Swiss Grand Circle - 02. St Moritz on the Cheap

In case rugged peaks and pristine alpine lakes don’t fit your image of glitzy St. Moritz, we spent our 48 hours on some breathtaking hikes rather than the Jimmy Choo and Rolex showrooms, with all gondola rides and chairlifts paid for by our hotel.

And if you’re still wondering why these two backpackers chose expensive St. Moritz as vacation spot, trust me, we wouldn’t have done so if we didn’t get a good deal out of it.


Now THIS of course, is most people’s image of St. Moritz, the definitive Swiss luxury alpine resort and timeless playground even for the most jaded celebrities and European royals. From 19th century masquerade balls to modern day snow polo tournaments showcasing a dozen stallions galloping across its frozen lake, the extravagance of St. Moritz has always attracted the world’s wealthiest.


At the time of writing, St Moritz still holds the dubious distinction for the world’s second most expensive hotels on average. Combined with the fact that none of the local ski lifts provide any discount for holders of the Half Fare Card or Swiss Travel Pass -- the favorite money saving strategy of foreign visitors -- and you may wonder why the average guy would ever vacation here.

Ah, but there is a trick.


Yes, the great equalizer known locally as Bergbahnen Inklusive. Book into an endorsed hotel for two nights or more, and the hotel pays for all mountain transport -- funiculars, gondolas, chairlifts -- in the Upper Engadine Valley from Piz Nair to Corvatsch to Diavolezza near the Italian border. In our extreme example, we paid CHF 298 plus local tax for our two-night stay, and the hotel refunded all our return lift tickets -- Muottas Muragl / Alp Languard, Diavolezza and Corviglia -- for CHF 242 back in cash. If paying CHF 56 total for two nights in a double room, in a 4-star hotel at Switzerland’s most expensive resort sounds too good to be true, go to the official site and see for yourself.


Penny-pinching aside, we still wanted to check out the lavish Victorian deco inside Badrutt’s Palace or Kulm Hotel. Now it may sound exceedingly decadent for two backpackers to reserve a table at Badrutt’s Le Grand Hall for its opulent English afternoon tea, except that it’s arguably cheaper than two entrées with beers at a blue-collar Swiss gaststube -- and was filling enough to double as an early dinner.


As if the hiking and gastronomy weren’t enticing enough, the rail journey itself -- 2 hours of stunning alpine scenery from SBB’s oversized train windows -- from Chur to St. Moritz is a UNESCO World Heritage Site featuring the world’s most amazing 19th and early 20th century railway engineering.


Implausible spiral tunnels and the pictured Landwasser Viaduct are among the ingenious 120-year-old engineering feats helping the Rhaetian Railway overcome staggering elevation differences through mountain passes. For rail buffs, the reservations-only Bernina Express would be an unsurpassable showcase of turn-of-20th-century rail engineering as the narrow guage train climbs 1500m from Chur to Bernina Pass before dropping 1700m down to the Italian town of Tirano.


Fresh off our train from Chur, we stopped first at our hotel in the neighbourhood of Samedan to drop off everything except our poles and a day pack for our afternoon hike. I cannot recommend Hotel Bernina 1865 enough for its hearty breakfast buffet that fuelled our morning hike in addition to the much-appreciated sauna room after hiking.


And remember, with the Bergbahnen Inklusive program our hotel paid for all of our gondola tickets. On the first day we tackled the Muottas Muragl Panorama Trail, to be reviewed in the next post, and on the second day we did two hikes starting with a gondola ride up the 2900m Diavolezza.


Even among non-hikers, Diavolezza is famous for its front row panorama of the Eastern Alps’ tallest peak -- the 4048m Piz Bernina (right) flanked by the 3900m Piz Palü with its glacier (left) -- right outside the gondola station with no hiking required.


While this isn’t a physically demanding hike, the 30 minute climb up to the rocky summit of Sass Queder was complicated by an ankle-twisting path of loose rocks as well as the thin air at 3000m. Awaiting at the top is Europe’s highest barbecue pit fit for an epic picnic.


This was the 360 panorama that made it worthwhile: Piz Bernina and Piz Palü behind the back, a cliff-edge drop to Lago Bianco beneath the feet, and countless Italian peaks as far as the eye can see in the direction of Bormio.


After a short train ride of spectacular hairpin turns, we arrived back at St. Moritz where we hopped on the Corviglia funicular for our second hike of the day, on a grassy 2500m plateau that once served as the alpine skiing venue for the 1948 Winter Olympics.


With less than three hours available before having to return to St. Moritz, we took the official Corviglia hiking map and picked Familienweg Lej Alv, marked No. 8 on the map and billed as an easy, 5 km trail in the shadow of gorgeous 3000m peaks. It’s also marked as stroller-friendly, I mean, navigation should be a breeze, right?


Except that the advertised trail didn’t really exist, or perhaps the overgrown vegetation had reduced it into a barely-noticeable goat path that certainly wasn’t stroller-friendly. For 30 minutes our only guidance was my phone’s imprecise GPS reception, pointing us towards a distant flock of wooly sheep.


Of course the sheep were hanging out beside this sublime alpine lake and the destination of our hike, a natural reservoir with crystal blue waters and zero visitors aside from ourselves, plus one caretaker attempting to keep the vegetation in control with his handheld weed trimmer. With a circumference of exactly 1 km, the wood-chip-covered running track circling the lake is apparently popular with distance runners arriving for altitude training.


Just beyond the reservoir we reached the pristine emerald lake of Lej Alv, perennially fed by snow melt from the 3100m Piz Grisch to provide a rare watering hole in these alpine meadows. In a couple weeks the owners would return and bring the herds back to the valley for the annual Alpabzug procession and wintering in the covered barns.


The stroller-friendly trail emerged at last, leading from Lej Alv back to the funicular station with sweeping views towards the towns of Celerina and Samedan where we were staying. The 5 km loop took us about 2 hours in good weather, with a long rest at the reservoir and plenty of photo stops along the route, taking us back to St. Moritz in time for our 17:00 reservation.


Victorian armchairs, inlaid marble floors and wall-to-ceiling wood panels abound, the aptly named Le Grand Hall is the classic setting for English afternoon tea at Badrutt’s Palace, St. Moritz’s 120-year-old landmark frequently voted top hotel in all of Switzerland. Now this may sound really absurd, but buried behind this lavishness was one of the best deals in town.


Guests are greeted by majestic windows overlooking the hotel’s own yacht sailing across the turquoise Lake St. Moritz, ready for hire by the next billionaire checking in. Inside the same menu featuring CHF 4500 bottles of vintage Krug is a small section detailing the hotel’s signature afternoon tea set: more than a dozen finger sandwiches, cakes and scones complemented by a small dictionary of teas from around the world, with a surprisingly affordable price tag.


We had no hope of finishing this tower of tartlets and sandwiches, ranging from smoked salmon to macaron to prosciutto-and-alpine-cheese to Engadine nusstorte to a delectable cheesecake with a crème brulee top. Each guest gets her personal choice of tea -- 28 varieties in total including an outstanding Oolong -- served in a teapot of polished silver.


We made sure to finish before 19:00 when jackets become mandatory, now filled to our cheeks with no further need for dinner. The price for an afternoon of extravagance? Just CHF 32.5 (CAD$45) per person, which barely buys an entrée of bratwurst, rösti and beer in a typical Swiss restaurant. A Canadian equivalence I’m familiar with is the famous afternoon tea at Victoria, B.C.'s Empress Hotel, which charges CAD$82 plus tax at the time of writing. Not to sound unpatriotic, but at half the price I'd take Badrutt's any day.


As mentioned we took full advantage of the Bergbahnen Inklusive program with a third hike over our two-night stay. The stunning Panorama Trail between Alp Languard and Muottas Muragl will be the subject of the next post.

Swiss Grand Circle - 01. Appenzell and St Gallen

Five hours after stepping off the plane at Zürich Airport, we’re arriving for lunch at Switzerland’s most iconic and historic restaurant, 1500m above sea level and accessible only via a soggy hike past grazing cows and through a sequence of prehistoric caves inhabited for centuries by hermit monks. If this weathered gasthaus standing precipitously underneath the towering cliff looks familiar to you, you’ve probably seen it on the cover of National Geographic’s Destinations of a Lifetime.


The Aescher Gasthaus is just one of the unique charms at this far-flung region of northeast Switzerland known as Appenzellerland, two sparsely populated cantons renowned for their distinctive festivals and ultra-traditional customs. This would be the start of our 16-day circle route to appreciate Switzerland’s cultural diversity, starting with possibly its most old-fashioned corner.


Outside Switzerland, Appenzell is best known as a quaint specimen of Swiss direct democracy for its annual Landsgemeinde, a 600-year-old tradition where citizens congregate at the town square to vote on cantonal governance issues by a public show of hands. And up until 1991 women had no right to vote in the Landsgemeinde, which shows just how culturally conservative this corner of Switzerland has been.


Among the Swiss themselves though, Appenzell is appreciated for its hard, spicy Appenzeller cheese featured on premium cheese platters across the nation, as well as the excellent Appenzeller Bier -- especially the unfiltered Quöllfrisch variety -- available at most supermarkets. Just 90 minutes from Zürich Airport via one of the world’s best train networks, we plunged right into the heartland of Swiss traditions on our first morning.


Our first interaction with the locals was at Appenzell Station where a gracious staff member agreed to safeguard our heavy backpacks for the day ... for free. Within minutes we unpacked our hiking poles and took the next train to nearby Wasserauen followed by a cable car up the local peak of Ebenalp, where a light 30 minute hike would lead us to Aescher Gasthaus for a late Sunday brunch.


Even before the establishment of Aescher Gasthaus in the late 1800s, mysterious Ebenalp had attracted centuries of pilgrims to its cave chapel and hermitage that provided food and lodging to the faithfuls. En route to the gasthaus, today’s hikers must still pass through a subterranean cavern once inhabited by Neanderthals and cave bears in the ice age, and by little hobbit-like people according to legends.


It was another busy Sunday in Aescher’s short operating season, lasting only from late May until mid-October, 130 plus years running. Until a couple years ago hikers could overnight at its detached mountain lodge next to the cave church before coming in for breakfast, though the nearest bathtub would be the local lake of Seealpsee in the valley below.


Just about every table washed down their obligatory charcuterie platter with shots of a local herb tonic known as Alpenbitter, or with the house’s full-strength apple cider. The smoked and thinly sliced Mostbröckli and sharp Appenzeller cheese were appealing, but the real star -- and both my wife and I agreed -- was a simple Schwartenmagen head cheese that might have been our favourite charcuterie item of the entire trip.


We fuelled up further with a house made cheese pie that came with a sauce I had never dreamed of, an earthy pesto of wild nettle -- yes, the same stinging nettle for treating allergy symptoms -- that perfectly toned down the oiliness of the melted cheese and elevated the homey fare into gastronomic sophistication. One has to be impressed with the chef’s resourcefulness demonstrated by the originality of menu items, considering that fresh supplies only get towed in twice weekly by farm tractors.

Meal for Two Persons

Cold Platter	CHF 26
Cheese Pie with Nettle Sauce	CHF 12
Bottle of Flauder 0.5 L	CHF 5.5
Apple Cider 0.5 L	CHF 6.5
TOTAL	CHF50 (CAD$69)

Back in Appenzell after our lunch and hike, we finally reached the town’s historic quarters among a surprising number of multi-national tourists arriving on tour buses for the Sunday afternoon. Fortunately few would remain after sundown, as we would soon learn over two nights in town.


Noiseless and vacant as Landsgemeindeplatz appeared on this day, this is the venue for the annual cantonal assembly in April when any citizen can rise to the podium to propose changes for the other 4,000 to approve or vote down by a show of hands. While the women bring their voter cards, most men still carry their personal ceremonial sword which also qualifies as voter ID from a tradition dating back to the 1400s.


For those of us arriving outside of Appenzell’s various colourful festivals, its living traditions are always on display at Museum Appenzell inside a historic house next to the town hall. The historic quarter is full of fascinating vintage houses, one of which we would be renting for two nights.


Or at least the bottom floor of a traditional 4-storey Appenzeller house belonging to a winery proprietor, a 2 minute walk east of town centre and 7 minutes from the train station. Next door happened to be the local institution of Bäckerei Böhli, a 5th generation bakery apparently popular with the townsfolk judging by line-ups forming as early as 06:30.


To be completely honest, we chose this house as it was the cheapest accommodation available in the old town and within walking distance from the train station, at a one-third discount compared with the cheapest hotel. And in practical terms, a functional kitchen is simply indispensable for budget travelers in expensive Switzerland.


For two nights we cooked our own meals and sampled two regional favorites, the Appenzeller Siedwurst and the St Galler Kalbsbratwurst picked up from local supermarkets. The Appenzeller version pictured, with its silky texture and mild peppery spices, turned out to be my favourite out of all regional specialty sausages that we sampled across Switzerland.


As for picnics and hikes, we followed the local wisdom and purchased from Bäckerei Böhli these traditional form of energy bars: a gingerbread with almond filling known as the Appenzeller Biber (pictured left), and a bar of dried pears known as Birnweggen (right). Combined with a chicken leg from Migros and some packaged salad, these made for a cheap and filling lunch on the go.


As one of Switzerland’s greenest cantons where dairy farming remains a common career, Appenzell’s greatest appeal arguably lies in its picturesque countryside and small towns, conveniently connected by the private Appenzeller Bahnen with its half-hourly train service. Our original plan was to hike the Hundwiler Höhi from Gonten back to Appenzell, but we switched to visiting Urnäsch on a rainy day.


A small town even by the standard of Switzerland’s least populous cantons, charming Urnäsch looms large on tourism brochures with its 17th century town square and an outstanding museum, in fact my favourite in Switzerland over our 16-day journey.


Housed inside a 400-year-old half-timber building with low vaulted ceilings and crooked wooden floors, the Appenzeller Brauchtumsmuseum hosts the most comprehensive collection relating to Appenzell’s rural customs from the bi-annual livestock processions to hands-on practices with traditional musical instruments.


Most memorable were vivid exhibits of the canton’s Silvesterchläuse festivities on New Year’s Eve, a millennium-old pagan tradition in which a team of masked villages would dress in flamboyant costumes, wear 30 kg cow bells and yodel from house to house wishing everyone a prosperous new year.


Just 30 minute north of tiny Urnäsch, crossing cantonal boundaries and into a 21st century urban spread, is eastern Switzerland’s commerce and transportation hub of St. Gallen. Visitors arrive at a train station surrounded by a glass-and-concrete business district and filled with legions of daily commuters to Zürich, yet just a 10 minute walk from a medieval town centre crowned with a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Predating the birth of the Swiss nation by 500 years, the medieval Abbey of St. Gall began as a humble Benedictine monastery and blossomed into a powerful theocratic city-state reporting only to the Holy Roman Emperor. Today it is revered among Switzerland’s most important cultural heritage as evidenced by the masses of high school students on field trips.


Striking as the cathedral’s baroque ceiling may appear, it pales in comparison to the abbey’s magnificent library possessing one of the world’s greatest collections of medieval codices dating to the 8th century. If you’re interested in viewing the select thousand-year-old manuscripts on display, visit in person as no pictures are allowed.


Back in Appenzell we spent the rest of the drizzly afternoon in shops and supermarkets. In better weather I would have loved to hike the Hundwiler Höhi for its panoramic views, but we salvaged what we could by shuffling Gasthaus Aescher to our only dry half-day. This would not be the last time that we had to reschedule our hikes and excursions according to Meteo Swiss’s incredibly accurate forecasts.