Innsbruck to St. Moritz

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Bags out at 7am, breakfast at 7am, departure at 7:40am. Word on the bus was that people didn't sleep well because of Friday night noise. We did not have that problem. We were unhappy about only being able to get ice from the bar and the bar didn't open until 8am today. Even worse now, the hotel tonight only has ice from the bar and it doesn't open until 3pm! We'll have to try to get some after dinner and hope it will keep overnight inside the minibar.

So the sun was shining in Innsbruck, but that didn't last long. We drove straight for Switzerland through the Engadine Valley and stopped at the Austrian customs post on the border. Then a few miles later crossed into Switzerland and had a pee break at Martina in Switzerland. We arrived at the Reine Victoria Hotel in St. Moritz at noon. Our rooms would not be ready for at least an hour at the earliest. Mom had notes about a funicular ride up and a Heidi Flower Trail down that she wanted to do, but looking at the map it wasn't feasible. She also wanted to look for cross-stitch patterns. We thought we'd all have lunch first but Carol was hurting and didn't want to walk at all. She stayed at the lobby bar til she could get her room key. The 3 of us got a map and directions for a hike past the Heidi hut and flower trail and set out hoping to find a sandwich to go. We didn't find one until we reached the Signal Station up the mountain. We bought 1 stop cablecar tickets at the bottom and paid 12.60 CHF each for about a 5 minute ride. (In hindsight, especially given the heavy rain, we could have taken the cablecar round trip from St. Moritz Bad to Signal and just walked back and forth from Signal Station to Salastrains Hotel near the Heidi Hut.) At the top, we ordered a ham sandwich split 3 ways and a bag of chips for our light lunch and headed off downhill per instructions. It had been drizzling until we were inside waiting for the ham to be sliced. We watched a cloud roll downhill and engulf the mountainside as we paused before heading down! After about 5 minutes we all had to use an umbrella for the rest of the day as it rained hard. The cloud lifted though and we did enjoy some views. Per the hotel clerk's detailed directions, we found the Heidi hut and flower trail. That was good because most of the signs she suggested we follow were meaningless to us and the map was incomplete and possibly not to scale. Clay helped out with his phone GPS when we weren't sure, but his online maps were incomplete as well. Studying the map now I see that one word that had us flummoxed that was on almost all trail forks was blomenweg and it means flower trail. It doesn't clear up why every direction was it, but we definitely hiked down the blomenweg! We walked between 3 and 4 hours. We stopped for hot chocolate, ice cream and ovomaltine and to use the toilets. Ovomaltine is a Swiss product and clearly an acquired taste. We stopped at the COOP as instructed and found the needlework section on the 3rd floor but no patterns. When we stopped at the Reine Victoria front desk and asked for our keys, he said he had not given any out in the past 2 hours. But Carol had theirs and had been sitting in the lobby bar with a coffee. Stephane and I guess maybe everyone else were either out or on his optional train trip. If they were in the same rain we were in, they didn't get a very scenic trip. We still can't imagine that the big Alps won't be reached until tomorrow. We have an included dinner across the street from the hotel tonight. We meet at 6:30pm about 1.5 hours from now.

Dinner was across the street about a 1/2 block away in a hotel sister property. There were a couple other larger groups here at our hotel. Stephane promises breakfast tomorrow will be an ordeal! Dinner tonight was in a buffet setting with the public. No drinks other than tap water included. They had a salad bar, a cold dish buffet, a soup, sauerbraten carving station, a hot buffet, a cheese and fruit buffet and a dessert buffet. They had a rabbit stew on the buffet, it had a foreign name but I don't remember what it was because all I could think of was Hasenpfeffer! It was a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Anyway. Another early start and long day tomorrow...

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