I'd totally forgotten - frequent clear blue skies are one of the underrated balms of winter in New York - and although friends had reminded us...wow, the grey here in the winter is real.

We'll get round to skiing, etc., but it was extremely nice to take a train to the mountains purely to get above the clouds and load up on blue sky and sunshine.

Rigi is one of the big dumb tourist options, but for good reason: excellent views, usually above cloud cover, and a pair of cog railways for easy access from both Zurich and Luzern.

First built in the 1870s, these are some of the oldest mountain railways in Europe: I was happy to spy new carriages, pictured, under test (slated to enter service in 2022).

We took a cable car back down to make the day's travel into a kind of loop.

A delay of several minutes rippled through several local transport agencies and we were back to Zurich in under 90 minutes, as scheduled.

How do they do that?

#bluesky #rigi #switzerland #mountains #seaofclouds #mountainrailway #daytrip #andaschümlipflümliortwo