Day 9 Switzerland : St. Moritz to Italy : Tirano

If you like train travel , then you must come to Switzerland , there is 5 famous scenic train route here , namely : The Golden Pass Line , Glacier Express, Bernina Express , Voralpen Express and Gotthard Panorama Express. ( more detail informations can be found here). We will be covering almost 3 of the route for this trip thus that is the reason why we choose to stay in St.Moritz as this is one of the town that will have both Glacier Express and Bernina Express.

We had actually planned to stay in Chur but if we stayed there, either we have to stay also one night in St.Moritz or we might need to waste time taking to and fro train ride. Bernina Express route ( train + bus ) start from Chur and ends at Tirano,Italy then followed by a bus route to Lugano, our plan is just to take the train ride to Tirano and then back , so we can take the Glacier Express to Zermatt next day. If we were to stay at Chur , we will need to use about 4 hrs to Tirano then another 4 hrs back to Chur ( which Glacier express will also past by ). So instead we use yesterday to travel another 2 hrs to stay at St.Moritz then today we only need to travel 2 hrs to Tirano and then another 2 hrs back.
We took the 9:39am Bernina Express, which will reach Tirano at 12 pm. Do note that regular train travels the same route as Bernina Express , the only different is 1) You need to reserve a seat on Bernina express , 2) Bernina Express is Panoramic ( meaning it's aircon-ed but enclosed, making it not so good for taking photos because of the reflection BUT in better the carriages there are some part where the windows can be lower for better photo taking.), 3) Benina Express only has a few trains/day and think it only runs from May through November.We had planned to take one way on Bernina express then return using the normal local trains at 1:40pm. Plan is just to take a look and can said that i visited Italy and had authentic Italy pizza.@_@ Bernina Express will only stop at certain stop along the way for boarding and alighting , but it will stop at the station of Alp Grüm for like 10-15 min for passengers to get down and take pictures.
Upon reaching Tirano , we walk around a bit and then decided to take our lunch at Ristorante Pizzeria across the train station as we need to catch the 1pm/1:40pm train back. The Pizza was great and i can proudly stated that I visited Italy and had authentic Italian pizza !

Free Pass for bus and mountain railways

Next we took to local train back to St.Mortiz but along the way we stop at Punt Muragl Staz to visit Muottas Muragl ( cos saw that it has very nice sunset online ). If you are staying for more then ONE night in St. Moritz area, some hotels will give you a free pass for bus or mountain railways , so it actually free for us to go up to the mountain using the pass for the funicular.

Famous Brusio Spiral Viaduct

By the time we reach the top it was already about 5 pm, it was quite a clear day so we just hike around the area then was thinking maybe we should just stay for sunset and maybe can take night view photo of the St. Moritz town. But we stayed until almost 8pm and the sky was not even dark yet.
We decided to leave and take the 8:15 PM funicular down. From the bus stop in from of the funicular station , take Bus 1 back to St.Moritz. ( Do note that the Bus 1 stop in the same bus stop for both direction, so best to check with driver that it's the correct direction ) By the time we reach back hotel it's already 9pm.

Hotel packed Breakfast

As we were leaving very early tomorrow for Glacier Express , we had asked the hotel to pre pack our breakfast to eat onboard.