Milan and Zurich by Train

This is part three of a three week trip that begins with a trip to Rome, followed by a cruise through the Mediterranean and ending with a train ride through Milan and Zurich before flying back home.

• Part 1: Getting to Rome
• Part 2: Cruising the Mediterranean
• Part 3: Milan and Zurich by Train

My goal for this segment of the trip was to spend a few days in Europe before catching a cheap award flight back through Zurich. 

The cruise ended in Civitavecchia and from there I took a train to Rome and then onward to Milan before stopping for one night.

I arrived in Milan in the late afternoon and then headed straight to the hotel.

There was some sort of event going on in Milan this day. I believe there was a Formula 1 race and also a festival that was wrapping up. Hotel prices which are normally quite high in Milan were astronomical and there was effectively no sane award availability. 

Because I was only spending one night in Milan and coming in and out via train, I looked for cheap places near the train station where I could use a $150 Delta Stays credit, and this is how I ended up at Hotel 2000. 

When I booked this, through Delta Stays, I think I saw it with ok-ish reviews on the site I checked, 7/10 or higher. Later I discovered it was rated more like 5/10 including on sites like Delta Stays. 

While it was close to the train station, it was arguably in one of the sketchier neighborhoods. The hotel was covered in graffiti. My room was on the first floor with bars on the windows and lots of street noise. The checkin desk didn't speak much English which is fine for a small independent hotel and so communication was a slight struggle but workable.

He gave me a physical key, which is only the second time in hundreds of stays where that's happened. The other was in a kind of retro hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter where it was part of a theme. This just seemed like that's all they had. I think, but am not sure because of language issues, that the expectation was I would leave the key at the front desk before leaving the hotel.

The room itself was a decent size, though the bathroom seemed to have some issues with the toilet running and sound from water running in the plumbing which made me think there was a problem.

Maybe this is a me-problem, but between the physical key uncertainty and the general sketchiness, I ended up feeling uncomfortable leaving my possessions in the room, and so even though I only had one night in Milan, I decided to stay in the room. 

I was kind of tired anyway and spent the evening planning the next day. The next morning, rather than attempting to leave my luggage at the hotel, I checked out and took my luggage to the train station where there was a luggage store. Then I spent the day walking around Milan before catching my train.

Whenever I explore a city by foot, I usually find a few landmarks I want to see, and then look for parks on the way there. It gives me an opportunity to see a mix of neighborhoods and tourist sites. Giardini Indro Montanelli was a fairly large park on the way to Duomo di Milano ad a few other sites.

Leonardo da Vinci lived in Milan for about 20 years. They have a museum there inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It is fairly small and has a number of exhibits of his inventions.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a 19th century mall which is pretty cool since so many malls in America don't last more than 50 years or so.

The Duomo di Milano is right next to the gallery. Construction started in 1386 and finished in 1965 nearly 600 years later. My abbreviated schedule didn't give me time to stop inside.

Chiuse di Leonardo Da Vinci is an old canal lock system designed by Leonardo. The canal is empty and the locks are in ruins but you can still see the old doors.

Although Hotel 2000 had a breakfast, I skipped it and with a little time before my train, I decided to get lunch at the Hilton near the train station. 

Several credit cards have these $50-60 quarterly Hilton credits. It's not enough of a discount to get a free stay, but there are a few sites online that list every Hilton restaurant where the credits are known to work, often on a Google map or as a spreadsheet. 

It all depends on how the charge appears on your statement whether or not it will work, and of course this can change without notice, but the sites tend to be fairly reliable. Anyways, I'd scouted the location in advance and used my credit here to get a free-ish early dinner before taking the train. It was actually the best club sandwich I've ever had.

On earlier trains to Milan and to and from Civitavecchia I'd not been able to secure a good window seat or the person I shared it with was a local and had decided to close the blind.

For this trip through the Alps, I had carefully planned things, timing my journey to end near sunset, carefully selecting a perfect seat in a 1st class cabin on the correct side of the train for optimal views, with full control of the window. The train passes by Lake Como and beautiful alpine villages and is probably one of the most beautiful rides in the world, when you're not in a tunnel.

Unfortunately, about a third into the trip, a mother with a few young children booked her seats late and wasn't able to get a seat with her kids and then asked me to move. She was clearly in need and having some trouble wrangling the kids who were glaring at me, so I agreed. I went from having a seat almost to myself by the window to an aisle seat in a relatively cramped 2x2 section with folks facing each other and fairly large children sitting on people's laps.

There is a trick to this in that I'd missed. In 1st class cabins you can book either the regular car or the quiet car, and ALL the families and kids end up in the regular car. I don't think the 2nd class cars had this distinction and so I wonder a bit if normal 2nd class is better than 1st class without a quiet cabin.

It was still a nice ride, and a lot of it is tunnels anyway, but if there is a next time, I'll definitely book the quiet car. As predicted, I ended up arriving in Zurich just after sunset, but before it got dark.

After arriving in Zurich, I walked to my condo rental, arriving well after dark, maybe 9pm. Then I had a bit oof a problem in that the door to the building was locked and there was no one to let me in. I found what looked like a phone number in my reservation and tried calling it, but it wouldn't connect.

After hanging out for 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do, or find an alternate number, someone showed up, coming from a block or so away. Apparently, he'd seen me on a security camera. He explained to me that he'd tried to contact me, but I didn't have a WhatsApp number. I later realized the phone number provided on the reservation was actually an unlabeled WhatsApp number. 

I don't think this place had any check-in area and you were just supposed to know to coordinate your arrival via WhatsApp, and I don't see how I was supposed to know that. This is a pretty classic international third party booking problem where things fall through the cracks. Once I got checked in, the stay went from a potential nightmare to a dream.

The stay cost $647 for three nights through Capital One Travel. However I used $255 in Capital One travel credits so my out of pocket was more like $392. 

Capital One Travel also had a promotion where if you stay 3 nights, you earn a $200 future travel credit which I ended up using almost immediately for a flight. I think I later erased the $392 using Capital One points which is not an ideal redemption but I rationalized it by thinking of the points redemption as enabling the larger transaction.

On my first day in Zurich, I took a train to visit the Lindt World of Chocolate. It's a fairly large museum and there are lots of free samples.

After visiting the museum, I walked back all the way to downtown Zurich along the lakefront,

From Lindt, it was about 5-6 miles walk back to the apartment. It's a fairly nice walking path along the lake almost the entire way. I saw lots of dogs, birds, boats and unusual houses.

Along Lake Zurich, Rote Fabrik or Red Factory is a hot spot for graffiti. I saw some people adding new work as I walked by.

I made it back to the apartment around dark and enjoyed some fruit and cheese purchased from a neighborhood corner store.

The next day, I explored the central shopping and tourist areas of Zurich. The Fraumünster was built on the remains of a former abbey for aristocratic women and was founded in 853. The crypt had a lot of older relics.

The Grossmünster was a monastery church, vying for precedence with the Fraumünster. According to legend, the Grossmünster was founded by Charlemagne, whose horse fell to its knees over the tombs of Felix, Regula, and Exuperantius, Zurich’s patron saints. The present structure began construction much later around 1100.

So normally I think you melt the raclette at your table, but mine came pre-melted. It was still delicious.

The next day, I hopped on a train to the airport and then took a flight back to Columbus by way of Philadelphia. Alaska has a lot of sweet spots, or did, and the flight only cost 45k in business class. This was one of the reasons I chose to come back through Zurich.

Just a few aerial shots of Philadelphia and food on business class flight from Zurich.

Overall, it was a fun trip. The Mediterranean cruise was probably the best I've ever taken under 20 days. I liked that so many of the ports were highly walkable. Zurich was fantastic, and I'd love to visit again. It was also kind of fun to put the whole trip together in about a week.

Check out the other parts of the trip.

• Part 1: Getting to Rome
• Part 2: Cruising the Mediterranean
• Part 3: Milan and Zurich by Train