Bernina Express
 

We are staying in Bellagio (Lake Como) for 4 nights and would like to go on the Bernina Express. How do we book and where do we go from, we don't want to go to Milan. Has anyone been on this trip, and I would love feedback.
Thanks
Pachet

Hi Pachet - The Bernina Express runs from Tirano to San Moritz.

To get to Tirano you can catch the ferry from Bellagio across to Varenna - from where you continue to Tirano by train.

For Varenna-Tirano train timetables see:
http://www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html

Hope this helps ...

Steve

Pachet,

The way that I remember it, the official 'Bernina Express' leaves Tirano at 2:00pm. What you need to be aware of is - the official Bernina Express is one set of train cars and makes just one round trip a day. Alternatively, there are passenger trains over that route approximately every hour. So these alternate trains might work much better with your schedule.

In my opinion the best part of the trip is the Tirano, over the pass to Pontresina leg. The Pontresina to Chur leg is nice as well, but may force you to overnight somewhere.

How ever you do it, this is a spectacular train ride.

I'm looking for alternatives to the Bernina Express. We'll be coming from Varenna to Torino and want a couple of hours of the Alps experience. I've tried Trentalia and can't find a schedule for anything in that direction. I've tried Torino to Pontresina. We want to return to Varenna in the evening vs. staying over. Any suggestions?

There is also a bus from Menaggio to St. Moritz where you catch the train. From Tirano, you can take any train that stops in Varenna enroute to Milan--not all do. It will call for good scheduling, but totally feasible.

My apologies. I meant we want to catch a train from Tirano (I had previously written Torino) north as an alternative to the Bernina Express. We'd want to make it a day trip and return to Varenna that evening. What city would be good to train to and return? Thanks.,

This is a job for www.budgeteuropetravel.com! Last year I took trains all over Switzerland, and on the advice of a Fodor's post I called BET for advice and ticket arrangements. They walked me through all my options, ordered all tickets, and made sure my itinerary went off without a hitch.

We did take the Bernina Express and it was great!

Thanks, Abbydog, for that wonderful website. Besides rail info, it's a great trip planning guide.
We're do-it-your-selfers (Rick STeves empowered us) so we will probably take the regional trains vs. Bernina Express. The Bahn.de site is great.

See above---start in St. Moritz and train to Tirano then to Varenna.

Pattiboo,

The trains from Tirano and over the pass are Swiss trains, so they might not show up on TrenItalia.
Try Diebahn/english with travel from Tirano to Pontresina. Some trains over pass go to St Moritz but some skip it, howerver all trains go thru Pontresina.

There are trains about hourly from Tirano, Italy to Pontresina/St Moritz - in addition to the few daily official Glacier Express trains which demand reservations before boarding.

Scenery is obviously the same from either train and some of the local trains even have open-air platform cars that to me beat the Observation cars on the official Glacier Express.

At Tirano Italian trains dump you at the Italian Tirano station and then you walk right across the square to the Swiss station, nearly adjacent to the Italian one - but there are two different stations indeed.

And now that Switzerland is in the Schegen Accords fully (i guess) there are no longer passport controls when entering the Swiss station - speeding up connection times between trains.

Still always carry passports when crossing borders as there could always be checks for some reason IME