Arrividerci Italia, Guten Tag Switzerland

On Friday morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny day with almost no humidity; perhaps we shouldn’t leave the Italian Lakes just yet…..?  But then again we only have 32 days left before our ferry back over the Channel to England and there’s still all of Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium to get through.  So we used as much of the internet as we could during breakfast; the Italian sim card will be useless once we get to Switzerland later today, and then we hit the road north to Chiavenna.

From Chiavenna we turned up the Valle Bregaglia and stopped in a car park at Borgonuovo.  There is a short footpath that leads you beside a river up to a viewpoint for the Cascata Aqua Fraggio.  This was a waterfall that was really alive.  As you came through the trees, still a little distance from the base, the water pouring over the two cascades seemed to create its own wind and blew the water everywhere.  We got wet, the camera got wet and you really couldn’t stand there for long; but what a sight.

 

 

 

Back at the carpark we thought we would use up some of our euro coins, so with a lovely view of the waterfall, we enjoyed drinking a hot cappuccino and a hot chocolate.  This was to be my last Italian, very thick, hot chocolate; I do hope they will be as good in Switzerland, I love the way you can’t actually drink them, you have to eat them like a hot chocolate mousse.  And to give us a good laugh, Rodney’s final Italian cappuccino actually had chocolate sprinkled on the top for the first time !!!

 

 

We soon crossed the border in to Switzerland and I spoke briefly to the Italian guards and then also to the Swiss border guards, in Italian, and I have to say I am now thoroughly confused about which language I am supposed to be attempting.  I may just start throwing in merci, danke, graci and thank you all together, just to get my message across.

The valley was beautiful all the way, mainly following, or sometimes crossing the raging river Mera, which then became the river Maira.  As we climbed higher, the road was lined with incredibly tall pine trees and every meadow that opened up was full of wildflowers in so many colours.  We saw lupins in pink, white and purple growing wild beside the road and when we stopped at the top of the Maloja Pass, I picked a bunch of tiny wildflowers for my tiny vase in Eileen.  The scenery up there was majestic, just what we had come to see, and Rodney thinks the cows are much better looking in Switzerland, they have such lovely dusky coco-coloured coats.  I just like the bells around their necks.

 

 

At 1,807m above sea level we parked next to the Lej da Segl, I don’t think we could have found a more scenic lakeside spot for a picnic.  We managed to sit outside, but whenever the sun went behind a cloud, we realised that we would soon be needing to pull out some warmer clothes from the bottom of our suitcases.

 

 

We continued on uphill, past the Lej da Silvaplauna, the Lej da Champfer and into St Moritz.  We drove to the end of the St Moritz See (not sure why that one is a see and not a lej) for a bit of a look and then turned around to find our home for the next few days, Camping Olympiaschanze.  It’s a strange open field surrounded by thick woods and in the middle of the field is a massive electricity pylon and cables.  There is clay pigeon shooting going on close by, but I’m slowly getting used to the gunshots echoing around the valley; I’m assuming they’ll stop at night….?!!  But it’s only a 1km cycle ride into St Moritz and although this campsite is a lot more expensive, it does include internet access, so here we are.  We’ll be sleeping at 1,790 metres above sea level and I don’t think the windows will be open, or the fan switched on tonight.  Fingers crossed it doesn’t snow!