The cog railway tunnels up through the Eiger to the Jungfraujoch, the highest station in Europe. The Aletsch glacier runs away below the Sphinx terrace and the snow holds all year; we walked out onto the plateau and felt the altitude in the thin, bright air.

Zermatt is car-free, so the walk up was only the hum of electric taxis. The Matterhorn stood clear above the village that morning. The crooked pyramid everyone climbs up to photograph. And we took the Gornergrat railway for the wider view across the glaciers.

The Lavaux terraces step down to Lake Geneva in dry-stone walls eight centuries old, the vines catching sun off the water and the wall and the lake all at once. The three suns the growers talk about. We tasted the Chasselas in a cellar above Lutry with the lake spread out below.

After two weeks of mountains and lakes, Paris closed the trip. The hop-on tour wound to the Eiffel and we went up to the second level, the city flat to the horizon, then the Seine cruise at dusk back under the tower as it began its hourly five minutes of sparkle.