After spending some time trying to find out what trains are available over the next couple of days to get us back to Paris for the Eurostar on Tuesday, we decided to set out in the beautiful sunshine, Saturday 28 March to ride up to the highest point on the Rhaetian Railway, this time without all our luggage so we could ‘hop on and hop off’.
Our ‘day trip’ in the sunshine was just over two hours each way over this more spectacular section of the Bernina Line with many curves, tunnels and other features built by the early railway engineers. One remarkable ‘spiral viaduct’ was constructed to reduce height! We had fun trying to take photos of all the amazing twists and turns . . . Stopped at Alp Gruem for lunch then went on up to Ospizio Bernina, the highest point, 2,253 m (7,392 ft) above sea level, making this line the highest in Europe. This station is somewhat sparse with only a small cafe to shelter from the wind so we retreated to a slightly lower station at Alp Gruem with an excellent cafe, terrace and spectacular views. It was bitterly cold, especially as the clouds began to close in mid-afternoon so we set off back to Tirano after coffee and strudel.
The descent to Tirano from Alp Gruen is normal guage, without a rack railway system, making the Bernina line one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world. Our chosen restaurant was fully booked so we went to the one literally next door, in the lobby of our apartment block, for an enjoyable meal.
Clocks go forward tonight, so we’ll miss an hour and have agreed with Paulo to check out an hour later . . .