feel as high, probably because it is more built up and the surrounding mountain tops are further away. I checked into my hotel, which was run by an Italian-speaking family, and set off to explore St Moritz.
After wandering about the town centre for a while, I descended to the lake, the St Moritzersee, where I walked along the lake shore. The surface of the lake was almost completely frozen, apart from small areas around where water flowed into the lake. St Moritz is home to the Cresta Run, the natural bobsleigh course, which is rebuilt from ice each year. As it had just closed for the season, I did not pay it a visit.
That evening I returned to a restaurant by the lake shore for dinner, which seemed much more reasonably priced than those in the town centre. Here I had delicious Salmon Rösti with a tasty local beer.
Day 8 – Wednesday 25th March 2026 – St Moritz to Lucerne
Having researched what I wanted to do in Lucerne, to maximise my time there I decided that I would make an early start from St Moritz. This meant leaving the hotel before the reception was staffed in the morning, but I had arranged where I should leave my key. I made my way to St Moritz station to catch the 07:48 train.
Unlike Zermatt, there are several railway lines to and from St Moritz and the train I was taking to Landquart took a different, but still very scenic, route to that by which I had arrived. The train was virtually empty on departure. When the ticket inspector came round, he pointed out that although I had a first class Interrail pass, I was sitting in 2nd class. Apparently there was a small first class compartment right at the front of the train, but I declined to move there, as it was nice and peaceful where I was already sitting. The journey to Landquart took just under two hours, including descending steeply through the 19km long Vereina Tunnel.
The train arrived on time at Landquart, where there was a short wait for my next train to Zurich. This travelled along the shore of the Walensee and Lake Zurich, retracing in reverse the route I took in 2022, when I travelled from Zurich to Innsbruck. I was not visiting Zurich on this trip, as I had stopped off there on my 2022 journey. However, the time for my change in Zurich was just long enough for me to leave the station to look at the outside of the Swiss National Museum opposite, where I had spent most of an afternoon in 2022.
The shortest of my three train rides was from Zurich to Lucerne. (I am using the English/French version for the name of the city. In its native German it is Luzern.) I was pleased that the ticket collector gave short shrift to some pathetic pleading from a couple of Americans who were sitting in first class with second class tickets. The ticket collector pointed out that to enter the carriage they had come through a door marked first class, all the seats had a large ‘1’ on them and that there had been an announcement before departure about needing a first class ticket to sit in first class. When the Americans suggested that they move to second class, they were told that they would be fined 100 Swiss Francs, as they had been sitting in first class. Alternatively, they could pay 24 Swiss Francs each to upgrade their tickets – which was the option that they chose.
Unlike in the other big cities, where my free city transport pass had been emailed to me in advance of my arrival, I had received nothing from Lucerne. I also remembered from my previous visit in 1983, that the transport museum and the ferries on the lake were free for Interrail users, but this no longer seemed to be the case. The transport museum now seemed to be very expensive, such that a two-day pass for all the museums in Lucerne was only two Swiss Francs more than the cost of entry to it. So on arrival in Lucerne I first called in at the Tourist Information Centre at the station, to check out information about passes and discounts. They confirmed that I would need to go my hotel to pick up my transport pass, but if stopped by an inspector en route to my hotel I could show my hotel reservation as evidence. They also confirmed that no discounts were available to Interrail users, but ferry tickets could just be bought on boarding. I decided to buy a two day pass for all the museums in the city.
The weather was warm and sunny when I arrived in Lucerne, but rain was forecast for later. I went to my hotel to collect my transport pass and then I decided to revisit the Swiss Transport Museum, that I had last been to in 1983. My original intention was to catch a ferry there, to take advantage of the good weather. However, at the time of year that I was there, the service was only hourly, with a two hour gap in the middle of the day. So rather than hang around for a long time, I caught a bus to the Swiss Transport Museum.
When I visited this museum in 1983 it was the Swiss Transport and Postal Museum, but the postal section is no more. To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment and I found it less interesting than I had 43 years previously. I don’t know if it was just the passage of time distorting my memory, but the railway section seemed less comprehensive, and now there seemed more on other modes of transport with a large collection of cars. When I had nearly finished in the museum and was visiting the aviation section, the weather suddenly changed. The temperature dropped dramatically, a gale started blowing and it rain lashed down. Unfortunately, I had left my warmer clothes and umbrella in a locker in the main building of the museum, which I could not get to without going outside. I realised that if I took the most direct route I would get completely soaked, so I hopped from building to building minimising the distance I was exposed to the rain. When I eventually reached the locker where my bag was stored, I had only a few minutes until the hourly ferry back to the centre of Lucerne departed.
So, with my umbrella up, I departed at speed towards the jetty from where the ferry departed. As I approached, I could see it coming in to dock and I was still hurrying down the path towards it when it arrived. I just managed to get on and it departed immediately. From what I had been told at the tourist office, I expected to have to pay on boarding. I am not sure if my information was wrong, or whether it was because of my late arrival or the inclement weather, but nobody seemed interested in whether I had a ticket or selling me one, so I had a free ride back to the quay near Lucerne railway station.
My plan had been to explore next the old town of Lucerne. But as it was still raining hard, I decided to postpone that. Instead I caught a bus to visit the Bourbaki Panorama, which is housed in a purpose built building conveniently located near my hotel. Viewing the panorama was included in the Lucerne Museum Pass that I had bought. The Bourbaki Panorama is an enormous cylindrical painting depicting the French Army of the East that sought sanctuary in Switzerland following their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Care of the wounded was one of the first major actions of the newly formed Red Cross. The panorama was painted by a team of 11 painters led by Édouard Castres. On the level below the panorama there is a museum giving more information and displaying items associated with the French Army’s disastrous campaign.
Once the rain started to ease that evening, I headed out to find food. For some reason, I was not feeling enormously hungry, so I just had a burger for my dinner.
Day 9 – Thursday 26th March 2026 – Lucerne to Basel
Before things opened that morning, I wanted to explore the old centre of Lucerne, which I had postponed due to the weather the previous day. However, when I woke and looked out of the window it was snowing. By the time I set off, the snow had turned to a light sleet. I zigzagged across the Reuss river using the ancient decorated covered bridges – the Kapellbrücke and Spruerbrücke. On the south side is the impressive Baroque Jesuit Church and on the north side is the old Town Hall. I also walked up to an intact section of the city walls which run to the north of the old town.
By the time that I had finished my walk the Museum Luzern had opened. This city museum is slightly odd. It is housed in two separate buildings that were once the city’s arsenal. One building covers the area’s geology and fauna and its displays are as in a conventional museum. The other building is the historical section, but is really just the archive stores, with everything piled up rather higgledy-piggledy. You are given a tablet to scan the barcodes which are attached to each item if you want to find out what it is. Hidden behind a curtain is the city’s guillotine, which was used for executions in the 19th century.
When I had finished in the city museum I calculated that I probably had time to do two more museums included in my Museums Pass, which were conveniently both near the station, provided I did not spend too long in either. The first was the Rosegengart Collection – this art gallery over three floors focussed primarily on works by Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. As neither of these is one of my favourite artists, I did not spend too long here. My final stop in Lucerne was at the art gallery on the top floor of KKL, a concert hall and arts centre right next to Lucerne station. The art in here interested me even less, so I was able to leave in plenty of time to catch my train just before 1pm.
Lucerne railway station burned down in 1971 and the modern replacement opened in 1991, with just the original entrance arch remaining standing outside the new station, between it and the bus station. When I spent a day in Lucerne in 1983, I did not stay overnight in the city. Having more stamina then, but less money, I had arrived on a night train from Florence (having changed at Arth-Goldau) and departed on an overnight train to Calais to return to England. I do not believe that either of those journeys are possible by night trains today. Presumably in 1983, Lucerne station had not yet been rebuilt after its fire, but I remember very little about it.
I finished in the KKL with sufficient time to buy a hot sausage roll to eat on the train I was catching to Basel. The journey to Basel just took an hour and as the train approached Basel station there was a torrential hailstorm, which lasted for only a few minutes and had virtually stopped by the time that I was ready to leave the station building. I had been to Basel more recently than to Lucerne, stopping off on my journey to Slovenia in 2022, so I had not scheduled so long in Basel, which given it is a very interesting city may have been a mistake. I was staying in the same hotel, a short walk from the station, as on my previous visit. On the way there, I noticed that the post office that I had used to buy a stamp four years ago, where I had my first ever conversation in German since starting to learn the language, had now shut down.
Last time I was in Basel I spent a lot of my time in the excellent city museum in the former Barfüsserkirche. I recalled it being so good, that I contemplated going back there, but concluded that I would not have time to do it justice before it closed for the evening. When I went in to the city centre, I noticed that the town hall that had been covered in scaffolding was now resplendent and brightly decorated, so I went into its courtyard for a further look. From there I went to Basel Münster which sits above the Rhine. Inside the church are the burial places of the philosopher Erasmus and the mathematician Jacob Bernoulli. Jacob was the head of a family of famous mathematicians, but his son Johann is buried in the Peterskirche in Basel. (The most famous mathematician to have come from Basel, Leonhard Euler, is buried in St Petersburg, where he moved under the patronage of Catherine the Great, after a spell in Berlin.)
That evening I ate in a restaurant that served hearty Germanic Swiss food in large portions. Here I had a schnitzel for the final full dinner of my trip.
Day 10 – Friday 27th March 2026 –Basel to London via Paris
After breakfast in the hotel, I set off to walk to Basel station to catch the 0825 train to Paris. The train started in Zurich and had a scheduled 30 minute wait in Basel, so as I walked from my hotel parallel to the railway lines I saw the train I was about to catch coming into the station. Stopping to admire the murals in the main hall of the station, I then found the platform where my train was waiting and got on. By the time the train left, my carriage was completely full. After passing, without stopping, through Dijon, which I had visited on my way to Basel in 2022, the train soon joined the high speed line to Paris.
We arrived at Gare De Lyon on time at 11:38. I intended to spend most of the afternoon in the Musée d’Orsay. When I had first booked this trip, they were not yet selling timed tickets for the Musée d’Orsay. However, when I looked again a week or so before I departed, the only timed tickets that were available for this day were 13:30 or 15:30, rather later than ideally I would have liked. So rather than catch the RER direct from the the Gare de Lyon to the Musée d’Orsay, I decided to walk there along the Seine via Notre Dame. It was not a warm and sunny day, as when I had crossed Paris nine days earlier, but at least it was not raining.
Even without walking quickly, and despite crossing the river to look at the front façade of Notre Dame, I still arrived at the Musée d’Orsay three-quarters of an hour before my due time slot. However, there was no queue at the entrance for timed ticket holders, and I was let in early without a problem. The Musée d’Orsay is in the former Quai d’Orsay railway station and contains the largest collection of Impressionist art anywhere in the world. I went first to the special exhibition that was on at the time of my visit, on Renoir and Love. Then with the help of an audio-guide I attempted to visit the galleries in order. After starting with some earlier works on the ground floor, I then went to the top floor where the main Impressionist and post-Impressionist collections are held. Towards the end of these galleries, I realised that I was starting to run out of time and had to skip the audio-guide commentary for some works. One could easily spend a full day in the Musée d’Orsay, and the nearly four hours I spent there was not enough.
I had a train home to catch, so I dragged myself away and caught a couple of RERs across Paris to Gare du Nord. I just had time to visit the usual supermarket I go to when returning via Paris, a couple of blocks from the Gare du Nord. This has an interesting selection of reasonably priced beers and I bought a few to bring home.
I checked in at the Eurostar Terminal and had a short wait before being allowed to board the 18:09 Eurostar train to London. By virtue of my 1st class Interrail pass, I was travelling in Eurostar Plus (which I had never done before), where I expected to be fed on my way home. As we were departing, someone came round saying that food would be served in about ten minutes. It turned out that it took 50 minutes for the food to reach us, by which time I was quite hungry, having had little to eat since breakfast. I did not think that the food offered was that great – just cold chicken and pasta and a tiny biscuit for ‘dessert’. I wanted to try Eurostar Plus, to see if it would be worth upgrading in future if I were hungry on the way home. I concluded that the premium normally charged for Plus above standard is not worth it. It was dark during most of the journey to London, where the train arrived five minutes late at 19:45.
Conclusion
I was not sure what time of year would be best to visit Switzerland, but concluded that I made the right choice, by having snow on the ground at the higher altitudes, but not so cold that it did not matter that I had not brought a thick coat. That said, I was very lucky with the weather, with great views during the time that I was in the mountains. Had the bad weather that I encountered in Lucerne arrived a few days earlier, it would have been a different story.
While it was reassuring to have a frequent and reliable train service throughout the country, it comes at a price – even booked well in advance, train fares are expensive. That also probably sums up the country as a whole – a very nice life can be had, provided you can afford it.
I enjoyed following you through Switzerland by train. What a beautiful country, though Australian friends of mine have said it is very expensive.