Switzerland: Day ‘Zwei’

‘Guten Tag’

We had a plan today and we moved according to it and we decided to take the Pre-Alpine express train. For many of these scenic trains, one has to go to Lucerne. So we boarded the train to Lucerne around 8:30 AM. After reaching Lucerne, we went looking for the ticket counter to book tickets for the Glacier express but we finally booked tickets for it at night because the pre-alpine express was already at the platform.

Switzerland Greenery

Switzerland Greenery

As usual we sat and ate our room-made sandwiches and enjoyed the beauty outside. This was what I wanted to explore with the buzz words being countryside, lush green, unexplored and scenic. This is away from the Alps and the key cities of Switzerland and there is nothing cosmopolitan about it. According to the website, it offers a lot of opportunities to discover the Germanic part of the nation.

We completed what is called the North-Eastern Arc. But since we had to come back to the base location it was more of a loop :)

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We took our first halt at St. Gallen. Here we picked two cups of cappuccino which woke us up from our jet lag. This place has two churches, a library and an old town to explore – all of it within 600 metres of the Bahn. We decided to skip the library and go around the church and the cathedral. One was a Catholic church and the other one was a Protestant Cathedral. We strolled around the Old Town. It was all very cute and quaint.

St. Gallen

St. Gallen

After St. Gallen, the train ran along the Lake Constance for a while. This is also called the Swabian Sea as it is a great place to unwind and enjoy the water. But believe me from what we could see from the train, the water was choppy and not so Atashi-friendly :)

We took another train from Romanshorn to Schaffhausen to go to Rhine Falls while making a stop at Stein am Rhein. Now this is a very small town with a population of about 3000 people. It had one of the most beautiful cobblestone Rathausplatz (town square). From the station one had to cross a small bridge over the Rhine to get to the see the Rathaus (Town Hall). The walls of these houses here were adorned with paintings and the houses were named according to the character of the paintings.

Stein am Rhein

Stein am Rhein

Rhine Falls

Then we hopped back on to the train to our stop at Rhine Falls. We missed a train stop to Rhine Falls and had to go one station back from Dachsen.

Rhine Falls were beautiful! I will let the pictures and the video (coming soon on youtube) do most of the talking here. Although I will add that we had to walk quite a bit to go there. We saw the Falls from both the sides. One is the east and the other being the west lol :)

We finally took a train back to Schaffhausen from where we boarded the train to Zurich and finally reached our hotel at 11:30 at night. It was a very very long day with a lot of walking and exploring. We spent the entire day eating sandwiches and now we are no longer going to eat them :)

Here’s the link to today’s pictures.

‘Auf Wiedersehen’

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