Davos; Wednesday, 13 April, 2022

After a reasonable lie-in and a quick breakfast in the hotel I headed out to the tram stop and caught the tram into the centre of Zurich, where I changed onto the train down to Landquart. In Landquart I changed onto the first of many trains from the Rhaetian Railway that I would be riding over the next few days.

During the worst days of lockdown, with the thought of ever being able to travel again a distant prospect, I’d been able to sate my wanderlust by watching videos of journeys on YouTube, and one set that I found particularly enthralling were those posted by train drivers working for this railway. Simple concept, place a camera in the cab of your train and record the journey. In a lot of places that would result in a relatively dull video, but when your railway includes large sections that are UNESCO inscribed then it becomes a different matter, and it was these rails that I was going to ride over the next few days.

The journey today was the relatively straightforward journey from Landquart to my base for the next couple of days in Davos. Within a couple of minutes of leaving Landquart we were already barrelling at full speed towards a wall of rock punctured only by the gorge of the Landquart river and hidden behind it a valley housing some of the most exclusive ski resorts in Switzerland, including Klosters.

After puncturing the wall of rock via a tunnel the train rapidly climbed up the valley with breath-taking view after breath-taking view being the order of the day. For the run up to Klosters the line was steep, but only snaked its way up the valley. From Klosters the route took a much more active approach to climbing the mountain pass over to Davos with the line climbing up the side of the mountain through a series of switch-backs with each pass showing more of the valley below, and the route already taken.

A little over an hour after leaving Landquart we arrived on the valley floor of the Landwasser river and rolled into Davos. I hopped off the train and straight onto the bus to go a couple of stops down to my hotel to check-in.

After dropping off my luggage in my room I headed out of the hotel into town and back down to the other side of the station to pick up the Jakobshornbahn, the cable car that runs up the side of the mountain opposite the town.

The cable car operates in two stages, the first and biggest – with accommodation for nearly 100 people heads up from Davos to ski resort at Ischalp where a smaller cable car completes the journey up to the peak of Jakobshorn. I had a bit of a wander around up here, but I only had a limited time as all the cable-cars and funiculars in town close down from 16:00 so I pretty quickly had to start the journey back down the mountain to avoid getting stranded.

Back in town I quickly grabbed some dinner from the Coop supermarket (restaurant prices in Davos were eye wateringly expensive) in town and headed back to the hotel to have a picnic dinner on my balcony overlooking the mountains.

Dinner completed I headed back to the station and caught the train back down the mountain to Klosters and spent some time wondering around that town before heading back to Davos and to bed.

Weather

Sunny Sunny
AM PM
Warm (10-20C, 50-68F)
16ºC/61ºF