Coffee in France, Lunch in Switzerland, Dinner in Italy

No sleep ‘till Como.

Those words did not cross my mind when I woke up on a Friday morning at home in Staten Island — but that is how the next 35 hours played out.

After a full day at the office, I took the A train to JFK, boarded a flight to Paris, and then rode seven different trains before having paccheri and baby octopus in Como, Italy.

I had a middle seat on my flight to Paris — not as awful as I thought it would be — and a woman in the row behind me coughed incessantly throughout the first half of the flight. I could almost tune it out, but the woman next to me turned around twice to scold her, jarring me as I began to drift off.

Rather than try in vain to sleep, I watched two Woody Allen movies — Vicky Cristina Barcelona (one of my favorites) and Blue Jasmine (not one of my favorites) — and four episodes of Schitt’s Creek.

As my Boeing 777 touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport an hour early, I thought I might have a shot at an earlier train out of Paris, one that would give me time to enjoy the Swiss Alps at a relaxed pace, rather than my initial plan to race to the Italian border by bedtime.

Once off the plane, I darted around people as best I could to and through immigration and to the Charles de Gaulle metro station, catching a commuter train to Gare de Lyon, and from there, a high-speed TGV through the French countryside to Mulhouse.

One of the best decisions I made on this trip was opting for a first-class Eurail pass. Days later, crossing the Bernina Pass, the first-class pass gave me a nearly panoramic view of the dramatic alpine crossing. Here, it meant wider seats in a less-crowded car.

For being a seemingly densely populated continent, I am always amazed at how wide open the Western European countryside is.

France has 306 people per square mile, while the United States has only 96 people per square mile — and yet the ride through eastern France was full of rolling hills, free-roaming white cattle and round bales of hay, interrupted every 15 minutes out so by a small town.

The route map looked like a trip through a kitchen, past Chablis and through Dijon, and that is about the time I ventured out of my lower-level seat and upstairs to the restaurant car.

I was so happy I did.

What a great setup, similar to a bar, with seats facing the windows. It was not as social as Amtrak, but good to be around people nonetheless.

I had my morning coffee facing the blurred countryside.

Two women were practicing their voice lessons, it seemed, at the bar, reading sheet music and singing in harmony, almost like church music. I wanted to tell them that their “chant” was “magnifique” — but I did not interrupt.

At Mulhouse, I hopped a train to Basel — where the language shifted from French to German — and then changed trains again to head south toward the Alps.

The interregional train heading south out of Basel had some of the largest train windows I had ever seen. But the only food and drink service was from a vending machine.

The clock was approaching noon, and I was approaching one of the most picturesque cities in Europe, Lucerne.

As we approached, I checked my train schedules, checked Google Maps, and made a last-minute decision to hop off the train for an hour.

I stashed my bag in a train station locker, and ventured across the mouth of the Reuss River to the Rathaus Brauerei for two beers and a small plate of sausages and sauerkraut.

Situated on a lake with the Alps towering in the background, Lucerne was beautiful, with baskets of flowers in bloom everywhere.

But it was also full of tourists, and pricey.

My sausages and beer cost more than $30. Had I ordered the veal cordon bleu, I would have paid more than $50.

I could have spent more time soaking in the city, but the Alps were calling me.

The next train south was an intercity train, as opposed to interregional. The windows were not as grand, but the train was wide open, giving me the ability to move about.

Pulling out of Lucerne, we skirted lakes left and right, with the alps in the distance, and then we began to climb. A recent derailment in the 35-mile-long Gotthard Base tunnel meant that all trains on this route took a more scenic route.

I initially had a perfect spot, by the window, solo, and no one across from me, so I could take photos framed by that window and chairs —until a woman sat down, put a hood on her head, a mask on her eyes and feet up to sleep, ruining any pics from there.

Fortunately, a better spot awaited me.

Unlike the previous train I was on, which had only a vending machine (that would not dispense alcohol without swiping a European ID), this train included a bar car, where I ordered a Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine.

I told the attendant that while I could not speak German, I could get by in Italian. He said his Spanish was better than his Italian. “Yo tambien,” I said.

It turned out he was from Mexico City, and his mom lives in Phoenix, so after my trying to order in Italian, we had a nice conversation going back and forth between English and Spanish (this being Europe, he of course also speaks German).

I subsequently enjoyed a small bottle of Swiss merlot, with cups of olives, salami, cheese and breadsticks on a gray tablecloth in the bar car as we continued through the Alps.

At Lugano, another picture-perfect city on a lake, I opted for one more quick stopover, lighting a candle in the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo to give thanks for a safe arrival. I took a quick walk by the lake, and then a funicular back up to the train station.

Within an hour, I was again back on a train, continuing to Chiasso, on the Italian-Swiss border, where I would spend the night.

My hotel, the Bahnhof Has, was literally a stone’s throw from the border. It was clean and simple, with a kind staff and a restaurant attached — and a fraction of the cost of a hotel in Como.

Awake for nearly 30 hours at this point, I really needed some sleep — but instead, I took a seven-minute train ride to Como, for a small bowl of paccheri with baby octopus, tomatoes, olives and capers at Ristorante Lo Storico.

I declined a second course and dessert, paid my bill, took a short walk past the lake, and then headed back to Chiasso.

At the restaurant adjacent to my hotel, I ordered a Braulio on ice for a nightcap, and while that was enough, I couldn’t resist sampling a bottle I had never seen before — Amaro dell’Eremo, made by local ‘frati.”

I was in bed before 10 pm — hard to believe, after all I had seen — and slept soundly until 5 am.

By 730 am, I was on a train to Milano, making a 7-minute connection to a southbound train to Rome, where I would meet my parents before driving east to Abruzzo.

My first choice for this journey had been to take one high-speed train from Paris to Torino, a different route through the French Alps, but a massive mudslide last week cut off that rail connection. This route through Switzerland was my Plan B — and what a great Plan B it was.