Poet T. S. Eliot said, “The journey not the arrival matters” and we would tend to agree. Naturally when we’re planning a vacation it’s typically the destination that first catches our eye. There are two TV travel programs that we watch weekly to get ideas of where we might want to visit and our process is always the same: when an attractive location appears on the screen, Bill pauses the video, with the image hopefully displaying the spelling of the city and then we see if it has a train station. With that confirmed it goes on our “Want to See” list for further investigation. On occasion, however, it will be a particularly interesting train that’s featured and that was definitely the case with Switzerland, where it ended up being three different trains.

Years ago part of my job included selling day trips on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express and to understand what I was promoting I got to experience four hours of total luxury in white glove service on a lunch excursion into the countryside. Last year Bill and I extended that part of a day into a full week when we traveled on a similarly styled train across the top of Spain. Now it was time to see what Switzerland had to offer.

The Bernina Express—The Italian border town of Tirano was our starting point for this panoramic train that is marketed as going “From snow-capped peaks to palm-tree paradise”. The full route terminates in Chur (we got off in St. Moritz) and travels on the highest railway tracks in Europe and the steepest in the world through 55 tunnels and over 196 bridges. Since our portion of the journey was only 2 ½ hours, with a lunchtime arrival, we opted to forgo any food and drink onboard and just enjoy the amazing view.

Bernina Express onboard meal menu pdf

The Glacier Express—This train’s name was the motivating factor for this vacation: to take the train while there were still glaciers to see and we were not disappointed. For the 8-hour journey to Zermatt we chose Excellence Class where the 20 single seats ensure that everyone has a huge window that stretches across part of the ceiling and no one is ever hungry or thirsty. We started with champagne and nibbles before moving onto the 5-course lunch paired with wines. Illustrated menu below.

Nicknamed “The slowest express train in the world”, traveling at 24 mph (39 kph) meant that the incredible scenery that surrounded us didn’t flash by in a blur. There are a lot of tunnels—91 of them, including some spiraling ones—but the 291 bridges give you plenty of open air viewpoints of the valleys stretching out below.

Glacier Express onboard meal menu pdf

The GoldenPass Express—On this final leg of the trip we were in Prestige Class that gives you a heated, rotating (on request) seat that is elevated 40 centimeters (15.7 in.) higher than in the rest of the train to “project” you into the landscape. The route is like an inland Golden Coast through mountain passes connecting one Alpine resort town to another, hence the train’s name. We could have pre-booked a champagne and caviar snack (89 CHF or €) but with a 9:00 AM departure from Zermatt and a 12:20 PM arrival in Montreux we just waited for lunch at our hotel. Once again there was spectacular scenery along the way, easily viewed through huge windows. Equipment note: The GoldenPass fleet is capable of changing track gauges but that has been suspended for technical reasons; consequently we departed on a regular train from Interlaken and changed to the luxurious Prestige Class about half-way through the trip at the station in Zweisimmen.

GoldenPass Express onboard meal menu pdf

Photo note: Bill normally takes all of our photos but the ones for today’s post that were clearly taken by a drone from vantage points that were impossible for us to achieve, came from each train’s website and are marked with a steam locomotive 🚂

Express note: Although each train is designated as an Express, it does not derive from the speed but from not having to change trains from beginning to end and from not stopping at every station along the route.

Three photo galleries below: