ITINERARY TWO
TRANSALPINE RAIL ADVENTURE
Start point: Munich, Germany • End point: Milan, Italy • Distance travelled: 490 miles • Average length: 10-14 days
Bounding effortlessly over viaducts, cresting mountain passes and skimming the shores of turquoise lakes, train travel in the Alps is pure edge-of-your-seat drama. Forget driving, this is the way to go, with trains running like clockwork and panoramic windows framing scenes of pastures, forest-cloaked slopes, rivers and church-topped villages between glacier-frosted mountains. Providing you’ve factored in ample time, you can stop off as you choose.
This is the big itinerary: a 10-day to two-week escapade, traversing four countries and dropping you into the heart of the Alps, including many of the best-known destinations. A convenient gateway is Munich in Germany, where you can chug to Füssen in the Bavarian Alps in two hours before nudging into Tyrol in Austria. Then, drop south west into the Engadine Valley in Switzerland and beyond to mellower climes in Sondrio, Italy, finally flying out from the hub of Milan.