Zurich to Milan

We caught a 7:15 am train from Zurich to Milan - 4 hours up and over the Alps.

I was very excited for this ride as its on of the worlds most scenic routes, and next year it will be largely bypassed by the 35 mile long Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) which has taken 20 years to build.

Here's our route

Here's a detail of the best part. The current short tunnel in yellow; GBT in red. Blue circles indicate spiral tunnels; the route is so steep and narrow that they made these to gain altitude in a short distance

Ready to depart at 7am. Despite my teasing pics of Bee sleeping, when it's time to go she always rallies and is often ready before me

Sunrise over the Zurichsee 

 Nap time :)

Bee got me back! Here's Dave on the (any) train. If you look closely you might see a bit of drool on the window :)

The ticket guy was pretty severe, kicking people out of first class and chastising them for being in the wrong seat. He said "I hate international trains". We were in the right car/seat, so we got off easy. Interestingly, this was the only train so far that they checked tix. They also made an announcement about border control checking passports, but when the Italian border cops walked thru they didn't ask any white people for ID

The south eastern end of Lake Lucerne

At a small station I saw a middle school aged field trip. Just like in the U.S.: girls waiting quietly and patiently, boys rough housing and comparing knives

As we head south the valley narrows and the peaks get higher

In Erstfeld you pass the northern portal of the GBT. Lots of construction activity

As you climb, the road parallels the twists turns and tunnels. The GBT will move most transport from trucks on this road to high speed train

All along thee are beautiful Alpine plateaus and villages. People live here just as they have for hundreds of years (but they have cars and Internet)

Town way up on the ridge

The town of Wassen. It sits between two spiral tunnels, and we passed that church three times: eastbound below it, northbound next to it, then southbound above it. In the pic you can see the middle track

Near the summit tunnel the valley gets very narrow.

Then you go through the summit tunnel for about 10 minutes and pop out in Airolo, Italy. On this end the valley is much wider

More sights: in Quinto there's a funicular way up the mountain. There's a lake up there and those are hydro power pipes to the right of the tracks

There are still plenty of twists and turns on this end. In the distance, just south of Quinto, there's a narrow canyon thru which both the road and tracks pass, and we went thru a spiral tunnel to lose altitude

The valley continues to widen, and other large valleys join ours. This is Biasca; the southern portal of the GBT is near here

Still plenty of Alpine excitement! Waterfalls cascade down the steep cliffs all along the line

And many granite quarries as well

At Bellinzona the new GBT tracks head due south while our tracks climb the mountainside then go thru a pass to Lugano; here's Lake Lugano

Across the lake is the town of Campione d'Italia - looks amazing

Time for a snack! Bee is in Italy eating a Swiss sandwich to which she added cheese from Germany

Milan station

The main concourse is beautiful

We took the metro to our hotel. It was very clean, and there were police on board. Is this just how Milan does it, or are they just putting on a show for all the Expo visitors?

On the 2 block walk to the hotel, we saw this - workmen winching a wheelbarrow up 6 floors. Hope they used strong rope

And that's it for our travels. After checking in we visited Expo 2015, which deserves its own blog entry