A fabulous painted church ceiling and a lovely Carolingian church; St Moritz high in the mountains of the Engadin.
At the end of April 2018 we drove from our home near Basel to the Graubunden, stopping at a very convenient motorway service station for coffee with fabulous views over the beautiful Walensee.
We made a slight detour to see the magnificent painted ceiling St. Martin at Zillis. Dating from c. 1150 it is the oldest completely painted wooden ceiling in the west.
The panels depict the Life of Christ and seven panels the Life of St. Martin. But they also provide an insight into the lives of the people at the time, their clothing, tools and weapons, how they caught fish, etc.
I love the way the paintings aren't confined by their borders.
The artist(s) had a wonderfully vivid imagination when it came to the fabulous beasts around the edge of the ceiling.
This lovely Carolingian church is one of my favourites. We first visited in 1991 then returned in 2018.
It sits in tranquil countryside surrounded by wooded hills. Inside is a bright, peaceful and simple space. The late 8th century building still has its three Carolingian altars, though only remnants of the Carolingian wall paintings. Most of the paintings date from the Gothic era.
The paintings on the north wall above the side entrance are much cruder than the Gothic paintings in the apses and the St Christopher nearby.
In August 2020 we ventured to St Moritz for a few days. We had originally booked the hotel, the Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski, for February, when I might have got a bit of skiing in, but then Covid 19 struck, Italy was going downhill fast and we weren't prepared to risk it. We postponed to June, but then the hotel decided they would not open until July so we rebooked for August.
We drove down, a little over three hours from Basel, arriving late afternoon. It is a fabulous hotel, built in 1864 but luxuriously modernised throughout, and we had a lovely spacious room with a balcony on the front of the hotel looking out towards the mountains.
Our first morning we took the two funiculars and a cable car to the top of Piz Nair.
At just over 3,000m above sea level the ascent from St Moritz is about 1200m. I was a bit dismayed to see that social distancing was nonexistent but at least everyone was wearing masks.
It was a beautiful morning with a few clouds at the top.
In the cable car on the way down the operator gave interesting information about St Moritz and the mountain, including that it has the steepest start of any downhill race in the world. A 45° incline marks the "Free Fall" and a skier will reach a speed of over 100 km/hr in just a few seconds after launching themself onto it.
Back down the mountain we had a very good lunch at the hotel - a lovely brawn Caesar salad for me and pasta for Andrew, with Ittinger beer - a Swiss beer we hadn't come across before but which has a very good taste.
Later that afternoon we walked to St Moritz lake. There really didn't seem to be very many people around. I don't know what it's like in a "normal" year but maybe Covid19 was keeping many people away. Our hotel had very few people staying and two of their restaurants were not open, though the Michelin-starred restaurant is only usually open in the winter season.
St Moritz is, of course, really all about winter sports. It was here in the 1860s that Alpine tourism began when English guests on their summer holiday were persuaded by a local hotelier to come back in winter. That was all it took to start winter alpine sporting tourism.
The following day we decided to walk around the lake, taking in Lake Staz which lies about half a kilometre east of the eastern end of the St Moritzersee.
Lake Staz was looking beautiful, even though it was a dullish morning.
