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GLACIER EXPRESS
Swiss Mountain Sight-seeing Vistas by Scenic Rail

Taking a rail journey through the Swiss Alps past the glaciers which remain through winter and summer is one wild ride. The Alps highest peaks are along the southern border with Italy, a high snow-capped curtain wall of mountain crags with few passes between. Long dark tunnels, high bridges and tiny mountain villages with those distictive slate roof little buildings which dot the deep valleys. The Swiss Rail Glacier Express which runs between St. Moritz and Zermatt in eastern Switzerland offers some of the world's most magical mountain vistas from the Oberalp Pass switchbacks to the magnificent mighty Matterhorn.

Travel on the distinctive red Swiss rail cars through 91 tunnels and over 291 bridges across deep gorges and clang to the sides of rocky cliffs. The classic Swiss Scenic rail route connects two world famous resorts St. Moritz and Zermatt, passing through the towns of Chur, Andermatt, and Brig. The Glacier Express runs daily in the summer and winter season and offers first and second class cars, panoramic view seating and a dining car. © Bargain Travel Europe

Take the Glacier Express - Panoramic trip from St. Moritz to Zermatt  

THE TOWN THAT ISN'T THERE
An Orient Express Mystery Poirot Never Solved

Train journey murder-mystery tours have become very popular, perhaps inspired by a certain mystery novel with a fastidious Belgian detective. Riding the Swiss Rail train across the Swiss-Italian border, winding up the long grade toward Brig, you travel the tracks followed by the Simplon line of the legendary Orient Express of literary and movie fame. But the track path has made a change since the romantic golden days when Hercule Poirot unearthed the intricate plot of a dozen murderers.

As you pass along the slope of a long deep valley, the track curves away from the mountainside passing around a cascaded pile of crumbled stone and high in the canyon gap above, a wall of white clings between the rock crags like the glass sharp edge of the broken end of a popsicle. The pile of stone is where a Swiss Alpine village once stood. The jagged white above is the sheer terminus of a glacier. One heavy winter the snow was too much for the mountain to hold and an avalanche of ice brought down the ancient mountainside rock, burying the entire village and it’s sleeping inhabitants. Gone in an instant. I wonder if Poirot could get Mother Nature to confess to this mass murder. © Bargain Travel Europe

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SEE ALSO:

WALLISERHOF CHALET HOTEL ZERMATT
Snuggle under the Matterhorn

STONE AND GRAPES: THE CASTLES OF TRENTINO

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