Europe and England 2023

In May and June 2023 I jetted off for a six week adventure in Europe and England. Travelling mostly by rail to see the sights of Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and England, culminating in a long-awaited catch up with good friends in Weston-Super-Mare after three long years!

Revisit the journey below, either by following along with the journal entries or checking out the highlight videos!

Zurich

Chur and Arosa

Albula Line, Chur to St Moritz

Bernina Express, St Moritz to Tirano

Return to Chur

Glacier Express

Lucerne

Heading into Germany (Stuttgart)

Hamburg (Miniatur Wunderland)

Dusseldorf and Wuppertal

Brussels

London

Weston Super Mare, Bristol and Bath

The Way Home

The Map

The Journal

Day 11: Luzern Old Town and Transport Museum

Day 11: Luzern Old Town and Transport Museum

The ankle brace helped a bit, but the ankle is still struggling. I probably don't myself any favours with days like today. This morning I had a slow start as I wanted to give my ankle a bit more time in the brace before I headed out. I must have got sick of it at some point during the night in my sleep because I'd removed when I woke up this morning. I had some of my emergency supply of snack bars for first breakfast, and picked up the usual pretzel and choccy milk for the main breakfast. I...

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Day 10: Luzern

Day 10: Luzern

The day the ankle cried enough. Woke up this morning at about 6:30, that's been a pretty standard time throughout the trip, and figured I might as well get up and have a shower. As I rolled out of bed I found that I couldn't stand. My left ankle felt like it had been sprained in several directions and wouldn't let me put any pressure on it. Well shit. I had planned a rest day for tomorrow where I would take it easy and find something with a fair amount of sitting to do. After eventually...

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Day 9: Zermatt to Luzern

Day 9: Zermatt to Luzern

Another big day of train travel today. Not scenic trains this time though, I just need to transfer between a few different trains to get where I am going. Destination: Lucerne (Luzern) Before departing though, there was time to do a bit of souvenir shopping and sightseeing before checking out of the hotel. Mind you though, even after checking out I hung around for a bit longer to try and catch a glimpse of the Matterhorn. This was probably the best conditions I got, overhearing a local talking...

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Day 8: Glacier Express to Zermatt

Day 8: Glacier Express to Zermatt

Another big day today. I've diagnosed the issue, it was my laptop being out of space on the C: Drive due to temporary files. I've got a backlog of photos to edit and upload. Today was the day, the Glacier Express. One of the key reasons I came Switzerland was to do this train journey after seeing footage of it online. The slowest express train in the world takes 8 hours to get from St Moritz to Zermatt, a distance of around 160km. It winds its way along the Rhone to Visp and then turns to...

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Day 7: Return to Chur

My photo editing software is misbehaving so I'll diagnose that and get some photos uploaded when I get to the hotel in Zermatt tomorrow. The morning started with breakfast at the hotel, pretty standard fare. There were croissants, cereals, bread for toasting and eggs. I ended up just having a bowl of cereal and a couple of croissants. Checkout time at the hotel was earlier than the Ibis hotels I've been staying at. That was okay though because we'd made loose plans yesterday that would have...

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Day 6: St Moritz and Tirano

Day 6: St Moritz and Tirano

Third times the charm. Today was a big day. (I've got more photos to add to this post, my photo editing software is misbehaving though, I'll try and get to it in Zermatt) I haven't even had a chance to sort through any of the photos and videos I took today. There are too many. By my count I took almost a thousand photos on my SLR alone. The phone and DJI Pocket have more photos and videos to go through at some point. But what a day it was. Started with a bit more of a walk around Chur, found...

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Day 5: Chur

Day 5: Chur

So this time, it wasn't my fault. Heather and Sean yesterday had put forward the idea of catching the train up to Arosa, a skiing village to the south east that would take around an hour to get there. The information we had received was that the Chur Guest Card from Chur Tourism would give us free travel on the buses and mountain railways for the duration of our stay. As none of us had any other plans we decided to go for it even though the weather was not ideal as you can see in the picture...

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Day 4: Chur

Day 4: Chur

Here's a lesson in what not to do: Don't purchase tickets online and then lose your only way to access them by... not being online. It's a bit of a long one but I promise I'll come back to that. Today was the day to depart Zurich and head south towards the Alps. I had booked a lot of my tickets in advance but stupidly forgot the one to get me from Zurich to Chur, figuring I had no idea at that point what I was going to be doing I purchased a day pass before leaving and thought nothing more of...

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Day 3: Zurich

Day 3: Zurich

Well I had a better night's sleep last night after I figured out I could open the window to let some of the cool Swiss air into the room. The air conditioning either isn't working or is intentionally turned so low that it barely pushes any air, and that made the room extremely hot the first night. Today I booked in to a city bus tour and Lake Zurich cruise. It was scheduled to leave at midday so I had the morning to wander around looking at more of Zurich. I decided to head in the direction I...

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No update yet

Laptop battery died, I'll need to charge it overnight and go through today's photos in the morning. Check back this afternoon Aus Eastern time (maybe around 5pm depending on what time I wake up and how long it takes me to write the post).

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