Sunday, July 17: Sargans
This trip started on Saturday morning, when our son drove us to Charlotte for a 1:00 flight to Philadelphia. Ideally we like to fly direct from CLT to Munich, but by going to Philly, we could fly straight to Zurich. We had to take a train on one end of our trip, and it was shorter to ride from Montreux to Zurich on the back end than from Munich to Sargans on the front.
In any case, travel was easy, though Philadelphia’s airport has become unlivably crowded with restaurants occupying the former gate areas. I got some real work done in the AA lounge, though.
The flight to Zurich was only about half full, and premium economy was comfortable. Arrival in Zurich was great, too – super quick immigration, and we’d carried our bags with us so we could just leave.
We headed straight to the trains, where we took a quick ride to the Hauptbahnhof and then a train straight to Sargans, where the Via Alpina began. (They’ve subsequently added a new first stage that begins in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.) We were in town by 1 pm, only slightly stunned by jet lag.
Sargans was hot and sunny and fairly dead on a Sunday afternoon. Our hotel was actually in Mels, another “town” though it seems contiguous with Sargans. We dragged our suitcases about a mile down the road to get there.
After a nap in our hot bedroom, we walked into Sargans hoping for a cooler evening.
After wandering the town looking for a “typische” restaurant that wasn’t either crammed full or sitting next to a ridiculously loud road, we ended up at an Asian place, where we were served a lovely meal by a young woman carrying her new baby in a snuggli. I left my LSU baseball cap there – I hope some young man is wearing it!
It was so good to sleep.