So Maybe THIS Was The Best Train Ride

FYI: The only real point of coming to Switzerland in the first place was to be able to get to Geneva by tonight in order to take the night train from there to Barcelona.

After waking up this morning in Brig we walked around the town, nestled in between the Alps, to take in the view. We could have taken the direct train from Brig to Geneva and arrived as early as about 12:30 in Geneva, however our night train from Geneva didn’t leave until 11:35 pm so we decided against this path. What we did instead was take a series of scenic trains through the mountains to various Swiss towns.

We left Brig at 1:30 in the afternoon and headed to Spiez where we could have connected to the next train almost immediately, but instead we decided to take the next train in about an hour so we could walk around the town. We definitely wish we had more than an hour in Spiez, it is one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen. It is set right on Lake Thun with mountains all around. The temperature had to be 80 to 90°, there were people swimming in the lake and laying out on the grass all while snow capped mountains could be seen around the town. We took a couple pictures and then got on the train. Our path from that point was Spiez to Zweisimmen, Zweisimmen to Montreux, and Montreux to Geneva. Probably the best leg of the journey was from Zweisimmen to Mountreux because we were actually on a train that was intended to provide the “scenic route” with extra high windows. A lot more of the pictures I took turned out this time, but to give you a better idea of the trip I even took some video. The whole journey was a great experience, especially because of how unexpected it was.

The one unfortunate thing was where the journey ended up taking us, Geneva. The entire train ride through the mountains provided such a build up of beautiful scenery full of mountains, valleys, small towns, lakes, and the list goes on. Because Geneva was the only Swiss town we’d actually heard of we thought this great build up would lead to the final climax in Geneva. This was not the case. We definitely had a great day, but we found Geneva to be crowded, uninteresting, lacking in any kind of draw or “it” quality the rest of Switzerland seemed to have, not too mention we stumbled through the, uh, burlesque area of town. ….and we saw a lot of weirdos.

We are now on the train to Barcelona which is also somewhat disappointing as the train we are in is at least a couple decades old (at least it looks that way). We figured the night trains would be much nicer ince they provide longer trips and are intended for sleep and comfort. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, all I’ll say is the one things we’ve found on our trip is not everything is going to be exactly what you expect. Oh well, no worries…we made it and we’re on our way to Spain!