Much better day today. Got our Mongolian Visas, saw more wonderful scenery and travelled all day on our Eurail Pass. Everywhere we have been in Switzerland consists of huge mountains, large lakes and small valleys in between where villages cluster along the railway track. This works because the Government spends more on rail facilities than on roads, we think. They are building a double tunnel through the Alps to Italy which in 2016 will take 2000 trucks per day off the roads and speed delivery. Every village has a church which always looks the same with a tall shingled spire and a clock. We had a lovely breakfast, got a trip plan for tomorrow's trains at Brig Station Travel Centre and caught the 8.24 train to Geneva. Another beautiful day so we admired Glaciers and the Rhone river leading us to Lake Geneva.
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| THIS AREA HAS BEEN FLOODED BY THE RHONE MANY TIMES |
We caught a taxi to the Mongolian Consulate and arrived there at 11.20. The sign on the gate said they closed for the day at 12.30. You may remember they were closed on most of last week for National Holidays which involved the Annual Wrestling Competition with 6000 starters and only one winner. a very nice girl greeted us and said we would be able to pick up our visas after 5 days. BUT, if we paid CHF360 in cash before 12.30 we could have them in an hour. We agreed, to save ourselves another trip to Geneva next week and to avoid travelling without our passports for a week. We have now spent about $1200 on visas to cover only about two weeks of our travels. Back to Geneva Station and headed back along the lake and we saw this train ready to leave:
One famous St Bernard was credited with saving the lives of 40 people over its life. Quite a few of the trains are brightly decorated. This one specialised in bears:
We followed the shores of Lake Geneva as far as Montreux where we alighted to see if we could get a half price trip on a ship but the Golden Pass Panorama Train was on the adjoining platform. A quick word with the guard confirmed it was a goer for us, and she shooed us on and closed the doors, and the train took off as we sat down. Since this looked like a tourist train we wondered about our budget but the guard looked at our pass and said OK. Well, we struck the jackpot here. The trip took 2 hours and was almost as spectacular as the Bernina Express. It was significantly better than the trip on the Glacier Express yesterday. We rose quickly to over 1000 meters zigzagging up the mountains while still in sight of Lake Geneva.
There were many tunnels and viaducts and continuous views of glaciers all along the trip.
Many vineyards were to be seen on the hills above the lake.
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