3 hours ago
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Is there a better sensation for a traveller than when a train speeds out of a tunnel? The sudden flood of light, that howling rush of air. Clearly, it’s not just me who thinks trains are the new (old) planes, with 2025 having seen a 7% rise in UK train travel, and more Europeans than ever looking to hit the rails.
It’s late December, and I’m heading out on a slow-train journey across the historic railways of the Swiss Alps and the Italian lakes. It’s a trip of roughly 1,800 miles (2,900km), crossing five countries, almost entirely by scenic daytime trains.
What is clear from the off is how easy, and slightly disorientating, this type of train travel can be: drifting through stations, across platforms and over borders, it’s hard to believe we’ve hit three countries in less than a day – the UK, France and Switzerland – such is the ease of each passport stop. Gone are the sweaty finger scans of airport border control, replaced by the most polite immigration police I’ve ever encountered. “You’ve travelled a lot,” one says, with a wry smile and a German shepherd, to which I reply “legally”, just to cover my back.
Outside, the French countryside soon blurs into Swiss hills, all behind a thin veil of white, wintry light. The fields, with their clumps of bare trees, seem suspended in mid-freeze, as though bracing for the full blast to come. As we roll into Zurich, we catch our first glimpse of the milky Alpine peaks.
This is the thrill of train trips: the steadily shifting scenes, the rise and fall of the landscape, leavened like fresh bread. Next morning, we’re greeted with crisp blue skies for our mountain ascent via one of Europe’s most historic train routes, the Matterhorn Gotthard railway. The original line opened in 1882 and was the railroad that changed Europe, slicing a path through inhospitable mountains and isolated villages.
We catch one of the historic trains (the IR46) – keen to avoid anything routed through the Gotthard base tunnel, which bypasses the beauty. In summer, a tourist train – with bigger windows and a bigger price tag – takes the exact same route, famously depicted by JMW Turner and described in awed terms by Goethe. “Here,” he wrote, “it is necessary to submit to nature.” Though it’s the cafe car selling Swiss coffee at eye-watering prices that forces me to revise Goethe: here, it is necessary to submit to inflation.
Phones duly on charge (as is slow-train travel etiquette), we sit back and gawp out of the window for three hours, eating Swiss truffles as the tracks snake the mythic Alps via the famous Gotthard “spirals” – corkscrew tracks built inside the mountains for a steady ascent. It’s the stuff of oil paintings all right – vertiginous gorges, frothing rivers and snow-capped peaks.
At Göschenen, we opt for a lunch stop via a short, even steeper rack-and-pinion route high into the former garrison town of Andermatt, now reinvented as a chic ski retreat. Up here, the snow is thick. Between that and the dark Alpine stone, it’s as though we’ve stepped out into a monochrome photograph. A comforting lunch at the excellent Biselli, along with several glasses of Swiss Ticino red (liquid lunch being another perk of slow-train travel) takes the edge off a dense mist that has crept over the rest of the day’s rail route. Thankfully, Italy soon pushes back, with clear skies and terracotta valley towns, and – just like that – another border is crossed, bringing with it a welcome drop in the cost of a cappuccino (from €5 to €2), enjoyed while skimming the edge of the ice-blue Lake Lugano.
By dusk, we’re at Lake Como. Bags dropped, we catch the last of the light with an easy passeggiata (stroll) round the perimeter of the famous lake, mercifully lacking its high-season crowds. Ornate street lamps line the water’s edge like washed-up pearls and, in the distance, the funicular up to the hillside town of Brunate shines with a string of golden lights that dangle down the slope like lost jewellery. It’s hard to imagine Como any other way.
Next morning, having got into the swing of slow-train transience, we pack up in record time and take coffee at the station. For our final stop, we’re heading in the direction of a much-needed metropolis. Ditching Milan – Italy’s least interesting city – we roll into Turin, one of its most underappreciated.
Stepping off the rickety regional train at Torino Porta Susa, what we find is a vibrant, easygoing student city that appears contentedly trapped in some kind of temporal ragu; a place where 1920s art deco neon signs cling to 18th-century baroque buildings that house vintage shops run by students dressed as if they are in the 1990s.
Miraculously, all this gels, and the student cohort rub along just fine with their more conservative elders, united beneath the impressive porticos that run, unbroken, for more than 18km and are lined with boutiques and historic coffee bars. We round out our first night with an aperitivo at the classic art-school haunt Caffè Università, with its frayed edges and charmingly outmoded daily buffet.
Next morning, Turin’s enviable portfolio of museums and galleries beckon, most free to enter with the Torino card. Here, the time-warp vibes continue within the soaring spire of the 19th-century Mole Antonelliana, now housing the superb Museo Nazionale del Cinema – surely, the only neoclassical building that’s home to an xenomorph egg from the film Alien? Likewise, another repurposed building, the Lingotto complex, boasts an even more outlandish upcycle: the famous Fiat test track on its roof has been reimagined as La Pista 500, a panoramic garden walk, where art installations live alongside the historic skidmarks. Proof that Turin is not interested in simply preserving history, but also evolving.
With a chill in the air, we duck in for a perfect meal at the unassuming yet excellent Osteria Rabezzana, part of the Mangébin circuit that promotes Piedmontese cuisine. The brasato al barolo (beef braised in barolo wine) and local agnolotti del plin (beef- and cabbage-stuffed pasta) are excellent. This family-run restaurant and winery opened just after the second world war, and judging by the convivial atmosphere – full of local people on office festive outings – it has served the city well ever since.
Next morning, we are up and out to catch the 7.36 TGV all the way back to Paris. Drifting in and out of sleep, we take in a last glimpse of the Italian Alps. By the time we reach our Parisian pit stop, day is folding in on itself, and soon enough, we’re slumped back on the Eurostar, flanked by bags of clinking wine bottles cushioned by crushed panettone. Homebound and heady, we reluctantly plunge back into the black of the Channel tunnel, leaving all that light behind us.
Transport was provided by Interrail; passes allowing seven days of travel within one month are £255 youths, £339 adults, £305 seniors (under-12s travel free). Return Eurostar from London to Paris starts from £78. Accommodation was provided by The Home Hotel Zurich (from £165B&B), Hilton Lake Como (from €270 B&B), NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina (from £203 B&B) and 25hours Terminus Nord in Paris (from €179 room-only ).
