Before leaving the B&B in Interlaken, the hostess asked us where we were heading to. Milan, we answered. "Oh, that's about 3 hours train ride from Interlaken." She replied. REALLY?? How come I didn't know that there are trains departure from Interlaken to Milan when I did my research. :( Anyway, because I didn't realize there's such a route exist, I bought the ticket from Zurich to Milan, which means we need to go from Interlaken to Bern, Bern to Zurich, and then from there to go to Milan, a total of 5 hours train ride. (Well, I could only comfort myself that I haven't been to Zurich yet, and this short stop in Zurich will allow me to at least have a peak of the city.)
Zurich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. Most of Zurich's sights are located within the area beside the Limmat river, which is really close to the main railway station. Of course, we wouldn't have time to visit them but at least we could glance from distance.
There's also a shopping street really close to the train station, so we did a quick shopping to buy some famous Swiss Chocolates.
It was a rainy day thus I didn't take any pictures when we were on our way from Zurich to Milan, but that part of the ride at the Swiss side was REALLY REALLY scenic. Totally worth the extra two-hour train ride.
Milan
It's already 2 o'clock when our train arrived in Milan. From here, we will purchase the tickets to go to Lake Como, which is our first stop in Italy. It took us some time to figure out a few logistics.
First of all, we were trying to find an ATM to withdraw some euros 'cos we had no euros in hand. Before our trip, we got an BOA checking card. (BOA has a partner bank BNL in Italy. No foreign transaction fee will be charged if we withdraw money from the BNL bank in Italy.) Well, no BNL ATMs inside or outside the Milan railway station! We finally had to withdraw euros from a different bank's ATM. It also took us a while to find the place to purchase the train tickets to go to Varenna, a small town in Lake Como. The one we went to was actually an agency. No long waiting lines but the trade-off was we were charged 1 euro more for each ticket (Lesson learned: We should have found the Tranitalia ticket center to buy train tickets).
It's a pity that we didn't have enough time to visit the famous Milan Cathedral, which is a few subway stops away but even the railway station itself looks magnificent. I simply love Italy - art works everywhere!
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