Train Day
As you travel across Switzerland by train from west to east you are beckoned to exit at various stops - Lausanne, Nyon, Montreaux etc - by a seductive and sultry French voice. I imagine the voice is a lithe and athletic Genevieve Bujold in her prime wearing a diaphanous robe billowed by a gentle breeze. By the time you reach Visp and Brig, Genevieve has been replaced by a 300 pound mustacheod man burping up two chili dogs with extra onions. Welcome to the German part of Switzerland. I would like to tell with some authority and accuracy about the cultural and linguistic bifurcation of Switzerland, but I can not. Next trip. All I know is that in a little country like Switzerland I can gesture spastically and mumble in multiple languages that I do not speak.
We needed to travel from Brig, Switzerland to Pisa, Italy, a 7.5 hour train ride, including five train changes, according to the Swiss Railway website. The first leg was from Brig to Domodossola, a short hop through the mountains to Italy. Literally through the mountains- most of the twenty minute trip we spent in a tunnel, when, had we not closed the windows, we would have all died of asphyxiation. When the train stopped, we were in Domod..er...Iselle, where we were told to disembark and walk to a bus stop for a ride to Domodossola. This was one of two unexpected events that happened on the train trip. The second was being fined by the conductor for traveling with a ticket which had not been validated. Stay with me here: you are required to purchase a ticket to ride a train, but you must also validate the ticket in a little machine about the size of a parking meter before entering  the train. So, I paid about $200 for two tickets to Pisa and was still fined €10 (Euros) because they were not validated. I still can not figure out why this is important. However, for the most part, train travel is a punctual and pleasurable mode of travel in Europe. It does not take many checkpoints where you remove your shoes and belts,TSA pat downs and extra baggage charges to convince you that train is the preferred way to go. Viva Europe!

As well, it is a great place to enjoy a picnic. Leslie and I took cheese, bread, sun-dried tomato pesto, olives, plums and red wine and dined with great gusto in our air-conditioned cabin on the way to Milan.
Once in Domodossola, we climbed back on a train to Milan. Changed. Florence. Changed. Pisa. Cab ride to the Hotel Ariston. At the end of the day, the only thing between our hotel room and the Leaning Tower of Pisa were about 50 yards of aggressive vendors of cheap sunglasses, Pisa University t-shirts and tacky reproductions of the tower in plastic, plaster and glass. If you must know, ours is glass.