Tiefencastel, Graubünden

We are enjoying a 4-day weekend in Tiefencastel, Switzerland.

A large portion of our trip is driving over mountain passes, which isn't easy driving (constant curvey roads) but the views are simply stunning! There are snow covered peaks in the background and goat covered fields of rolling green grass in the foreground.

We drove over St.Bernardi pass, near the Italian border (not to be confused with St. Bernard pass where you'll find the famous namesake rescue pups). At up to 2,200+meters and beyond the tree line the passes look rather barren and grey without their pristine white snow blankets so I really felt as though we were touring the end of the earth, or perhaps the moon. It brought back memories of other remote places I've seen (Patagonia, Bolivia).

We swerved along a couple of other passes, some in both directions for good measure.

Since the summer tourist season hasn't begun yet there is a lot of post-winter cleanup going on. There are toppled trees to cut and clear, rock slides to pile up and roads to repair. It's pretty cool to see the Swiss maintaining their impeccable infrastructure!

We are having a very nice time, eating well and enjoying the scenery and fresh air.

Today we hiked to the edge of a receding glacier (sad). It was a beautiful hike but the measured recession of the glacier was quite drastic and particularly since 1970. And never mind in the last 2 years alone!!

So Alexander was bouncing along happily on his dads back (in the kiddy backpack) sipping on his water after devouring a fruit bar and a whole lot of spaghetti bolonaise at lunch.... Are you predicting what happened when we made him laugh?? Well, first came the hiccups then the concerned expression... Then a wee bit of barf. Suffice to say, Alex was happy to walk over a kilometer back to the car. Yes we took long and felt permanently hunched over, but it was worth it!

What a great day!