Vaduz, Liechtenstein and Zurich, Switzerland

A while back we set ourselves the goal of visiting 60 countries by the end of 2015. Our definition of 'visiting' is aligned with this country-ticking objective - cross the border and it counts!
So when we noticed that Vaduz - capital of the small Principality of Liechtenstein was directly accessible by train and bus from Chur, Switzerland (our location from the last blog post); we couldn't resist the trip to see it. Then after just two hours of sightseeing, we were back in Switzerland, on route to Zurich for the final stop on our four day Swiss rail journey.

Lucerne and Chur, Switzerland

The second leg of our Swiss rail adventure included visiting the pretty lake side city of Lucerne for lunch, two nights at the historic town of Chur and the trip highlight - a journey in the first class scenic carriages of the Bernina Express that took us over the Alps and across the Italian border to Tirano. Time in Italy clocked to just over two hours before we were back on the train to the resort town of St Moritz. After wandering through the quiet streets (it was off peak season), we headed back to our hotel with lasting memories of mountain scenery, snow covered peaks and meadows of lush grass and flowers.

Bern and Interlaken, Switzerland

Switzerland's amazing rail network allows you to spend hours gazing at lush Springtime pastures and snow capped peaks whilst lazing in the comfort of a climate controlled, perfectly spotless carriage. Our four day Swiss Rail Adventure in May kicked off from Zurich, involved many stops at historic cities (Bern, Lucerne, Chur) and two border crossings - Italy (Tirano) and Liechtenstein (Vaduz). We used the Swiss Pass to its full potential as evidenced by the following three blogs worth of travel photos.

Zurich, Switzerland

Our time in Zurich was spent over a two day period from the 18th-19th of August, arriving via train from Paris Gare de Lyon station where we spent about 2.5 hours in cafe, eating steak tartare and people watching.
The train ride was Zurich, is a beautiful city that is fringed by a lake and the outline of the Alps is visible from a fair distance. We were quite amazed that the tops of the mountains still had snow, although the central city was baking at close to 30 degrees Celsius - could we improve our tan in Switzerland?