Scouting out Scoul

The first week of our trip was spent hiking around the Engadine valley in Switzerland. See the full album.

We landed in Zurich in the evening and then took a cab to the hotel. Near downtown, things started to look really familiar and then I realized that it was the same location as one of the pedestrian detection datasets I used during my thesis. After starting at those videos for so long, of course I could recognize the real thing! After unpacking, we met up with Catherine's family, who had arrived earlier and went out for a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant where I had a chicory risotto.

The next morning, we took a train through to mountains to Scoul and got there around lunch. We checked into the GuardaVal and then had a quiet lunch in the sister hotel and then went for a quick hike. This was my intro to hiking Switzerland style. You take a chairlift, gondola, tram or bus up the hill and then hike around and see the scenery from high up. In this case, it was a quick walk where we went up the gondola and then walked to the top of the Ftan chairlift and back. Catherine and her parents took the gondola back down, but the rest of us rented these mountain bike foot scooter hybrids and took them down the hill. Wheeee!

We had dinner at the hotel's restaurant, which was a stuffing, multi-course affair with an excellent wine pairing. It was delicious but took over 3 hours so we were ready to hit the sack by the end of it.

In the morning, we took a local bus to the Svizzer National Park. The road to the trailhead was very narrow and windy. At one point, it went across a gigantic scree field that looked like it gets washed away and re-graded every year. Only the Swiss would think it's perfectly reasonable to have a local bus run a regular route along there!

The first part of the hike was a slow ascent through the forested park to an Alpine meadow. Catherine joined us for most of it and then turned around to catch a taxi. She didn't want to push her joints too much. In the alpine meadow, there was a viewing area where people sit down with their binoculars and try to find wildlife like the Chamoix. We didn't see any there, so we continued up over the ridge into the next valley. This took us out of the national park and instantly we were surrounded by cow patties. This would be a theme when hiking in the Alps. You share the trail with the cows with their bells clanging away.

We went down the side of the ridge and came upon a hunting cabin where there were a couple of hunters who had caught a Chamois. They brought out their scope and showed us more Chamois eating on the side of the mountain on the other side of the valley. They also showed us some marmots hanging out near their den.

After the cabin, we headed down the valley and came across a herd of sheep with their shepherdess. They also had bells and were quite cute as we walked through the flock along the trail. The last stage of the trail into Tarasp included stops interpretive telling the story of Snow White (or at least a local version of it), including little wood vignettes like a table with 7 bowls. At the end, we caught sight of the castle in Tarasp up on the hill, which of course was supposed to be the castle from the story. 

We got back to the hotel fairly late, so there wasn't much time between stretching out and dinner. For dinner, we took a bus to Sent and had dinner at the Aldier. It was delicious, traditional mountain food. I had veal in butter and herbs, while Catherine had some delicious lamb. We traded bites.

For our last day in Scoul, we took a bus to Ftan and took the chairlift up into the hills. We then walked over to the Alp Laret, a family mountain cabin. They served some amazing food! Catherine had a buckwheat cake with fresh berry cream, while I had the soup of the day which consisted of two big dumplings (the size of matzo balls) made of bread, ham and herbs, served in a clear ham broth. From there, we walked up the hill and along the alpine meadows, seeing cows everywhere. We were originally thinking of going to an alpine lake, but we wanted to get down in time to go to the baths and it was cloudy so we just went along the meadow Chamanna Naluns where we stopped for another snack. This time it was mostly french fries and sparkling apple juice. Then, we took the gondola back down into Scoul. Catherine made it the whole way on the hike!

Snow White's Castle

After peeling off my clothes and stretching out, I went down to the baths. Catherine had done it the day before so she described what to do. They are huge! They're somewhat affiliated with the hotel, but are also open to the public. They consistent of a huge series of pools and each one has a board detailing the temperature, salt content and any specific rules. One was outside with a lazy rive and pods to get water massages. The main inside pool included jacuzzi space both sitting and lying down as well as wading space. There was also a pair of hot & cold pools colored with red & blue light so that you can go back and forth between them. One room had the decor of a roman bath and was filled with saltwater denser than the red sea. I still couldn't float, but other people could. Finally, there was a series of steam rooms and saunas that you are supposed to use in various stages of undress. All the pools were packed by people enjoying their bathing and relaxing.

After the baths, we went to dinner over in Sent again. This time, we went to a pizzeria run by an Italian couple. They were hilarious and energetic so it was a nice low key dinner. They even had gluten free pizza crusts to that everybody could get their pizza fix in. After dinner, we went back to the hotel's bar and had fun trying small samples of various Swiss spirits and liqueurs. The bar explicitly tries to carry very local products, but there were some from other areas of Switzerland too. There were a couple of new drinks that I hadn't had before. Marc is a Swiss brandy made from local grapes and then sometimes aged a little. There were also a number of sweet liquors made with local mountain herbs. Finally, there was a good selection of Schnapps including apricot, pear, cherry, vielle prune and apple.