← All articles · Switzerland · 15 March 2016

St. Moritz, Switzerland: In March the lake is solid enough to walk across

St. Moritz in March 2016: off the Bernina train onto a frozen lake, a memorial to two railwaymen, and a carved wooden waiter guarding a restaurant door.

We arrived in St. Moritz in March 2016 the good way, on the red train up from Tirano. You leave an Italian valley in a jacket and get off a couple of hours later next to a lake that's frozen solid.

A dark stone plaque set into a rough wall, in memory of Giovanni Maffina and Giovanni Cortesi, who died on 22 March 1934, placed by the Bernina Railway — A plaque up on the line for Giovanni Maffina and Giovanni Cortesi, who died doing this job on 22 March 1934. The mountain railway is beautiful. It wasn't free.

A lake you can walk on

A pale stone bell tower with a blue and gold clock face and a bronze bell visible in the open belfry — Blue and gold clock face, bell on show, and not a minute out.

The town

St. Moritz is expensive in a way that's quite funny to walk through with a backpack. Everything is polished, everything is deliberate, and there's a Swiss flag on more or less every second building.

Inga and Dileep taking a selfie in sunglasses on a St. Moritz street with a large red and white Swiss flag hanging from a pole above them — You don't get long here without a flag turning up in the shot.

Inga standing beside a life sized carved white wooden figure of a waiter in a bow tie holding a bottle, next to a restaurant door — A wooden waiter in a bow tie, holding a bottle, permanently on shift.

Inga on a wide cobbled St. Moritz street with an arcaded stone building, a timber clad corner house and a chalet style kiosk with snow on the roof — Arcades, timber, snow on the kiosk roof, and hardly anyone about at the end of the season.

From here we came back down the mountain and carried on into Italy: Milan next, then Rome.