Our dear friend, Bella (Dolly Goolsby) is on the go again, this time in Italy. She has graciously allowed us to republish her travel blogs. Enjoy!
Wow! What a lovely train ride we had today. We left Varenna this morning under beautiful sunny skies, which was amazing, as we had experienced thunder, lightning and rain most of the night last night.
I had gone to the travel agent in town to get some help with train tickets from Varenna into Switzerland. So I had all our timetables and tickets to get to Pontresina in the Alps.
We boarded the regional train and took it to Tirano, which is barely over the border. From there we had to change trains, from the Italian Trenitalia, to the Swiss rail system. We got on a lovely, comfortable train car, sat back and relaxed, and lo and behold, we were on the Bernina Express. This train goes over several mountain passes, through many tunnels, and we had absolutely gorgeous scenery.
We hadn’t been traveling very long before we saw a waterfall, then another, and another.
As we got further and further into the mountains, the terrain started changing. Before long, we saw the first glacier and a glacial lake.
We crossed more bridges, went through more tunnels, stopped at stations out in the middle of all these mountains and glaciers. We stopped at one station, Ospizia Bernina, that at 2253 meters above sea level, is the highest train station anywhere. (I had to go to my computer and calculate that into feet. It is 7392 feet above sea level.
As we got lower, we stopped at stations that had big parks around them, we saw several hiking trails, and at one stretch where we paralleled the highway, I saw a group of 5 motorcycles. Fun!
We got to Pontresina about 2:00 in the afternoon. We had to make our lunch from what we could find in the mini market by the train station, so everyone is hungry now. Guess I had better close this off and join my group for dinner.
Tomorrow we take another scenic train ride. This is the one I had planned on doing, the Glacier Express. We will go from here to Zermatt, and although it is called an expres, it is really slow and a beautiful ride.
The next post will be from Zermatt. Still praying for good weather to continue.
Till next time.
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