When we planned our trip to Italy we discovered that Edelweiss Air flies nonstop from Tampa to Zurich, Switzerland. And since we love train travel we thought we should take the Bernina Express, one of the most beautiful train rides in the world. It travels from Tirano, Italy to Chur, Switzerland via the Swiss Alps.
It was designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 2008 and is one of only three train rides that have been designated. It opened in 1910 and is at it’s lowest elevation in Tirano, at 428 meters or 1400 feet. The Bernina Express climbs as high as 2253 meters or 7400 feet!
We ended our trip with this amazing ride, and it’s a good thing we did, since our flight to Zurich was delayed by 24 hours! (You can read about that disaster here.)
The Bernina Express is a beautiful panoramic train. We were in business class and the seats were comfortable and it wasn’t crowded at all. The Husband was a little nervous about the trip. He had read that it ran along the edge of the mountain, but it wasn’t scary at all. It was amazing.
Business class on the Bernina Express.
The first amazing thing we came across was the Brusio Viaduct. It’s considered a masterpiece of the bridge engineering and allows the train to climb pretty high in a short time.
The Viaduct.
The rest of the trip was too beautiful to even try to describe. So I’ll just let the photos do the talking.
It is truly a majestic, breathtaking train ride. Please, do yourself a favor and plan your next trip to Europe around the Bernina Express.