Swiss Rambles
While we were living in Switzerland, temperatures hovered in the upper 90s one summer and the canicule or heat wave made international news. Since few people in Geneva had air conditioning, it was miserable to be in the city and hard to sleep at night. Fortunately, we managed to escape to the mountains for long weekends and a week-long vacation.
Lake Thun
One such weekend we drove to Lake Thun and spent a hundred-degree day swimming in the cleanest lake in Switzerland (according to our guidebook); an idyllic respite we didn’t want to leave.
At the end of the day we drove to Grindelwald and spent three nights in a VRBO rental. The condo’s balcony overlooked a scenic river valley below the Eiger, a legendary mountain among avid climbers. We ate all our meals on that balcony to gaze at the mountain, and we hiked nearby trails in Alpen air that helped us forget the canicule.
Seeking higher Peaks
Another hot weekend we escaped to the town of Les Diablarets above Aigle. Diablarets was an excellent jumping off point for hikes above 8,000 feet, just as it was for skiing and snowshoeing in winter.
We took a cable car up to Glacier 3000 where we could walk on the glacier and cross the newly-opened Peak Walk; the first and only suspension bridge between two Alpine peaks. On a clear day we could see the Bernese Oberland and the Matterhorn. Diablarets also had a 25-meter municipal pool where we were delighted to cool off after hiking.
From Diablarets we drove past the resort town of Gstaad and up a narrow road to the crest of a mountain. While staying at the Berghotel Hornberg, we were serenaded by students who were learning to play the alpenhorn. Hiking trails diverged in all directions from the top of the Hornberg, and we walked several of them the following day.
La Thuile
On a separate trip, we drove to the tiny town of La Thuile in Italy’s Aoste Valley on the far side of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. Taking a cable car to the crest of the closest mountain, we had stunning views of the back side of Mont Blanc towering over its neighbors.
On a hike to Rutor Falls, we had an unexpected dalliance with a waterfall. The trail wound up a mountain slope and crossed a rickety bridge near the summit where we were sprayed by glacier waters cascading down from the cliffs overhead.
St. Luc
A friend sent us to the mountains above Martigny to two of the highest villages in Europe, both dating back to 1200 AD. Dining on the terrace of a St. Luc chalet, it felt like we were eating in an eagle’s nest overlooking a deep valley.
We walked from Saint Luc to the even higher town of Chandolin and explored the tiny church and stores there. Other hikes from St. Luc led to remote lakes and peaks and to a Planets Trail that was designed to show the vastness of our solar system; a walk that took us an entire day.
Entering the Engadin
At the end of the summer our son joined us for a week-long tour of the Engadin Valley. I’d wanted to visit it ever since reading a rapturous description of the remote Swiss region in Stefan Zweig’s novel, “Post Office Girl.” The book had only hinted at the splendor of the narrow valley encased by steep mountains on both sides.
The Engadin
We drove from Geneva to the Engadin via Chur and did a walking tour of the oldest town in Switzerland. The following day, descending into the Engadine via the Julier Pass, we breezed through Davos and St. Moritz on our way to Silvaplana without stopping.
Ritzy St. Moritz had been a destination for Victorian tourists in the 1800s, and nearby Davos was made famous by jetsetters and politicos who attended the annual World Economic forum. But long before those towns became hotspots for the rich and famous, visitors had been charmed by the deep valleys and towering peaks of the Engadin.
The Engadin
Silvaplana is situated at the head of an emerald lake known for its superlative kitesurfing. Nestled in the foothills overlooking the lake, our rental was a great base for mountain hiking.
We took cable cars to the top of the mountain above our condo and could choose among a network of trails fanning out in all directions. From a platform at 11,000 feet, we hiked along a ridge bursting with wildflowers while our eyes were drawn to the jade lake in the valley below, the clang of cowbells drifting up from hillside meadows.
Our son decided to try windsurfing on Silvaplana’s lake one day when he had his fill of hiking. After watching him skate back and forth across the lake at frightening speeds, I retreated to a sprawling pool complex in St. Moritz where I could swim and soak in a hot tub.
There were more hidden gems as we drove further into the Engadin, through ancient towns where people spoke a dialect—Romansch—that sounded like an amalgam of Swiss German and Italian. Along the way we explored a couple of castles perched above the highway and ambled through hamlets like Scuol and Susch with their cobbled streets and ancient squares.
On our last day in the Engadin, we hopped on a scenic train that went up and over the Bernina Pass into Italy. After spending a night in Pontresina on the Swiss side of the border, we boarded the train and were glued to its windows for hours, gawking at glaciers and cliffs that fell away on either side of a deep chasm as we climbed.
The train stopped long enough at a meadow lake on the summit to allow passengers to stretch their legs before chugging down into a valley on the Italian side. We had a few hours to explore the town of Tirano before boarding the train for another heart-stopping ride back up and over the Bernina Pass.
No rapturous descriptions in novels and travel guides can do justice to those storybook landscapes, which I’m fantasizing about visiting again someday.