The weather forecast for today was for partly cloudy skies for most of the day, then some clouds and rain in the late afternoon. It was fairly cloudy when I woke up at 6:45 AM, it was barely light enough to see outside, but enough to tell it was cloudy over the mountains.
We were not sure what we would do today, after spending most of the day yesterday in the rain, we were not too thrilled to make today a repeat of that. I worked on the blog while Stephanie slept in yet again. I just wish we had a coffee maker in the room, I hate waiting until we go to breakfast to get my first cup of coffee, but I did not see a good way to get a cup from the breakfast area, it just seemed hard to do.
Fresh Snow on the Mountain Peaks
Once the sun really came up, the clouds actually started to disperse and we could see some blue skies. It was very pretty to look at the mountains, they had a fresh dusting of snow above a certain elevation from last night.
Stephanie got up and we got ready to go to breakfast. While eating we decided to go back to the Bernina Diavolezza Cable Car to see the top of the mountain and glacier in the sunshine. We knew it would be pretty spectacular in the sunshine based on what we were able to see in the snowy rain yesterday. Since the price of the Cable Car was included in our Engadin Card, there was no reason not to go and see it again in better weather. We had learned a lot about the train and bus schedules yesterday, and so this time, we opted to take the Bus there from a stop near to our hotel and not make the long walk to the train station.
At about 8:45 AM we headed out to walk to the bus station. Today we were better prepared for the possibility of cold weather. Yesterday, we just had not expected it to be that cold, rainy and windy at the top of the mountain, and we had gotten a little chilled by the time we rode down.
We arrived at the bus station, and there were quite a lot of people waiting there already. We hoped that the bus would have enough room for everyone, and were relived when most of the people waiting at the stop got onto a different bus going to another destination. When our bus arrived, it was fairly full already, and the remaining people filled it up. We did not have seats at first, but eventually, people got off at other stops and we finally got seats.
Much Better Weather Today
It was only about a 15 minute ride and we arrived at the Diavolezza Cable Car station. It was much more crowded than yesterday because of the better weather, go figure. Many of the people already there had arrived by train and by car, and our bus load was probably the smallest addition. Of course, the train arrived right before us, so we had to wait until the train left before we could even cross the tracks to get to the other side where the cable car station was located.
There was one large tour group that we bypassed at the ticket gate, and we were actually the first two persons on the large cable car, so we got a good location right in the front end of the car.
The car was pretty full by the time it left, and while everyone was wearing masks, social distancing was not an option. Luckily, the ride up is only about 12-14 minutes long, so we are not “exposed” for more than the recommended 15 minutes….we just kept telling ourselves that.
Panoramic Image – Piz Bernina & The Morteratsch Glacier
The ride up was much more scenic than yesterday, where at times, we were just riding inside a cloud. We were so glad we had come back. When we got to the top, we exited the car and were amazed at the amount of snow that had fallen at the top overnight, probably 8-10 inches. We headed outside to see the Morteratsch Glacier and again, were amazed at the sight. From our vantage point we could also see the Piz Bernina, the highest mountain in the Eastern Alps.
Beautiful Views From The Top
Stephanie tried to make a small snowman, but she only made one small round blob for the base before her hands were “frozen” from the snow. We walked around in the snow, and set up the tripod to take some photos with the glacier in the background.
We spent about 45 minutes on the top, there were not a lot of places to go, but we could get 360 degree views of the surrounding mountains.
Beautiful Sunshine at the Top
We decided to head back down and take the train back towards Pontresina, and actually head all the way over to St. Moritz. We did a little better on our train timing today, but because we came down early, we thought we still had about 30 minutes to wait.
However, a Bernina Express train came through, similar to the train that we had not gotten onto yesterday in Pontresina (of course that one had been leaving out towards Bernina Diavolezza), thinking it did not stop here. We were wrong, it did, but we had to board one the two front cars since they were the only ones on the train used for general transport, all of the others were the panoramic cars requiring a special reservation.
Diavolezza Cable Car
Of course, it helped that there was one other couple doing the same thing, and they looked like they knew what they were doing, so we just followed them. This made our decision to come down early really work out from a train timing perspective.
We rode over to St. Moritz, just about 10 minutes farther than Pontresina. Once we were off the train, we looked around to try and see how to get up into town. There was a walkway leading to a very long escalator, actually a series of escalators, taking us up into the town center. We must have ridden 4-5 long escalators to get up to the city center elevation
We were not that impressed with St. Moritz. There were a lot of high end stores and high end hotels, but everything seemed to be uphill from wherever we were. Our legs were weary and walking uphill was not helping. We looked at a large map of the city that was posted in a small square and saw that it was quite a distance to walk, yes, uphill to a funicular, and even farther to get to a large cable car to head up to the top of the mountains above St. Moritz. We could have used the bus with our passes, but we were just not that interested. We stopped in a grocery for some Coke Lights and a box of Ricolla cough drops. We are both having issues with a little bit of congestion and scratchy throats from the dry heat in the room.
Panoramic View From St. Moritz
We did stop at a small café for a Kebab wrap, made with what looked like Gyro meat of some type. There was an older man there who made our sandwich, along with an order of fries. We were the only ones there and no one came in while we ate, but he did tell us that we were not supposed to bring in our own drinks, in this case our Coke Lights we had just purchased at the grocery store…….really, the place was so packed with customers he was going to complain about that.
It was starting to get cloudy, the forecast for the late afternoon was for more rain. We were glad we had a sunny day so far, but were too tired to really explore St. Moritz with gusto. We headed back down to the train station, and actually found that the bus to Pontresina was leaving in just a few minutes, and would drop us off up near our hotel. We hopped on the bus and took the 15 minute ride back to Pontresina. There were a couple of stores near the bus stop in Pontresina that Stephanie had seen the other day, so we walked over and looked into a couple of those before heading downhill, thankfully, to our hotel.
It was only about 3:00 PM, so we decided to do another session in the Spa. Unlike yesterday when we had to go to Mass later, Stephanie was not worried about her hair and make-up, we had no where else to go today. We were the only ones in the whole Spa, so we enjoyed the steam room, the hot aromatic room and the sauna. We did shed our suits, per the instructions, but still wrapped up in towels, al least most of the time since we were the only ones there. It was enjoyable and hopefully helped our tired legs.
We headed back to the room and relaxed a bit, Stephanie worked on a Facebook posting with pictures from the last coupe of days here while I actually napped a little, well mostly on and off.
After a bit, we got ready for dinner. We stopped by the front desk on the way out to make sure our bill charges were correct, we were not sure exactly how much the meals and drinks in the bar were on the first night we were here, and they had been charged to the room. Everything looked correct, and we asked about a shuttle to the train station for tomorrow morning, which they provide free of charge. We certainly wished we knew about the free shuttle when we arrived, but how could we, we did not even know what hotel we were staying in! We scheduled a 7:30 AM shuttle for tomorrow morning for our 8:02 AM train heading toward Innsbruck.
We decided to just eat at the same pizzeria as the last two nights, the food is good, the wine selection is great and sold at a fair price, and the service is wonderful. We were just going to split a pasta dish since we had eaten lunch late. We ordered Spaghetti Carbonara and a salad to split, along with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. The plate of Carbonara they brought was huge, we were glad we were splitting it. The salad and bread were also tasty.
We saw the same couple from Colorado we met the other night, they were also eating here again. We talked with them for a bit while we were waiting for our dinner to arrive. They were heading to Zermatt tomorrow on the Glacier Express, the same trip we had done, but in reverse. They wanted to know the location of the Pharmacy where we had gotten our permanent Swiss Covid Certificates so they could also go there and try to get one. They had stopped at a couple of pharmacies and clinics in this area, but had not had any luck getting a permanent certificate. They also tried to get tested to get a certificate, but everyone was booked.
After dinner, we headed back to the room to finish packing for tomorrow’s journey to Innsbruck. This will be our last night in Switzerland, for the remainder of the trip will be visiting Austria. Tomorrow will be our most difficult travel day, we have to take a train from Pontresina, then two buses, and then another train to get to the Innsbruck Train Station. Then, from there, we have to take another bus to get to the Innsbruck Airport to pick up our rental car. The bus connections are tight, so hopefully, the Swiss buses will run with the same precision as the Swiss trains.
We set an alarm for 6:00 AM and called it a night at around 10:00 PM.