We rode the train from 6:42 a.m. to about 4 this afternoon -- a fun, easy, and delightful day! From La Spezia near the Italian sea to Disentis on top of the Swiss Alps is quite a contrast. It's so gorgeous up here!!!
In the comfortable train, we retraced our route through Cinque Terra and continued along the seaside to Genoa. It seemed like we were riding in tunnels about 1/3 of the time. From Genoa, we turned east to Milan and then north again to Switzerland.
Seeing the remarkable and majestic Swiss Alps from Bellinzona to Goschenen to Andermatt to Disentis was pure joy. Riding along with snow below us
and melting water gushing down the sides of the mountains,
and viewing all this through train cars with curved windows that allowed us to see all the way up to the tops of the mountains on both sides was breathtaking!
After the oppressing heat of Eilat, Israel, it seemed impossible to need a sweater and to see the fields of snow.
When we arrived in Disentis,
we mailed my postcard to EnKhunizen, Netherlands apologizing to the Friends of Bicyclers there for not being able to notify them that we weren't able to keep our reservation with them because I was sick in Amsterdam (we'd lost their contact info).
We got information at the train station for renting bikes for 3 days beginning tomorrow morning. Then we looked for a place to stay. We called 3 Zimmers, but couldn't talk to anyone, so we started walking to look for one of the Zimmers that we thought had a room available. We walked quite a ways with our backpacks, but they didn't answer their door. It started to rain, and each Zimmer that we stopped at was full. We were getting soaked by the time we finally found a (too expensive) room at the Alpsu Hotel. We changed to dry clothes, ate supper at the hotel, and walked back to the phone booth and called Elsa to see if our stopping at her house on Wednesday would work for her. She said it would be fine, and we will be staying with her Wednesday night -- that is, if we don't have too much more rain!
We spent the rest of the evening checking our E-mail and adding pictures to several of our blogs -- big job, but it's great to have a good, free wireless Internet connection.
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