My husband and I are going to take the Bernina Express in June. Has anyone out there ever done this trip from Lugano? We were going to take it from Lugano and end up back in Zurich. We were wondering if we should plan on spending the night somehwere, or if we can make it all the way through to Zurich in the same day. Otherwise it looks as though hotels in St. Moritz are very expensive. One of them told me that we would have to spend two nights in St. Moritz. Thank you.
Posted by
Yorkshire, UK
264 posts
Elaine - We have done the trip from Lugano. Going on the website the Post Bus leaves Lugano at 10am and arrives at Tirano at 1255.
If you take the 950 train leaving at 1404 your final point will be Chur not St. Moritz at 1828
From there any number of trains will get you back to Zurich the same day.
I should note the train also ends in Davos if you get on the right one. We ended up there and while rooms were cheap the town was dead during the summer.
Posted by
OP
Mission Viejo, Calif., USA
1010 posts
Thank you Mike for your quick reply and your suggestions. I really appreciate talking with somebody who has actually done the trip. Did you think it was a worthwhile trip? What month did you do the trip in? Did you have a Swiss Pass?
Posted by
Yorkshire, UK
264 posts
Elaine - My pleasure. I went on the Bernina Express at the end of September. So like you it was certainly during the warmer months.
Did I think it was worth it is a tougher question. I think I mentioned to someone a while back on this board that for me in retrospect the most amazing thing about the Bernina Express was the engineering. The engineering was actually very difficult to see while in the train.
Did I have a bad experience? Certainly not. Having a swiss pass to keep the price down also helped. For me when you talk "worth" in Switzerland the bar is set very high when you have places like the Bernese Oberland and Zermatt. In hindsight I would have chosen easily to take another day in those places. Just one man's opinion.
That said, if your wants or needs are such that the different trains are a priority for you, it definitely was not a disappointment or anything like that.
Please feel free to post further or PM me if I can do anything else to help you. I can try my best.
Posted by
dallas, tx, usa
1358 posts
I found hotels in St Moritz very expensive. I priced them all and found the one at the RR station to be lowest priced when I was there six years ago.
It is older and quaint with large rooms and interesting decor.
We paid the premium price for the Glacier Express train and later learned that we could have taken the same route on the normal train for less and seen the same sights.
The only advantage of the express trains is that you have larger windows. You will have to decide how much the windows are worth to you.