Saturday, 21 August

His perspective


Quite a full day after a slow start. After breakfast we headed for St. Moritz to find the cable car to Piz Nair, a 3057M/10,030ft peak overlooking St. Moritz. I found a 30 minute parking place, which by sheer luck happened to be near the tramway. We went to the ticket office to ask where we could find a parking place. He pointed out that a garage was directly next to where I had parked. Another stroke count for the Griswold’s.

Panorama shot from Piz Nair

The trip to the top of the mountain consists of 2 funiculars and 1 cable car, for two way points between the station in St.Moritz Dorf and the top of Piz Nair. We briefly stopped at the 1st way point, Chantarella and took some pics (which I’ll post later). From there we took the funicular to the 2nd way point, Corviglia, where we immediately got on the cable car to the top. And I mean top. Welcome to the top of the world, on a clear sunny day, with a nice cool temp of 51F. The haze that seemed to obscure the mountains a bit at lower elevations was gone. We had a panoramic view of the Alps, almost all the way to the Matterhorn. St. Moritz and the Engadine Valley towns spread out below us. Spectacular, is not giving it credit. We sat outside at the mountain top restaurant and had a bowl of tomato basil soup and a drink. The sun was warm, and the clouds cast different shadows on the mountains constantly. For some reason, I decided to look at some of the pics I had taken. They were all terribly over exposed. I put the camera on the correct setting and started over. But the top of the world isn’t a bad place to have to do that. On the way down the mountain we stopped at the 2nd way point, Corviglia. Corviglia is still above the tree line, but has a lot of grazing cows. Almost all wore traditional Swiss bells….a cacophony of bells and moos.

We took a brief stroll through St. Moritz Dorf, listened to some street music and saw displays of classic race cars (a 1951 Alfa for one) and an exhibit of very large sculptures entitled Angels and Demons.

From St. Moritz we headed toward the Maloja Pass. I had no idea what the Maloja Pass was, but had read somewhere that it was worth seeing. I assumed it was a pass over a mountain range with great views.

Moth

Along the way we stopped at a town called Silvaplana. We had passed through Silvaplana on way from Luzern and had seen lots of para-sailors. Seems that the Moth International Championships were held on Lake Silvaplana, ending today. A moth is a fast dingy, sailing hydrofoil.

From Silvaplana we headed for the Maloja Pass. We never came a point at the top of a mountain pass as I had expected. But we did start going downhill and were very shortly in the midst of Lombard St. in San Fransisco on steroids. Switchback after switchback, getting passed by motorcyclists, traffic coming to a halt when a bus when through a switchback, as there was not enough room for him and anything else. Incredible. We traveled about 4 miles in distance and 1600 feet in altitude.

Back to the hotel and a good dinner up the street.

Tomorrow, the Bernina Express train to Tirano, Italy.