Beckenried to Zürich Flughafen

We woke to persistent rain and very low cloud.

An hour later it was a little better.

It looked as though we wouldn't see anything up on Rigi Kulm, but still, the train trips should be fun. Frau Scheuber kindly drove our suitcases to the dock so they stayed dry, whilst we walked. We caught the 10.02 ship and hopped off at Vitznau, just across the lake. About 20 metres from the ship is the train line for the red Rigibahn train.

This was Switzerland's first rack-and-pinion railway, and it started operating in 1871. It's a half hour journey up to Rigi Kulm (1752 m). Some lovely wildflowers on the way up (which are easy to see as the mountain trains travel quite slowly). Visibility was poor, however.

We went into the hotel on the summit and had a cup of hot chocolate, then Phil and I went outside for a while. The cloud was pretty dense, but we did manage to find a couple of (very brief) breaks and see a small part of the valley below.

We dragged the luggage outside and Caelli came and had a look, but by this time (a whole 10 minutes later) the cloud had thickened. Phil wanted to head back down and went to wait at the station for the blue Rigibahn train to Arth-Goldau on the other side of Rigi (this one dates back to 1875). Caelli and I joined him 10 minutes later when it started raining.

Once we got halfway down, we were below the clouds and there were some pretty views of the valley.

We ate lunch at Arth-Goldau and watched the next train heading up into the clouds (no sign of Mt Rigi). Then off to the normal train station for a train to Zürich. Zürich was quite disappointing. There is no park nearby, and nowhere in the station to sit that's non-smoking. It looked like every second person had a cigarette (or maybe 2 out of every 3. Switzerland seems to be worse than the other European countries.) Caelli went off to the youth hostel to dump her luggage, and Phil and I finally found a non-smoking cafe to sit in to wait for her. Then off to Zürich Flughafen. We were told to check-in by 7.15pm at the latest, but at 6.45pm there were no check-in counters operating. Weird. We ended up doing "Early Check-in" at 7pm, and then waiting. And waiting. Caelli left about 9.15pm as Phil and I headed for the departure gates. This was a lengthy process involving lots of walking and a train ride. Our plane left Zürich at 22.15 for a six hour flight to Dubai. We were on our way home.