Slow Europe

I am such a Slow Traveler - I love to settle into a new vacation rental!! We are in Gstaad, in an apartment I found on the Gstaad Tourist Office website. I was a bit nervous about the apartment because there are only a few photos and they don’t look great, but the location was good and most vacation rentals in Switzerland are good quality, so I emailed the apartment manager and she said she would hold it for us.

On Saturday morning we packed up in the Kandersteg apartment, said goodbye to Bill and Pam who own Adams Alpine Eden, and had breakfast in the cafe before leaving town. I don’t remember going to any cafe regularly on our trip seven years ago (I have a good memory for that kind of thing and can point out years later hotels we stayed in, restaurants we ate at, shops we went to - but I can never remember how to spell a town name!!). Maybe this cafe was not there then, but more likely we just did not try it. It is attached to the bakery, in the next building (heading up the valley) from Adams Alpine Eden. We had a good Swiss breakfast of a basket bread, boiled egg, orange juice and coffee. In the US we have the refillable coffee - order a coffee, get one or more free refills. In Switzerland you pay for each coffee but they have a refillable bread basket. If you are still hungry, they will bring you more bread.

Breakfast (Früstück) in Kandersteg

Quiz Question: What is the Ovomaltine thing on the table?
Answer: This is where you put your breakfast garbage - butter wrappers, jam containers.

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It took all week, but things are resolved and we have the rest of our trip planned.

We were scheduled to fly from Geneva to London on Tuesday, then have 16 nights in a Rural Retreats cottage near Painswick (Plough Cottage). We spent a month in this cottage in May 2000 and have kept in email contact with the owners, so they emailed us about the floods that happened the weekend before our scheduled arrival (they emailed us to let us know what was going on and that the cottage was okay). From the news reports it looked like the situation was going to get worse, so we delayed our arrival by four nights. We figured by then we would have an idea of how bad things were.

This is the big downside of vacation rentals (and Slow Travel); for most you have to prepay 30 - 60 days before arrival. If you think about it, the business could not run any other way. Vacation rentals are usually individually owned (some owners may own a few vacation rentals, cottages on a farm for example) and booking is done either directly with the owner or through an agency which represents owners. It is not like a hotel with 100 rooms who takes bookings and cancellations up to the last minute. Most vacation rentals are booked months ahead, so if you cancel at the last minute, the chances are that it cannot be re-rented. So we had prepaid 16 nights with an expensive agency in high season, knowing we would not be changing our plans.

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We are having the best time in Kandersteg! It is a very different experience here, in the middle of summer, than when we were here last time at the end of the season (early October). The town is lively and full of people. Tables are set up outside all the restaurants and cafes, people are out and about all day and all evening. Tonight there was live music down the street (a local children’s band judging by the sound).

Yesterday we hiked up to Oeschinensee, an alpine lake in the mountains above town. The walk up was about 1.5 hours and was mostly a pony trail (easy). You can also ride a chairlift up most of the way, with a 25 minute downhill walk from the chairlift to the lake. We decided to walk up then ride the chairlift down.

On Tuesday, the day we moved from Gstaad to Kandersteg, it was overcast and drizzling. Wednesday was perfect - bright sunshine, clear skies, temperatures in the low 70s. The trail starts from town, from beside our vacation rental, and goes across the valley, then slowly uphill through woods on a wide dirt road. There is a nice “excercise” trail through the woods, where they have workout stations. You find these in most Swiss mountain towns. But our trail was mostly on a dirt road that must be used some times for cars, but we did not see any.

After about 45 minutes of easy uphill, you leave the road and switchback up a steep mountain side for about 30 minutes. Then a last easy 15 minutes on a path to the lake.

Oeschinensee - lake and restaurants

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We both forgot how beautiful Kandersteg is! We spent two weeks here in September 2000 and enjoyed the town and the hiking. Since then we continued our mission to spend a week in every main valley in the Berner Oberland (and into the Vaud canton on this trip), so have not returned until now.

Kandersteg is at the end of a long valley south of Lakes Thunder and Lightening (they join at Interlaken). The road ends at the town, but you can take a car-train through the mountains to come out in the Valais. Kandersteg is at the end of this long valley, in a small, spectacular valley of its own. The valley floor is flat and the moutains rise straight up at the edges.

View from our apartment at Adams Alpine Eden

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Rural Retreats. Nice places, high prices, zero service.

I used to be a big fan of the agency Rural Retreats (vacation rentals in England). Not any more. Each year that I book with them, I like them less.

I have used them in the past for two reasons:

1) I have been so busy with work (mine and Steve’s) the last few years that I did not have time to do a good search for England vacation rentals (we really need more England vacation rental reviews on SlowTrav!);

2) Some of their listings have phones and we need a phone or an internet connection.

Really, I have just been lazy. This year I used them only because we wanted to stay near Stroud and one of their listings that we stayed in before and loved is near there.

We are in Switzerland now. We spent three weeks in Switzerland at the start of the trip, then drove down into Italy for a week. We had a wonderful week in Italy, staying with other Slow Travelers at Villa Rosy near Assisi. We visited a lot of people and Thursday’s GTG was fabulous. I will post more about our week in Italy later.

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We left Switzerland around 11:30am, the sun blazing and the town full of people, and by 5:00pm we were pulling into Diana’s beautiful B&B (Baur B&B). I am sitting on the terrace with a breeze and a beautiful view. This is a very tranquil corner of Italy!!

Now I am going to take some photos!!

The weather changed on Wednesday afternoon and we have been busy ever since. We did a short hike Wednesday near Leysin. Wendy and Richard came up to visit in the early evening and we got takeout pizza for dinner! Had a wonderful visit.

Thursday we drove back to Gstaad and did another hike. Friday we climbed from Leysin, up for 2hr 15min, to the top of Berneuse where the Gondola ride goes to, then rode the Gondola back down. Stopped part way up at Lac du Meyin for a lovely lunch sitting on their terrace looking at the alpine lake and mountains and blue sky. Heaven!

Tomorrow we drive to Diana’s B&B in the Piedmont (Baur B&B) for just one night (we had to meet Diana!!), then to Assisi to meet up with Janet and Alan and their group. This is going to be one busy week - we are visiting with someone every single day!! I am looking forward to seeing everyone.

We changed our plans for our three days before we fly from Geneva to England - cancelled the booking in Annecy, France and (you guessed it) booked three nights in Gstaad!! We want two more days of hiking!

But now - to bed and then - to Italy (where it has been sunny and hot this whole time)!!

A very quick post to say that we got together with Wendy and Richard yesterday in Vevey (WendyAsh and Riccardo on the board). They are staying at a wonderful hotel, with a large room looking right out on Lake Geneva. I loved their room! We sat on the terrace when the sun was out, then it clouded over and started to rain, so we moved inside. It was amazing watching the storm from their room. We had a great dinner at the hotel with them.

Today we had breakfast at the cafe in Leysin - usually we have it in the apartment, but we were out of bread. It was overcast and the valley was filled with clouds. This town is really growing on me. The cafe is very friendly and fun, the Coop grocery store has everything we need (including organic brown rice!), the newspaper/magazine store is good (bought a Donna Leon mystery today AND they have Pocket Coffee, Steve’s favorite Italy candy), the bakery is very good (I just remembered we bought fruit tartes today!) and they have a good pizza restaurant.

Steve in the snowfall at Lac Lioson, near Col des Mosses

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A quick post to say that we woke up to brilliant sunshine, then walked out to get fresh croissants and bread for breakfast and by the time we got back to the house (30 minutes later), it was overcast and cold. Once we got inside it started to pour and poured all morning. Fine, we were tired anyway from our big day out yesterday.

By 1:30pm, it started to clear. We got ready for a hike and drove across town to a hiking area just above Feyday (where we went for our first hike in this area). This time we walked up across the hillside above Leysin to Lac du Mayen. It was 1hr 30 minutes up and just under an hour coming back. The trail was along a narrow paved road, only used by the local farms. One or two cars passed us.

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We woke up Saturday morning to the best weather of the whole trip (so far). Bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky.

I am writing this on Sunday evening in the middle of an amazing thunderstorm and pouring rain. Leysin is perched on a shelf on the side of a mountain, overlooking a narrow valley below and the large Valais valley beyond (we look down at Martigny, on the way to the St. Bernard pass). It is very beautiful here. We also look across to snow and glacier covered mountains. All this makes for excellent thunder and lightening. I thought we got great storms in Santa Fe (we do!) but tonight’s is incredible. The thunder echos around the valleys and BOOMS. Since we have such a great view, you really get to see the lightening.

But yesterday there was not a cloud in the sky. We had been waiting for a good weather day to do a hike in Gstaad, where we spent two weeks our last time in Switzerland, in September 2003. I read back through my old blog entries and my SlowTrav pages to remember which were our favorite hikes.

Horneggli Chairlift at Schonried, near Gstaad

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