Given that it poured yesterday, our one and only full day in Vevey, it was only natural that the sun came into view this morning just as we were checking out, and of course we ended up spending practically the whole day on the train.

And this wasn’t your typical souped-up Swiss master train - we’d discovered it was cheaper to ride the ‘panoramic train’, which provides the best views of Switzerland by way of travelling at 3kms per hour and stopping at every possible station along the way.

The train was packed with kids and old people, meaning that we were the only ones older than 4 but less than 400, so as we boarded we had to make a snap decision as to whether we wanted to be the disturbers or the disturbees. All having a natural tendency for the former, we squeezed into a carriage full of pensioners and I was rewarded for this indiscretion by being seated next to an old woman with a goiter so monstrous she almost knocked me out with it every time she turned her head.

But as for the scenery, it was straight out of the The Sound of Music. We trundled over snowy mountain peaks, fields of sunflowers and cows with bells around their necks, and through tiny villages dotted with log cabins and townsfolk who stood by their gates and waved the train through.

Inside our carriage though, we were all ravenous but the only thing we had that vaguely resembled something edible was a three-day-old loaf of bread. So we sat there in first class (we’d taken the liberty of upgrading ourselves) amongst the Swiss rich and elderly dining on our dry crusts of bread and ocassionally breaking into Julie Andrews songs.