[PICTURED: Looking back toward the rear of the train as the Bernina Express crosses a bridge in the Swiss Alps]

The Bernina Express is said to be among the most beautiful and scenic train rides in the world, partly because its route passes through the Alps at a high elevation, and partly because the train cars are mostly made of glass, featuring giant panoramic windows at least six feet wide that go all the way to the top of the car and then curve around to the roof and become skylights.

The Bernina Express is not a cog train, so to get up the Alps without very steep inclines took a bit of Swiss engineering, with many switchbacks, spirals, tunnels, and bridges. Sometimes the thing that was spiraling was a tunnel; sometimes it was a bridge. Sometimes the bridges crossed gorges dramatically.

At the top of the route we passed glaciers with waterfalls cascading off.  The scale of it made effective photography impossible. Or the speed of the train made it impossible – you had to realize a shot was available, engage your camera, and frame the shot, before the train went into a tunnel or behind a row of trees.

So although the photographic residue of the 4.5 hour trek through the Alps was sparse, the thing that we failed to document was quite beautiful.

Tirano

The Bernina Express ends in the small town of Tirano, just across the Swiss border in Italy.

Italy’s TrenNord station was literally adjacent to the Bernina Express station, but all the train ticket customs we had learned in Switzerland were useless in Italy. So the ticket to Milan we had to buy at a window, and then validate the ticket by sticking it into a yellow electronic ticket punch – like punching in at a time clock.

But we weren’t in a hurry to get to Milan, so instead we went across the Piazza to a restaurant labeled “Restaurant Pizzeria” – which is also the name of most restaurants in Italy – and there we were served on the piazza some of the best Italian food we would have on the trip.  It was great.  And down the stairs to the basement were the best restaurant bathrooms in history.  I thought I was in a palace. Chiara had said, “Do not miss the restrooms.”  I took photos of the restrooms.  And it was the least expensive meal of the trip, too.

There were two gelato stores on the piazza; we tried the both.  At the second, we had our first trouble not traveling with Euros; $5 minimum for Visa.  We had to order extra ice cream.

Tirano is my favorite city in Italy.

Milan

But Tirano did not last, because then we went to the train station, validated our ticket, and rode TrenNord for 2.5 hours to Milan Central Station.

The scenery from the northernmost tip of Italy to Milan, its northernmost big city, was surprisingly beautiful.  We rode between mountains on the floor of a valley that never ended.  On the sides of the valley, just a little ways up the mountain, were town after town, steeple after steeple, vineyard after vineyard.  And an hour later we were still in the mountains.

But eventually we arrived at Milan Central, a giant railroad and subway station, and with some difficulty coaxed from the machines, subway tickets to and from our hotel, as well as train tickets to the Malpensa Airport the following morning.

Our hotel – the UNA Cusina – was well-located, if you want to visit Milan’s castle or cathedral in the dead-center of town.  It’s not well-located if you just need to spend the night and head to the airport at dawn, but not all of my travel arrangements work out the way I hoped.

Chiara and I scouted many square blocks for restaurants – just to get our steps in the searing heat – and finally settled on Quatro Mori y Pizza, which I think translates roughly as Four N*&%#s and Pizza.

They served us Pizza and Salad, with mosquitos, in a beautiful covered garden courtyard. To ward off mosquitos, they lit the spiral smoke emitters that I remember from my childhood.  They didn’t work back then; they don’t work now.

Milan’s Castle

Next we did a lap around the Castle. Milan’s Castle is strange in several respects.  First, it is gorgeous and ornate, but it also has all the elements of an actual defensive fortification – just excessively decorated and polished.

It turns out that the castle was originally built as a fortification, but was subsequently renovated for show.  Napoleon planned to make it into the equivalent of Trump Tower (Napolean Forum) in the 19th century.  After unification, the Italians weren’t sure whether to preserve it or destroy it, but ended up preserving it.

The exterior of the castle is riddled with hundreds of holes that look like arrow slits, but now serve as swift nests.  The air was filled with buzzing swifts, and we know what they were eating, because the huge flocks of swifts were STILL not enough swifts to eradicate the mosquitos.