{"id":2140,"date":"2013-06-22T19:48:12","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T18:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=2140"},"modified":"2026-05-25T05:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T04:10:47","slug":"had-to-go-hiking-couldnt-afford-the-shops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2013\/06\/22\/had-to-go-hiking-couldnt-afford-the-shops\/","title":{"rendered":"Had To Go Hiking, Couldn\u2019t Afford The Shops\u2026.."},"content":{"rendered":"

Now I know why we don\u2019t ski at St Moritz; the only shops we could find were Chanel, Prada, Aspreys, Tom Ford, Dolce & Gabbana, etc.\u00a0 Oh, and two cups of hot chocolate and a shared slice of carrot cake costs SFr 17, about AU$20 or \u00a312, so we\u2019re slumming it in the campsite. But then again, we\u2019re still getting the most beautiful views of snow-capped mountains, the campsite has really lovely showers with endless hot water, and I\u2019m not going to moan about Eileen, so we\u2019re not really slumming it at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Looking
Looking down to Lej da Silvaplauna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We cycled through St Moritz Bad, past the casino and around the lake, to the train station.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they couldn\u2019t sell us a two day \u2019Engadin Hiking Pass\u2019 because their printer wasn\u2019t working, hmmm, so much for Swiss efficiency.\u00a0 So we cancelled our plan to catch a train to Celerina and cycled, or should I say, pushed our bikes up to St Moritz Dorf instead.\u00a0 We locked up our bikes at the base of the Corviglia funicular and there we did manage to buy our Engadin Wanderpass, danke.\u00a0 Five minutes later we were being dragged up the mountain to Chantarella where we swapped to another funicular up to Corviglia.\u00a0 When we arrived, we had twenty minutes available to wander around and enjoy the view before boarding the next cable car to the top of Piz Nair at 3,056 metres above sea level.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Checking
Checking that we are at Corviglia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"At
At the top of Piz Nair<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

After hot chocolates and cake, we boarded the cable car back down to Corviglia, because the footpaths up there were still under a lot of snow, but from Corviglia we set off on foot downhill.\u00a0 In places it was very steep, but I was very glad that we had decided to walk that section because the meadows around us were filled with the most incredible amount of wildflowers.\u00a0 There were plants we\u2019re sure we haven\u2019t seen before and at one point we stood in one spot and, within our sights, we counted over fifteen different varieties of flowers.\u00a0 All up, we must have seen over forty different flowers and those were only the ones that are blooming now.\u00a0 My favourite was the Fr\u00fchlings Anemone, or Pale Pasqueflower, it was more like a small furry animal with a flower on its head; I had to keep stroking them, they were so soft and fluffy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Fr\u00fchlings
Fr\u00fchlings Anemone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Looking
Looking toward Pontresina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

After about a couple of hours of hiking, we finally reached the Chantarella station and caught the funicular train back down to St Moritz Dorf.\u00a0 Cycling back downhill to the train station was much more fun than pushing the bikes uphill earlier in the day and now that we had our Wanderpasses, we rode the train for just six minutes to Celerina.\u00a0 Rodney wasn\u2019t going to let me go back to Eileen and rest up just yet\u2026\u2026!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The funicular railway heading back down to St Moritz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Looking
Looking down on St Moritz See<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We walked through to the end of the village and caught a gondola up the mountain to Marguns at 2,273m.\u00a0 At the end of the ride we had hoped to catch a chair lift to the top of Las Trais Fluors, but they weren\u2019t running it, so we satisfied ourselves with a short stroll around gazing up at the basin above which was surrounded by craggy peaks; it looked like somewhere we would both enjoy skiing in the winter season.\u00a0 We bought a beer and an iced tea at the caf\u00e9 there and sat in a huge double deck chair to drink them, we almost dozed off in the sunshine, in fact I think Rodney did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Snow
Snow melt at Marguns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

So at 4pm, to wake ourselves up, we walked in to the gondola station and rented two trotti bikes and headed back downhill, 553 metres downhill.\u00a0 The route down was so steep and gravelly and I was struggling to hold the stiff brakes on my bike, so we swapped trottis and, sort of, zoomed down the valley.\u00a0 Passing through a pine forest, the pine needles on the trail added to the slipping under wheels and then we encountered a Mexican standoff with a couple of cows, who obviously felt that it was their pathway.\u00a0 After a few Germanic sounding shouts, we got them to move and passed through a meadow full of fellow cows munching away on the wildflowers.\u00a0 Every one of them had a bell on the leather strap around their necks and being amongst them was actually quite a noisy affair.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Trotti
Trotti biking above Celerina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

After passing through some more pine forest, we popped out just opposite the famous bobsleigh ‘The Cresta Run’; now the only remaining natural bobsleigh run left in the world.\u00a0 Back at the gondola base station, we returned the trottis before catching the train back to St Moritz.\u00a0 Our bicycles were waiting for us at the train station and so was a head wind all the way back to the campsite. I was exhausted when we finally reached Eileen and my legs were still throbbing when we went to sleep.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m going to manage more of this tomorrow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"St
St Moritz See in the evening<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now I know why we don\u2019t ski at St Moritz; the only shops we could find were Chanel, Prada, Aspreys, Tom Ford, Dolce & Gabbana, etc.\u00a0 Oh, and two cups of hot chocolate and a shared slice of carrot cake costs SFr 17, about AU$20 or \u00a312, so we\u2019re slumming it in the campsite. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8387,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions\/8387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}