Browsing: Alps

“Mis huus, dis huus – mis Herz isch es Hotel” (“My house, your house – my heart is a hotel.”) Even though the song by Switzerland’s award-winnning rap duo Lo & Leduc (they rap in the Swiss German dialect) has absolutely no connection to the HUUS Gstaad Hotel, I couldn’t get the catchy tune out of my mind during the drive there. Maybe it was that Latino groove?

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The hike from the stylish Blue Lounge to the Fluhalp is easy peasy. It takes you along a glacial moraine high above Zermatt on an ever so slight gradient through the alpine mountain landscape. But even those scant few meters of altitude differential pay off, because the view… Yes, it simply is magic — both there and back again.

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Having stayed in Sweden’s ice hotel, Walter is a clever rabbit when it comes to spending the night in ice. Also an Alpine hare, as it turns out. I, being Italian, like my ice in the form of gelato melting in the sun. Nevertheless, good sport that I also am, I let myself be inveigled to spend a night in Zermatt’s Igloo Village…

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Recently, we lifted our heads and sniffed fresh mountain air again. Since we are not what you would call “hard core hikers,” we had settled for a simple walking tour in the Alpstein mountain range in Appenzell Canton. Once again, the beauty of these mountains and the lake they call Seealpsee just blew us away!

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We surely have no shortage of mountain lakes in Switzerland. Granted, they’re not always easy to reach  — or it may at least take a respectable hike first. Not so in the case of Lake Cresta and Lake Cauma! Let us show you here how to navigate to them for your mountain waterside enjoyment:

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The German word “Ziege” meaning “goat” in that language can shade into negative connotations, as in “dumme Geiss”, which means “silly goat” (or worse). From there it is not much of a leap to “Zicke,”  in American English a “priss” — an uptight person. However, in Italian the word for goat is “capra” and the sound alone is charming. Then calling something “The Capra” is high English style, and this is what happened with a new boutique hotel in the village of Saas-Fee named – The Capra. Alone the daring choice of moniker was reason enough for us to make the trip to Wallis Canton (Valais)….

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