The Camino Frances

The Camino Frances

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Rigi, Queen of the Mountains

Rigi is one of Switzerland's more favourite excursions, with good reason. We traveled by bus,2 trains, and the cogwheel  mountain railway to the peak, at 1800 meters, and it only took us about 2 hours. The travel time was beautiful too, beside the lake of Zug and through the town of Goldau. The view from the top was 360' of breathtaking  peaks. Apparently, you can see as far as the Black Forest in Germany, and the Vosges in France. There are 120 km of trails, and we walked down from the summit at Rigi Kulm, where we had lunch, to Staffel, at 1604 meters, where we had espresso and pastries. (I only ate the filling).

Every view was really unbelievable, and the weather could not have been better. It was clear, with a wind from the south, and the temperature was about 15'. Josef pointed out many peaks, and tried to orient me to the trips that we had aready taken, and the ones he has in mind. Tomorrow we are going to a village high in the mountain - Appenzell, I think, in the north east corner of the country.

The transportation system here is really unique. Today we took 4 separate vehicles, and we never had to wait more than 10 minutes for the next one. Josef could look up all the timetables on his smart phone. There are no escalators in the stations, but the steps are not steep, and there is always a wheelchair accessible path to where you need to go. They do, however, allow smoking on the platforms and property, unlike Toronto. The whole place runs like clockwork, and I continue to be amazed by the workers I see working on cleaning and trimming the public places. Truly an amazing country.

If you want pictures, try www.rigi.ch, and choose the language in the top right corner, and just picture me there. 

1 comment:

  1. What beauty! I can't even imagine Swiss life. I am so glad that you are experiencing it.

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