St. Moritz

I returned yesterday from a nine-day vacation in Switzerland and Italy.  For the Switzerland portion, I stayed in St. Moritz, known as the birthplace of Alpine winter holidays and as a hangout for the rich, in the canton of Graubünden.  In most of this canton, German coexists with Romansch, a language descended from Latin, but there are a few areas where the principal language is Italian.  St. Moritz is located in a valley called the Engadin, next to the St. Moritzer See, along the Inn River.  The name "Engadin" is derived from the Romansch name for the Inn, En, and the Romansch word giadina, which means "garden".  The river flows generally southwest to northeast while in Switzerland, and eventually passes through Innsbruck, Austria.

To get to St. Moritz, I flew into the Zürich airport, and after joining my tour, rode a bus in a generally southeastward direction.  We stopped at a rest area near Thusis.  Here was some of the nearby scenery.

Along the way, we saw scenes like this.

We also saw places that looked like this, with a town right in front of a mountain.

After I got settled in, I took a partial shot of the neighborhood, with the northeast end of the St. Moritzer See in the background.

In another direction is this residential area and a funicular, which unfortunately was not open.

We would eventually walk around St. Moritz, and find this combination statue and water fountain, near a small restaurant.

The Chesa Veglia is one of the oldest houses in the city.  The word chesa is Romansch for "house", similar to Spanish and Italian casa, and is pronounced "KAY-zah".

We also saw the old elementary school.