Euro Trip!: Saint Moritz

Saint Moritz Friday 24/02/17 til Tuesday 28/02/17 and Zurich Tuesday 28/02/17 til Wednesday 01/02/17

Friday 24/02/17
My original purpose to visit Saint Moritz was to see 'White Turf' or horse races on ice! Plus/minus some skiing or snowboarding and rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous...

I arrived on the Glacier Express at 5pm and Silvia drove me to her house. The apartment was beautiful and spacious and I had a whole room and bathroom to myself. Such Luxury!!

On the way home, she told me that they were holding night races that evening on the Lake. After unpacking I wandered down to have a look.

The races had finished by the time I got there but there was live music and a light show later. . Because I was late they had stopped selling food so they just gave me the left overs!

This is the coldest I have ever been! walking on a frozen lake, at night with a strong wind. Lucky there were fires and tents to help defrost.

Saturday 25/02/2017

This is the view from my room. Apparently you can ski from the side door down to the gondola place.

I was feeling very tired from travelling, skiing, snowboarding etc. so I just had a quiet morning finishing some earlier blogs and chatting on the phone.

Around 11, I decided to go for a walk to find some brunch and have a look around.

There was some advertising for the race tomorrow!

And you can get a horse and cart taxi!!

This is the view of the racecourse on the lake

This is Badrutt's Palace Luxury hotel. It is stunning from the outside and has the most amazing views over the lake. I think it costs from $500-$3000 a night...

This was in a luxury goods re-seller. It is a Louis Vitton box filled with Rolex watches.... So many $$$$$$$$

A Cow Bar including tractor!!

I'm not sure if I explained this earlier, but, Saint Moritz is a luxury destination. This is where the rich and famous go to holiday so all the shops and fancy designer brands and the restaurants are super swish!

And it is absolutely the done thing to wear fur. Not only is it stylish, it is very practical because it is so cold!

There are tiny horses warming up on the snow to the right of the picture.

Because I was going to be in Saint Moritz for a few days, I lashed out and bought some fruit, meals, cereal and milk...

There were so many types of milk in every language (German, French and Italian) but no English!

Sunday 26/02/2017
Race day!!
Again I had a bit of a sleep in (because I could) and the races didn't start until 11. I missed the first race so casually strolled down to the lake doing some sightseeing on the way.

As I approached the racecourse, a large helicopter landed in the middle. I thought, well, they must be rich, famous and important (and running a bit late) to land in the middle!

As I got closer, I noticed the helicopter was red with a white cross on it. Naively, I thought this might be a tourism helicopter as the Swiss flag is also red with a white cross on it. Unfortunately, it transpired that it was an ambulance helicopter... There had been a fall in the first race where a horse had tripped on/made a hole in the ice and fallen and caused a bit of a crash and one of the jockeys was being flown to hospital and a horse had been euthanised. As a result, they were cancelling all the races.

I was a bit disappointed as I had travelled so far specifically to see these races but was grateful I had not seen the horrendous fall and they were willing to cancel the rest of the races to avoid any other injuries.

So the day became- Dog Spotting!!!

Sightseeing...

And Horse-Spotting!!

They had pony rides for the kids! I was tempted but the saddles looked too small...

And a 'sandpit' full of hay

There was a parade through the crowd with a few different sleighs

They had a demonstration called 'Horses Inside Out' where they had painted the skeleton on some horses to demonstrate how the bones are structured underneath. It was interesting to watch.

I think these horses were either in the first race or warming up for the second race before it was cancelled..

And People watching!! Some very dressed up people and many who were wearing sensible skiing gear...

And some with just polar bears on their feet...

This para-glider went past during the day. It would have been a fabulous day for it!

Oh, and food! I couldn't pick one so I had both! I'm pretty sure there was alcohol in the cannoli.

I had a bit of a chuckle about this survey they asked me to do...

All dressed up and nowhere to go!!

Most people were happy to hang around at the grounds eating, drinking and socialising. I met a group of Britts who happened to live in Spain and were in town to watch the race. I spent the afternoon with them and had dinner with them. Later, we happened to meet the group that owned the horse that had been put down. Understandably they were all devastated and swore never to return to Saint Moritz.

Monday 27/02/2017

Don't you hate it when the drains freeze...

I decided I would try snowboarding again so I didn't forget what I had learnt in my lesson last week.
I only had to walk down the hill to the base of the gondola and hire gear there and take the gondola up the hill so it was very easy.

On the gondola there were two beautiful St Bernards. The male on the right was absolutely huge! Obviously they do this often and they were quite happy to have a nap!

This is the view from the top of the gondola thingy. Saint Moritz town is on the left and there are other (larger) lakes to the right

Again, Saint Moritz from where I was (trying to snowboard)

My snowboarding skills had not improved. I struggled to stand up. Then would fall after only a few meters. Some of the skiiers were sooooo good they would hold out their pole for me to hold and they would pull me up AND THEN, pull my up the hill on my board!! I can't even ski on the flat let alone up hill, let alone pull someone else!!

After many, many falls, I had lunch on the slope and resolved to try again.

This went much better. I could go some distance without falling and didn't have to crawl down backwards, breaking the whole way. I could, sort of, go down a bit, turn, and go down a different way so I quite while I was ahead (or without head injury)

Tuesday 28/02/2017
Leaving Saint Moritz. I woke up to SNOW! There had been snow everywhere for the last week of my trip. And it had snowed to varying degrees in various places. But this was beautiful, fluffy, soft, perfect white snow. It just sat as a cloud on everything.

I caught the train from Saint Moritz to Zurich which takes about 3.5 hours around 12 and arrived in Zurich around 3.30. I was flying to Norway in the morning so it was just a brief stop over.

This was my first night in a hostel. At the hostel, while waiting in the rain, I met a lovely lady from America. She was over here to compete in cross-country skiing at the Masters Games. She was exhausted from her flight but to avoid jetlag, we went for a walk around the centre of Zuirch.

Zurich is like a French version of Germany. Or a German version of Paris. I'm not sure which, I haven't been to Germany...

It took me way too long to work out why there was so much Swiss muesli. It was because I was in Switzerland...

Since we were in Switzerland, and they are famous for chocolate, we went to a patisserie/chocolate shop. I bought a few chocolates and macarrons. All very delicious! then we had hot chocolate. YUMM!!!

There was this store that makes 'cakes' and 'pizza' out of different lollies..

And for dinner I had the healthiest meal I have had in a loooong time - Quinoa salad with spinach, avocado, cranberries, other healthy stuff and bacon.