The Swiss Pass turns the whole rail network into a hop-on system, so the open day out of Zurich was ours to spend. We took the lake steamer in the morning and a train up into the foothills after lunch, the conductor barely glancing at the pass. Switzerland rewards the unplanned day.

We rode the lift to the Eiffel's second level as the light went. Paris flat to the horizon, the Seine bending through it, the bateaux strung with lights below. The hop-on bus had filled the day with the obvious circuit, but it was the tower at dusk that stayed.

Amsterdam after Paris felt low and intimate. Gabled houses leaning over the water, bicycles five deep against every bridge rail. We took the canal boat through the ring of seventeenth-century canals, the captain ducking us under bridges barely wider than the hull.

The last morning was the hop-on bus and boat on a single ticket. Past the Rijksmuseum, the flower market, the narrow houses of the Jordaan. We finished on the water again, which is the only honest way to see the city, and made the airport with cheese in the bag.