The Glacier Express to Zermatt

We checked out of the Reine Victoria hotel in St Moritz this morning.  I didn't say much about St Moritz or the hotel  yesterday. St Moritz is a beautiful town  but obviously  very upmarket and aimed at the super rich.  St Moritz  has been home to the  winter  Olympics  twice: in 1928 and 1948.   It has the oldest bobsleigh track in the world (opened  in 1908). It is also the only natural  ice track in the world - all the others are  artificially  iced.  For the bargain  price of 270 Swiss Francs, 2 guests can go down it in a 4 man Bob with an experienced  driver and  brake man.  There wasn't time to  do it even if I'd  had the nerve.  It has to be  booked  well in advance. 

After breakfast  we checked out of our grand old hotel  that we had been  very impressed with and boarded the Glacier Express to Zermatt.   The Glacier  Express is a very posh train with a glass roof.  Unforunately, the weather  was a bit wet and much of the journey was cloudy so we didn't have views quite as good as  yesterday.   However,  we were treated to a very nice 3 course lunch as well as tea and cookies  during the  8 hour journey.  

We arrived in Zermatt at about 6.30pm and had a snack for supper  before  walking through the picturesque old town  to a point where we could get a nice picture of the Matterhorn.  

The tour tomorrow  is a cable car trip up the Matterhorn,  but I don't do cable cars so I'm not going.  There is an 80% chance of rain  tomorrow, so the views  might not  be that good anyway.  Becky and I are going to  spend a  recovery day  exploring Zermatt at our own pace and hopefully finding a traditional Swiss restaurant for a nice meal.  Should the weather turn out nice after all then we may go  for a ride up a neighbouring peak on the Gornergrat cog railway. 

St Mortiz and the Bernina Pass

This morning we left Fawlty Towers Hotel behind and took a series of trains to St Moritz.  First it was a short trip from the train station at the airport to Zurich HB (Zurich central station).   Then from Zurich to Chur and then a change onto our final train into St Mortiz where we had lunch alongside the lake.

After lunch there was an excursion on the Bernina Express train over the Bernina Pass.  We came very close to the border with Italy where we stopped for some cheese and wine in the garden of a local restaurant before heading back.   The views were spectacular, including an amazing rainbow.   Despite the earlier forecast for rain it remained dry and the visibility was excellent.

This evening we had a buffet dinner at our hotel the Reine Victoria in St Moritz.  
Tomorrow there is a full day's train journey, including lunch, to get us to Zermatt. 

Sunday 8th September - Our tour begins

I've decided to rename our hotel from the Mövenpick  Zurich airport to the Mövenpick Fawlty Towers.  Today we met some of the people  in  our tour group and  none of them had a good word to say about the hotel.   I had complained yesterday that our room hadn't been  serviced. Some of our tour group were left without any toilet roll after their rooms were "serviced" and others had been left with only a single  hand towel in the  bathroom.  It turns out that nobody's AC is working,  but we are glad we didn't complain about it.  Those who did call maintenance had to wait hours  for anyone to  turn up, then  the maintenance  person  would pull the whole unit out of the wall and just disappear.  Given  that it's not working in the  entire  building  I think it's safe to say that the problem  isn't going to  be in the equipment  that's in the room anyway.   We can count ourselves lucky that at least we got a room to ourselves as several  people were given keys to rooms that were already  occupied  when  they opened the  door and walked in, or, alternatively were unpacking when some strangers would walk in on them.  There only seems to  be one power socket  in each room and that's in the bathroom.  Someone was complaining  that they'd had to put their  kettle in the bathroom to make  tea. Well at least they could  reach their kettle.  Our tea and coffee tray with the  kettle and cups on it has been  placed at the very top of our closet - well out of the reach of either me or Becky.  The final straw is that nobody's  card key seems to work for more than an hour and reception is full of a continuous  stream of people  trying to get their  card keys reset.  

Anyway, enough about the hotel as we're  leaving it tomorrow.   This afternoon we all congregated in reception to meet  our tour guide, Ellen.   Then it was onto the coach for a short tour of Zurich on coach and foot.  

The large church with the  2 towers is called the Grosse Munster.   The story goes that Charlemagne was riding  past this spot when his horse tripped over a gravestone and came a cropper. Charlemagne was unhurt and founded the church in thanks for his survival.  

We walked around the cobbled streets in the centre and saw many old buildings. Although few shops were open as it's Sunday. 

Many of the buildings are former Guild buildings  and  several have animal motifs on them representing the Guild that owned the building.  The wine Guild had a camel on it for some reason.  Meanwhile the building below had a red bull, so that must have been  the Guild for energy drinks. 

After our walking tour we were taken to a local restaurant for a very  nice welcome dinner and met some nice people  from Australia and Singapore.  

Tomorrow we have to be up at 6am to put our cases out for the porters and we will be traveling over the Bernina Pass to St Moritz.

7th September - The Adventures of Becky and Ruth in Zurich

Last night we'd taken a short walk from the hotel to find the Tram station, with the intent of taking the tram into the centre of Zurich today.   So it was a bit of a shock when we walked over to the tram station this morning only to find they were doing maintenance on the line over the weekend and the tram station was out of service.  

Not to be put off, we took the hotel shuttle to the airport and bought a 24 hour "Zurich card".   This allows travel on ALL forms of public transport in Zurich (which includes boats across Lake Zurich and even the cable cars!).   We then took the train to the main station and walked from there down to the lakefront doing a bit of souvenir shopping along the way.  

We then used our travel cards to take a short cruise on Lake Zurich.

We were able to conveniently disembark the cruise ship at a stop near the Lindt Home of Chocolate museum.   We had to wait for our tour, so in the meantime we decided to go in the cafe and have hot chocolates and slices of white chocolate cheesecake.

And yes, this is a real chocolate fountain in the foyer......

I don't know about this really being a museum so much as a tour of the chocolate factory with a bit of background about the history of chocolate thrown in.   At every stage there seemed to be opportunities to sample, liquid chocolate, squares of chocolate of different flavours, etc.  Between all the samples and the hot chocolate and white chocolate cheesecake I'd eaten in the cafe beforehand, by the time I got to the end of the tour I was chocolated out.   The final room gave us the opportunity to sample all the different flavours of lindor and I could only manage one flavour.   Becky pocketed a few for snacking on later though. 

After this we took the train out to a suburb where we did some more souvenir shopping and then managed to catch a train all the way back to the airport - so our Zurich Cards have been very useful.  They even got us a discount of 10% at the Chocolate museum tour.  

Tomorrow afternoon our guide should meet us in the hotel foyer and take us for a welcome meal in the evening.   

6th September - On our way to Zurich

Unfortunately, it's been a bit of a stressful day where nothing much has gone right.   We were up early to make our way over to Terminal 5 to catch our flight to Zurich.   The plane was delayed and we were about an hour late taking off.  So it's a good thing Zurich was our final destination and we didn't have a connection to make.

On arrival at Zurich Airport it transpired that the Hotel shuttle for the Movenpick hotel that we'd been booked into did not run between the hours of noon and 4pm.   That's a heck of a long lunch break!   So we had to get a taxi to the hotel.

Our problems didn't end there, as when we arrived at reception and showed them our booking from Trafalgar they insisted we had no booking and we weren't on their list of people on the Trafalgar tour.   We had to contact the Trafalgar helpline and get them to talk to the hotel.  Finally, after over an hour we were allowed to check in.   The AC in the room doesn't work (and it's really hot here), they aren't servicing the rooms daily and our room keys stopped working by the following day even though we're here for 3 nights.    All in all I'm not impressed with Movenpick and my feedback to Trafalgar will be that they should use a different hotel for their tours.

By the time we'd been allowed to check in and we'd had a shower it was early evening.  So we spent a couple of hours in the hotel bar having a meal and a well earned cocktail.  

I wouldn't have expected it, but smoking seems to be quite popular here in Switzerland. As well as there being a huge smoking terrace outside the hotel, there was a cigarette machine in the foyer.   I haven't seen one of these in years.

The Runway Bar

 Arrived at Heathrow on time this morning and made my way over to Terminal 3 to meet up with Becky.   We're staying at the Hilton Garden Inn (attached to Terminal 2) tonight and flying out to Zurich together tomorrow morning.

We checked in early and decided to have a short nap but were interrupted by the fire alarm.   Apparently somebody was smoking in their room and set the alarm off.   On return to the building we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening relaxing in the Runway Bar on the top floor of the hotel.   When we first got up there it was very wet outside, but the weather cleared up after a while and we had some great views.   We also had a very nice meal up there.   

A Tour of Switzerland by Rail

After all the travel I've done in the past few years my old suitcase was just falling apart.  So it's time for a new one ....

So tomorrow I'm taking my shiny new suitcase and heading for Heathrow where I'll meet up with my sister, Becky and from there we'll be flying on to Zurich together.   The next week will be spent on various scenic rail journeys around the country.  Wish me luck!

Last stop of the cruise - Sorrento and Pompeii

Apologies to those of you who have been stranded in Sicily for the last week.   It was a long journey from Italy back to Canada over 2 days, and when I got in I was exhausted and there were a heap of jobs to do like unpacking and laundry.  But here is my final entry for this trip.

Our final port of the cruise was Sorrento.  We were docked here for 2 days.  This is the captain's home port, so he anchored of Capri for breakfast on the first day and we had a smashing view of the island. 

I'd been to Sorrento before (albeit 40 years ago) and I was looking forward to a nice gelato in one of the ice-cream shops and to doing a bit of shopping.   Of course, last time I came here it was by car, not by ship.   So I hadn't anticipted the fact that the town was a few hundred feet up some sheer cliffs from where the ship was docked.   Fortunately, there was a shuttle minibus to take us up the tiny switchback road to the centre of town.  But it was a nail biting ride over cobblestones and not for the faint of heart.

After a ride like that it was nice to sit down for a ice-cream treat and to just stroll the streets of this picturesque town. 

Sorrento was a 2 day stop and on the 2nd day we were booked on an excursion to Pompeii.   I'd thought the minibus up to town was bad, but this was an hour's journey on tiny roads up and down hills being surrounded by people on scooters who all seemed to have a death wish.   I'd made the mistake of sitting at the front of the bus, so I got a bird's eye view of all the oncoming scooters.  By the time we got to Pompeii I had no fingernails left.   

I'd been to Pompeii 40 years ago as well.  Back then it was a lot less developed and we spent practically the whole day there and strolled at our own pace.   These days the site has been commercially developed and was absolutely heaving.   I've just come across the phrase "over-touristed" and Pompeii was definitely that.   You need to be fit to get around here, there are constant steps up and down and the limestone streets are uneven and slippery.   That said, there are some amazing things to see, if you can manage it - but I'd advise you to go by yourself and take a full day over it rather than having a guide who is trying to get you around all the major points of interest in about 90 minutes and is therefore setting a frenetic pace.

After that it was back to the ship for an evening of packing followed by 2 days of travel.  The ship docked at Civitavecchia on disembarkation day (which is the closest port to Rome).  We had an hour's journey by car to Rome airport before flying to Heathrow. It was 6pm by the time I got into Heathrow and too late for any flights to Canada that day. So I stayed at the Hilton in Terminal 2  with a lovely view (just in case I forgot where I was) and flew back to Montreal the next day. 

Watch this space in September for my Rail trip of Switzerland. 

Sicily

Today we docked at Siracusa in Sicily.  Sicily  sits at the junction of the North African and European plates, so it has a lot of volcanic activity. 

There were excursions into Siracusa itself, but we'd  chosen the excursion to Mt Etna and Catania.  This was an 8 hour excursion so we set off early. It was a long journey by coach  from the port to the city of Catania.  To be honest  I think it would have been better not to have bothered with Catania at all and just concentrated on Etna. The traffic was terrible  and it took ages to get into the centre of town. The city looked scruffy and the main square was overrun by rather suspect looking individuals trying to sell things to you.  We had a look around the cathedral  but it wasn't as impressive as the other cathedrals we've  seen  on this trip. About the only interesting thing was that there seemed to be statues of elephants everywhere. 

We reached Etna around noon.  The highest point the buses can reach is about 6000ft,  you can go further up by cable car, but still not that near the top (Etna is 10000ft). There are craters on the lower slopes though, including  the Silvestri crater, which we were able to walk up to from the parking lot.

We had an excellent  late lunch at the Nicosia winery, before  another long drive back to the ship.  

Today's fascinating fact is that Sicily used to be home to a miniature elephant, called elephas falconeri which went extinct about 250,000 years ago.  Ancient Greeks came to Sicily and found the skulls of these elephants. The skulls had a large hole in the centre where the trunk would have been, and this was the origin of the Greek  myth of the Cyclops. 

Malta

Today we docked at Valetta,  the capital of Malta. 

Denise and I were booked on the Island Panoramic tour, which was basically  a  tour of the island by bus.  What I learned  was that Malta is not a very big island and that it's almost completely  urbanized.   The guide  would say things like "We are now leaving village  X and entering  village Y", but there was no green space  between the 2 'villages'.

Our first stop was a place called  Marsaxlokk, which was a fishing village. The fishing boats were all painted bright colours and there was a Sunday market where  the were selling a variety of  things, including  fish.

Malta gained independence from Britain  back in 1964. But there's  still a few things around that remind you of Britain.  They drive on the left. They all speak English  (as well as Maltese) and signage is almost  completely  in English.   They also have red telephone boxes and Costa Coffee and  even an M&S (sadly it was closed on Sunday). 

We had a couple of photo stops  at various beauty spots, including the city of Mdina, which was the capital until 1530.

Finally, we stopped at Mosta, to visit  the Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady, which is also known  as the miracle church because  a bomb came through the dome during WWII while there were hundreds of people inside praying  - but the bomb failed to go off. If you  look closely at the photo  of the dome you'll see an area where the paint is not the  same, which is where the bomb came through.  They keep a replica of the bomb at the back of the church.

The outside of  the building  was also used in the filming of Game of Thrones.

Then it was back to the ship, where we had a superb meal at the grill where we cooked our own meat on a hot stone at the table.  After that we went to the chocolate extravaganza event that was being held on the pool deck to get dessert.