Rubin Trek 2017

Klaus and Esther planned yet another wonderful weekend for us.  This time it was off to Zermatt and then up the mountain to a lodge situated at the base of the Matterhorn.  (The REAL Matterhorn, not some Disney paper mache!) Zermatt is about 3 hours from Zurich by train and we arrived in mid-afternoon.  As charming as Zermatt is, it is also very touristy.  We walked through the town quickly in order to get to the tram that would take us up to our lodge.  Nice homes in Zermatt Sign in Zermatt--which trail to choose?  There are many choices!  View from the top of the tram.  Zermatt is the town nestled between the mountains We stayed 2 nights in the simple Schwarzee Lodge.  The four of us shared a small room with bunk beds (shower and bathroom down the hall) and the lodge provided breakfast and dinner.  The Schwarzsee Lodge and THE MATTERHORN without Photoshop! The Schwarsee Lodge from anothe...

Our dear friends Marcel and Jessa once again invited us to join them on another adventure.  We went to prospect for gold, just like the '49ers in California! There are no active mines here at the moment but there is a small amount of gold being prospected in the rivers and streams around Switzerland.  We drove to a site in the Lucerne canton called Doppleschwand where we met our guide, Damian.    Damian (left), 2 other prospectors, Jessa, Marcel and me Equipped with wading boots, shovels and gold mining pans, we walked to the stream and learned how to placer mine.  This is a technique where you fill your pan with a shovel full of sand and rocks and then swirl the pan, first extracting the rocks.  You keep dipping the pan with water, shake and swirl over and over, extracting pebbles until you have just a fine layer of sand at the bottom of the pan.  Then very carefully you look for tiny (and I mean TINY) specks of gold th...

Thomas, a clerk at the Swiss Travel Office at the main train station told us that the Bernina Express is his absolutely favorite train ride in all of Europe.  With a recommendation like that, we immediately bought tickets.  The Bernina Express is a train connecting Chur in Switzerland to Poschiavo  (Switzerland) and Tirano in Italy by crossing the Swiss Engadin Alps.  This route is so special that part of the railway line is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  It runs along 122 km. of track passing through 55 tunnels and over 196 bridges and viaducts.  The train ends in Tirano and an option (which we did) is to continue with the Bernina Express bus to Lugano. Here's the train and bus route: We started at the main train station in Zurich at 6:37am and after an hour reached Chur (pronounced Coor) where we boarded the Bernina Express train.  We had assigned 2nd class seats and the train had specially designed windows for viewing the sc...