We left Zurich in the early afternoon on a train that straddled the brilliant teal Zurichsee for about thirty kilometers before heading further south to Chur and then landing in St. Moritz. We learned that about a third of the journey (between Chur and St. Moritz) is part of the Glacier Express.
We arrived in St. Moritz late in the afternoon and then had to figure out the local bus system to our hotel. Turns out it was very simple, and also turns out we could have just walked along the lake, but the maps and routes were a bit confusing without understanding the layout in intimate detail as we would later.
After dinner in the hotel restaurant (the only one open!) Sam called it a day as she was suffering from jetlag. I went to walk around the lake with my camera and waited for sunset.
On Monday morning, we headed out on the Bernina train for the Bernina Diavolezza.
We were lucky to find some sun at the top.
We ate lunch before heading back down. On the way back to St. Moritz we stopped in Morteratsch to hike out to the glacier.
Having stood on glaciers in Iceland it was a bit of a disappointment when we reached the little glacier finger muddied with sediment at the end of a long valley.
Hungry after the hike we walked to a restaurant in St. Moritz Sam found on Yelp, but found it closed. As was everything else. Again. So we ate at our hotel. Again.
Turns out May 15th and 16th are observed holidays in Switzerland that shutter entire towns. The front desk said it was a “bank holiday,” but we learned later it was called Pentecost, a common Christian holiday, just not observed in this “shut everything down and vacate” way in America.
After dinner we walked along the lake to see the sunset, but, unlike the day before, snow clouds blew in and obscured any color.
We took a leisurely walk in the morning sun along the lake to the train station for our glacier express reservations.
We picked out a postcard to send to my parents and dropped in the post box before boarding the train. It was days later before I’d realize I never wrote their address on it (and Sam wouldn’t know it well enough to write it without me).
