Dave's Gone Global: Dave's in Switzerland

Got to the hotel in Gstaad around 8:30pm last night local time. The entire trip took about 24 hours and was blessedly free of complications. The final tally: 3 planes, 3 trains, 2 airport shuttle trains, 3 Admirals Club lounges. A brief recap follows.

I managed to secure First Class tickets for my transatlantic flights. There was a great deal of luck involved. I have almost never been able to use frequent flier miles when I want to, especially for summer vacations and other peak travel periods. I was looking for cheap airfares to Geneva and was having no luck. The best I could find were close to $2500 round-trip. I have lots of Delta miles, but Delta was asking over 100K miles each way and their connections were insane. I figured I'd check American just to be thorough but I wasn't expecting much. I was surprised to find that they were offering coach seats for 60k miles each way to London, and First Class for only 2k miles more! I clicked on that offer so quickly that my mousepad nearly broke. I coupled those with cheap flights to/from Geneva and my air travel was complete.

With the First Class tickets I got to go use the Admiral's Lounge all the way through. LAX even has a Super-Duper First Class Admirals Lounge. I think I was the youngest person there by 20 years. Fine by me – it's always nice to feel young. So my first trip picture is of the first drink of my vacation, this nice glass of Admiral's Club champagne.

Los Angeles to DFW was a snap. DFW to London was a 9 hour flight on a 777. First Class had sleeper seats which I've never gotten to use before. Each seat is a mini-booth that reclines completely. I was psyched because I am rarely able to sleep on planes.

Well, still no luck for me. For whatever reason, I couldn't get more than an hour or so of something-like-sleep. On the plus side, I had loaded the “Game of Thrones” HBO series on my iPad and got to watch the first few episodes. Great stuff - can't wait to see the rest. Also got a nice ice cream sundae.

I arrived in London at 10:30. Passport control was a snap and customs was a non-existent waive-thru, perhaps because they already X-ray every piece luggage now. I had until 2:00pm for my flight to Geneva so I went to the Admirals Club Arrivals lounge. They have these cool private shower/bathrooms which allowed me to return to a semi-human state. What an awesome concept. I'd rank that on my Top 10 All-Time Greatest Showers list (how's that for a title of a Coffee Table Book From Hell?)

Took a train to Heathrow Terminal 5 and then caught my 2pm flight to Geneva (1hr 15 min). Had to go through passport control again and once again no customs. Now on to Swiss Rail.

There's a train station right at Geneva Airport. I scoped out all of my train logistics and bought my tickets in advance. The first train was Geneva Airport to Lausanne (30 minutes). The views surprised me a bit – there was a fair amount of graffiti which seems very un-Swiss-like. It was done in colorful U.S. style, but the words were entirely too easy to read.

There I caught a quick connection to Montreux (35 minutes). I had 30 minutes at the Montreux station and then caught a 1hr 30 min train to Gstaad. Once I got past Lausanne, the views became more and more spectacular. I pulled myself out of my stupor on the Gstaad train and tried to take some pictures. They were taken through the window of a moving train, but they still are pretty nice.