The lakes of the Engadine Valley, with St. Moritz the biggest town down there
From Zermatt we took the beautiful Glacier Express, self-described as “the world’s slowest express train” to St. Moritz. In the winter this is one of the world’s most expensive ski resorts, vacation destination for the rich and famous. It still brags that it was the site of the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948, though we thought that after 66 years they might get over that. It is also allegedly the original site of winter tourism in the Alps and perhaps in all of the world: in 1864, exactly 150 years ago, the first British winter tourists arrived here.
One of Switzerland’s quirks. The smallish hotels we stayed at in both Zermatt & St. Moritz lock the front doors at 9:00 PM. When you go out for the evening you insert your room key into the control board and it releases a key to the front door. Then when you come home you put the front door key in and it releases your room key. Pretty efficient, but something utterly unique to Switzerland from our experience at least.
One of the amusing things about this area is that it seems as though throngs of Japanese tourists keep them in business. Everywhere you turned there was another big Japanese group moving (slowly) in a clump somewhere, all with their big floppy hats to keep the sun at bay. The restaurant we ate at our first night was nearly empty, and by the time we were finishing up we were the only patrons, so we talked for a while with the owner. He explained that yes, by 9:30 it was quiet, but at 6:00 PM he’d had a group of 35 Japanese. I won’t miss those big groups when we move back into France!
The other amusing feature of the area is that if you stay two or more nights at a hotel (we stayed two nights) they give you a free pass to all transportation in the region, including chairlifts and all that to get up into the mountains. So our experience is that everything in Switzerland is either two- or three-times as much as in other places … or it’s free. We liked the free part.
We did a loop hike that combined a difficult outbound segment and a pretty easy return. On the “easy” return we saw this family of five hiking. You’ll see Mom in front with an infant on her back while Dad is carrying a two-year-old on his shoulders and a four- or five-year old on his back. We were truly impressed!
And yes, we did another hike here. Beautiful mountains and valleys, great trails, perfect weather, and (of course) hordes of Japanese. Here are some more of our favorite pictures.
Mark on the trail. You’ll notice how the large stones have been set out to make a great trail. We observed, though, that moving those rocks and making the easy, level trail had to have been an enormous amount of work. Thanks to whomever…
Some of the gorgeous scenery
More of the gorgeous scenery
Mark’s on top of the world
Even the Swiss cows are beautiful