Saturday Sept. 23, 2017

The Hills are Alive with the Lonely Goatherd!

This morning we did not have a set agenda and only a roughed out plan of how we thought our day might go so we didn't set an alarm. We both woke up fairly early but enjoyed lazing in bed for a few minutes before we were going to rise. All of a sudden we heard what sounded like bells. A lot of bells. Many many bells?! Is that sheep? A lot of sheep! I rushed out onto our balcony to see the farmers who had brought their sheep down from the mountain as it was too cold and were taking them to the farm… through the middle of town and right by our window! I managed to capture some video and a few pictures as they paraded on by. I suppose I was part of the parade in my PJ's and my crazy hair for the other guests who were also outside to see but it was worth it to experience this!

By 10am we had eaten breakfast (I made the discovery that in Switzerland they offer you coffee, tea OR hot chocolate. Oh boy! It's going to be a problem for me to turn that last one down each morning but I will try!) and we were on our way. This morning we walked through the other side of town and saw some of the historical points of St. Moritz.

St. Moritz had always been a summer destination for "the season" among the upper class, specifically for the Brits. I cannot imagine leaving home for 3 or 4 months at a time to "season" somewhere but apparently it was/is very normal!

In September 1864 Johannes Badrutt, was bidding auf wiedersehen to his last British summer visitors and came up with an idea how to keep his hotel rooms full. "Come back and spend Christmas in St Moritz. It's sunnier and less rainy than London," he suggested. "If you don't like it, I'll pay your travel costs. If you do, you can stay as long as you like." It was a bet, so local legend goes, that the four English guests could not refuse. They returned to St Moritz in December and stayed until Easter creating Europe's first winter holiday resort town for the wealthy and the famous including Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II, Freidrich Nietzsche and many more. (Sadly for the Tsar he was overthrown before he saw the completion of his palace he commissioned in St. Moritz but we all know how that feels!). After the rich came the famous. Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Brigitte Bardot. Now it is the bankers, business tycoons and heirs to family fortunes who enjoy the winters in St. Moritz explaining the cost of living here (the Presidential Suite of one of the bigger hotels is rented for CHF 18,000.00 a night (Francs) and is rented at that rate for weeks at a time. I think I have the wrong friends!

The original hotel has changed names but it still stands as the Kulm hotel. The town reports that they have managed to avoid the binge drinking crowd simply based on the fact that it is just too expensive to get drunk in St. Moritz. That's a t shirt in the making!

On the grounds of the Kulm Hotel we also passed the Klum Golf Course which seemed to be completely uphill and we thought of our golf champ Nick Kenney who is likely the only person we know who could tackle this kind of course! We passed the Leaning Tower of St. Moritz and headed towards the lake, opting to use the sheep trail downhill rather then follow the sidewalk. We walked around the lake and then through the woods to reach our lunch destination that is actually in the forest of Staz. Grant had been told he could swim here but after feeling the water he opted out of that terrible idea! Lej da Staz (Lake of Staz) is where we enjoyed some local cheese, some soup, a quiche and a salad. Grant had his first beer of the holiday and I tried an Elderberry tea. There was a very well behaved Ginger dog inside the restaurant on a mat waiting patiently while their family had lunch. We wanted to visit him/her but we knew they were concentrating very hard on not getting up. There was another pup there who was not a ginger dog who was not very well behaved. Obviously there is a connection here.

After lunch our walk continued. I call it a walk but it was a HIKE up hill and down dale and the elevation is similar to that of flying in a plane above 6,000 feet. I felt like I needed those oxygen masks to drop a few times on this hike and I am finding it hard to take deep breaths in the mountain air. I whined that this must be Alpine Sickness but no one seemed to listen so I kept walking. Grant was singing an interesting combination of songs from the Sound of Music that he knew didn't sound quite right but wasn't sure why!

We reached the funicular station to take us to the top of Muottas Muragl Mountain. We jumped into a car just on time as the train headed to the peak. There was snow on top but it was such a warm and beautiful day I doubt that it would last very long in these conditions. From the top the view was like a National Geographic shoot. Just stunning! When we took the train back down we ended up missing our bus connection by 1 minute. We literally watched him pull away as we arrived. The downside to such an accurate transport system. 30 minutes to the exact minute, the next one arrived and took us to Bad. There are two villages in St. Moritz, we stayed in Dorf and the other is Bad (pronounce this with an accent!) We walked around for a few minutes and asked a few questions in a local hotel but realized that they were directing us back up to Dorf by our hotel. We did however discover the grocery store and purchased our dinner to enjoy in our room before walking back (uphill of course)! I was pretty sure I was not going to be able to move my feet or legs tomorrow after all this uphill hiking so the idea of a swim seemed like a good idea. It didn't last long as the pool was busy but we did spend a bit of time swimming and trying to ease our tired bodies from the long day.

Dinner in our room was lovely. Grant prepared us cheese, meats, fruit, tomato, a fresh loaf of bread, fig spread and the bottle of Barolo wine we had purchased from our wine tour in Piedmonte. Of course we only did this to lighten the suitcase weight for our train journey tomorrow. Very practical. We listened to music with Grant as the DJ (like a 70's satellite station!) we re-packed again and I got caught up on a little bit of blogging as I am days behind.

Tomorrow is the Glacier Train so it needs to be an early night although that ended up being around midnight as usual for me, which alas it is that time again now so I will sleep now and the tail of the Glacier Train will be tomorrow's project.