Day 4 : Lauchernalp

In my last post about  Switzerland we visited Swiss Miniatur and then went back to Lugano.  The rest of our day we were traveling from Lugano to Lauchernalp.

My brother has some friends from South Africa who owns a chalet is the Swiss Alps at Lauchernalp and they were kind to let us use the chalet for the weekend.  My mom and I were very excited to see some family after 4 days in Switzerland.
Lugano Station
 This was our trip from Lugano to Laucheralp:

13:30  Train from Lugano to Grubiasco
I don’t remember a lot of this ride because I was concentrating on finding the correct stop where we had to change trains.

14:04  Train from Grubiasco to Lucarno
            Again I spend most of the journey looking out for our next stop.

14:27  Arrived in Lucarno and had some trouble to find the Lucarno FART train.  We searched on the ground level but had to go underground to get on this train.  Luckily we had about 30 minutes between trains and found it in time.

Wikipedia : Underground, there is another terminal station, for the metre gauge Domodossola-Locarno railway, an international rail link operated in Switzerland by the Regional Bus and Rail Company of Canton Ticino (Italian: Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi, or FART).
Lucarni FART Enterance
14:55  Lucarno FART train to Domodossola in Italy
This was another amazing train ride through the mountains with the highest trees I have ever seen and small towns.  And lots of vineyards on the slopes of the mountains.  This was a weird train.  It was only 2 wagons but the connection between them look more like a tram.  The wagons could bend at the connection when we around sharp turns.  This was a longer ride and I could finally relax a bit and enjoy the pretty landscape.

 16:36  At Domodossola change to train to Brig and leave at 16:48
This was a fast train and we mostly traveled in an underground tunnel.  It was warm and some people opened windows.  It smelled like burned rubber in the tunnel.
We went pass the Iselle station and town (My sister is named Izelle) but we were to late to take a photo.

17:20  At Brig we changed to a train to Goppenstein and departed 17:36
Brig Station
18:01  Arrive at Goppenstein. 
We had to meet Erik and Ariane at Goppenstein station but their train from Bern was late.  We waited for them to arrive.

18:15  The 4 of us traveled with a bus from Goppenstein to Wiler.

18:25  Arrived at Wiler.  From Wiler we had to travel with a gondola (cable car) to Lauchernalp (1968 meter above sea level). Our Swiss pass worked again and we got 50% discount on the gondola.
 












18:30  Walk about 500m from the gondola to the chalet.

As you may imagine we were quite tired after this trip.  I had to concentrate a lot to make sure we get of at the correct stations to change to the next train.  Luckily everything went well. The chalet was great with a stunning view of the mountain.  Erik made us a lovely meal (chicken and vegetables) and we spent the rest of the evening talking.  At about 22:30 we went to bed.  I will tell you more about Lauchernalp later.

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