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Posts from the road

Skiing at Banff/Sunshine Village

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(Canmore, Alberta, Canada)

I’ve now completed three days of skiing at Banff Sunshine Village. The weather continues to be overcast and gray, but it really hasn’t affected my skiing enjoyment. I’ll take it over the -29’C temperatures I experienced the last time I was here!

Note the absence of a line-up for this chair lift (Sunshine Village)

Even though I have been active every single day of the pandemic, it often took the form of a walk or a relatively low-intensity sport. Hockey and soccer were severely curtailed. So I can’t overstate how good it feels to actually push myself to be seriously active for the entire day…multiple days in a row.

Typical skies this week above Sunshine Village

Although I have only skied for 3 days so far, it probably works out to be more like 5 or 6 “typical” days. There are only two of us skiing, lift lines are non-existent, and we ski at about the same pace…so we manage to get in a lot of runs. With the iffy weather, there also isn’t much incentive to linger over a beverage or have a leisurely al fresco lunch! While those things can also be enjoyable, it’s just not in the cards this year.

Naturally monochrome view from Mt. Standish, with Goat’s Eye Mountain to the left (Sunshine Village, Alberta)

At Sunshine Village, we spent most of our time in the “Goat’s Eye” area. There are basically two halves to Goat’s Eye Mountain (see photo above): the upper half is almost tundra-like, with fast, direct pistes. The bottom half is wooded, with terrain ranging from treed glades and mogul fields to steep powder stashes and leisurely cruising pistes. Our favourite piste this year was probably “Rolling Thunder”, which successfully combined a steep pitch with deep fluffy snow.

Delirium Dive at Sunshine Village: for adrenaline junkies only!

Sunshine Village also includes a couple of “hard core” areas for extreme skiers. Delirium Dive (access point pictured above) is one of them. You are not allowed to ski here unless you have avalanche equipment (digital avalanche transceiver, etc.) and a skiing partner with you. It’s rated a “double black diamond”, and the rating is certainly deserved. You can read more about Delirium Dive here.

Downtown Canmore, Alberta

We also spent some time on the areas serviced by the “Great Divide Express” and “TP Town” lifts. The TP Town chair lift is one of my favourites: not only is the music non-stop reggae (ideal for sports), but the seats are heated and there is also a “bubble” that you can pull down to shield yourself from the elements. The slopes are a little busier here, but my ski partner knows the area very well and was able to find hidden gems that the crowds completely ignored.

Downtown Canmore, Alberta (opposite corner from the previous photo)

Once again, my base for the week is the town of Canmore. I heard today that Canmore is the fastest-growing town in Canada. With the increasing popularity of telecommuting, more and more people are choosing to live here in the mountains rather than in big cities.

Stay tuned – I will be moving on to Lake Louise! Until then, here is a link to some highlights from the last time I went skiing here.

Posts from the road

My first flight/skiing/journey out of Ontario since the pandemic started

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(Canmore, Alberta, Canada)

The title says it all. On very short notice, I found myself on a plane to Calgary and about to do my first skiing since my trip to Morzine, France, in early 2020.

My worst photo ever – I think it’s tilted at least 45 degrees

I’m once again based in Canmore, Alberta, and spent the first day of skiing at Sunshine Village (just north of Banff). There was no real sunshine today, and usually my ski photos feature brilliant sun and blue skies, but I’ve decided to include the photos anyway. After two years, I was just so thrilled to be on the slopes that I want to document the occasion here!

Not much better – this “Welcome Back to Sunny Alberta” sign is maybe 100 yards past the “Welcome to British Columbia” sign. Note: it’s not actually sunny.

In one of those quirks of geography, a tiny sliver of the Sunshine Village ski area is actually located in British Columbia. I took the above two photos to document my very brief visit to B.C. today. Both were snapped whilst riding the chair lift into the grey misty abyss at the top of the resort. So, I have successfully proven that (ski mitts + movement + fog + wind) = objectively bad photos. I even managed to make an uphill chair lift look like it was going downhill!

Goat’s Eye area – Sunshine Village, Alberta.

I was kind of anxious about the flight to Calgary, as I hadn’t been on one for so long and quite a few restrictions were still in place. But once I printed out my baggage tag, it all seemed to fall into place and it really wasn’t that different from before. I just had to wear a mask for a lot longer than I’m used to doing, and people seemed to be just a little more cautious about personal space, etc. And I’m OK with that.

Random skier at Sunshine Village

Being on skis for the first time in two years also brought some mild trepidation. Would I still remember how? Would I still like it? Would the overcast weather lessen the fun? Would I be cold?

View of the older part of Sunshine Village, from the Goat’s Eye area

I needn’t have worried. It all came back fairly quickly, and I’m not even feeling that sore…despite maintaining a hectic pace for the entire day (and having a fairly short lunch to boot). It was a reawakening – finally being able to do something that had brought me so much joy before the pandemic. I still like the deep snow, I still relish the challenge of solving the slope, and I still love being out in the mountains. We kept on going until the lifts were closed, and we’re going back tomorrow for more.

Well, of course we had to try it…

More snow is in the forecast for the rest of the week, so I may not post *any* spectacular sun-dappled ski photos at all. But I’m still ecstatic to be here, and I admit that I’m already looking forward to the next trip…wherever it may be.

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Travel Flashback – Summer Trip to Switzerland (2006) – Part Three

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Today, I finally pulled the plug on my planned February 2022 ski trip to Zermatt, Switzerland. While I had been expecting this for some time, it was still kind of sad to cancel the Zermatt hotel room that would have formed the base for most of my trip. However, even with three COVID vaccinations so far, I couldn’t justify the costs and complications of international travel at this particular time. Perhaps to compensate, I’ve decided to finally write the final post from my summer 2006 trip to Switzerland. The first part is here, while the second part is here.

Italy! Domodossola’s old town (August 11, 2006)

As we had a Swisspass allowing unlimited travel on the Swiss transportation system, we were highly motivated to stay within Switzerland. However, certain cross-border trips were covered. One of them was to the northern Italian town of Domodossola. It was a nice change of pace, and we really enjoyed having a relaxed lunch on an outdoor patio.

Zermatt’s new town, with the Matterhorn struggling to emerge in the background (August 11, 2006)

While it would have been nice to stay longer, we had to return to Switzerland. In fact, our next stop was…Zermatt! A big part of Zermatt’s appeal is, of course, the Matterhorn. Alas, the grim weather that characterized much of this trip continued. We could barely see the Matterhorn from the village. And as you can see from the photo above, I had to put the jacket back on even though this was early August.

Zermatt’s old town (after many failed Matterhorn photos)…August 11, 2006

While we saw little of the Matterhorn, the trip to Zermatt was still memorable. I didn’t have a digital camera yet, but the views from the train were still stunning enough to attempt some pictures from the train window.

Crossing a bridge by train, and looking at other bridges (August 11, 2006) – near Stalden, Switzerland.

The next day, we explored the popular Swiss city of Luzern. It was much more crowded than our base in rural Hondrich. Once again, however, we used our SwissPass to see something totally unexpected: the Bourbaki Panorama. The Panorama is a very large round room, and it contains a very unusual thing: a circular painting! It is 377 feet long and 32 feet high, but each end is connected to the other. It depicts the French army retreating through Switzerland during the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. It’s a very long story – you can read more about it here.

My ticket to the Bourbaki Panorama in Luzern, Switzerland (August 12, 2006)

We took a walk on top of Luzern’s old city walls (the photo at the top of this post was taken from the top of the walls), saw some other typical Luzern sights, such as the old Kapellbrücke (chapel bridge) and the “Lion of Lucerne”, and then returned to Hondrich for one final night at the farmhouse.

At one end of Luzern’s ancient Kapellbrücke – August 12, 2006.

Writing this post has been another reminder of how much we took for granted in the past. Imagine making spontaneous decisions to hop on a train to visit another country! I remain hopeful that international travel will become a part of my life again soon, even if won’t be this winter.

Posts from Base Camp

2021 (Re-) Discoveries, Part 2

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Following up on my Boxing Day post, here are some more things that I appreciated musically in 2021. Today’s focus is on music with a connection to this travel blog.

In 2018, I went to a music conference in New Jersey. We saw a great band called the Weeklings: you can read more about it here. A couple of the songs they debuted at that conference (see photo at the top of this post) have since made it onto their 3rd studio album (logically, called “3”). I think the above cover of “Baby You’re a Rich Man” improves considerably on the Beatles’ original version…which is not something I say very often!

But I also like the Weeklings’ original music. “In the Moment”, “Running Away”, and the title track from “3” may not sound like 21st century recordings: hearing them is like finding previously unreleased power pop gems from the last century. And what’s wrong with that?

Another vinyl compilation I picked up in 2021 was Stevie Wonder’s “Original Musiquarium I”. This double album collects some of his best 1970s tracks along with a handful of new recordings from the 1980s. It’s hard to imagine a better sequence of music than the beginning of side 3: “Higher Ground”, “Sir Duke”, “Master Blaster (Jammin’)”, and “Boogie on Reggae Woman”.

An urgent live version of “Higher Ground”

But Side 1’s opening comes close: “Superstition”, “You Haven’t Done Nothin'”, and “Living for the City”. Despite being quite a distance from the stage, seeing Stevie Wonder a few years ago in Toronto is one of our fondest concert memories. Here’s a link to that post.

…and an urgent live version of “Superstition”, from the same 1974 German TV appearance

2021 saw me listen to a lot of Marshall Crenshaw’s music again. We saw him perform in upstate New York in 2013, and I managed to get him to sign my copy of his self-titled 1982 debut album (the original vinyl pressing, of course). He was happy to hear that I played his music on my radio program at CFRC-FM.

My signed copy of Marshall Crenshaw’s debut album

That album remains a great blast of fresh air, but I also like playing his lesser-known 1996 Miracle of Science LP. It was recently reissued on vinyl, and included a bonus single with a Michel Pagliaro cover!

Someday, Someway is from Marshall’s debut album

Michel Pagliaro may not be well-remembered, but this Quebec singer wrote and performed “Lovin’ You Ain’t Easy”. The title is rubbish, but musically it has more hooks than almost any other single ever released. When we saw the Trans-Canada Highwaymen perform at the Grand Theatre in Kingston a few years ago, they performed this song as an encore. An absolute highlight! Pagliaro is still performing in Quebec to this day; maybe we’ll get a chance to see him soon.

Music has been an important part of our travels. While the pandemic is crushing any travel ideas right now, I’m hopeful that in a few months we’ll be journeying and listening to live music again.

Posts from Base Camp

2021 (Re-) Discoveries

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

This post was going to be about the difficulty of planning travel during a pandemic. But my heart just wasn’t in it: we already read enough about isolation, quarantines, cancellations, and those dreaded words “tentatively scheduled”. I also appreciate that leisure travel cannot be prioritized over more serious concerns. Instead, I’ve decided to write about some of the music I discovered (or re-discovered) in 2021.

You’ll probably be seeing some of this at the 2022 Grammy awards

Music has continued to be a wonderful refuge from the pandemic. Most of my music purchases this year were on vinyl: at home, it is very easy to enjoy the ritual and warmer sound of vinyl records.

“I Need You”, by Jon Batiste

Some records were new to me. One of my favourites was “We Are”, by Jon Batiste. I first saw him as the bandleader for Stephen Colbert, but that is only a small part of his career. While loosely based on the music of New Orleans, “We Are” ranges from jazz, swing, and old-school R&B to hip-hop and gospel. And it is nice to see that it was released on the legendary Verve record label. I wasn’t surprised to see that it has just received a bunch of Grammy nominations. I’ve included a couple of video links – these are probably the most “commercial” of the tracks.

“Freedom”, by Jon Batiste

Another record that was “new” to me was actually released in 1978: Earth Wind & Fire’s “Greatest Hits, Volume 1”. I knew some of the songs beforehand, but I enjoyed practically everything on it. It seems to be from the sweet spot of vinyl: it sounded absolutely spectacular on my turntable. Sometimes these compilations would have a token new song that didn’t measure up to the rest. In this case, however, the token new song was “September”: it may well be their best song.

“September”, by Earth Wind & Fire

I took a chance on an LP called “Al Zman Saib”, by long-dead Moroccan singer Fadoul. The first track is called “Sid Redad”…but it is actually a startling Moroccan Arabic version of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”. While the LP contains a couple of other covers, even the original songs ae fascinating. Unpolished, to be sure, but the musicians do seem to be having a lot of fun.

Sid Redad (Paps’s Got A Brand New Bag)

The year also saw me rediscover some albums that I originally owned on CD. I’ll be mentioning some of those in a future post, but I’ll focus on one for now: The Beatles’ 1966 “Revolver” LP.

Tomorrow Never Knows – truly without precedent

Many people consider it the best album of the modern era, and the songs are of a uniformly high quality despite being incredibly diverse. It’s hard to believe that the Beatles recorded this LP less than 4 years after “Love Me Do”. But even though I’ve heard “Revolver” hundreds of times, listening to again on new vinyl was a revelation. I heard things I had never heard before. Whenever I want a quick jolt of the sound of innovation, nothing does the trick quite like “Revolver”.

Got to Get You Into My Life – by the Beatles
It’s hard to top the Beatles’ original version, but Earth Wind & Fire gave it a good shot!

If you enjoyed this post chronicling travel of a different sort, stay tuned. I’ll be posting some more music discoveries soon!

Posts from the road

Western Ontario – Part Three

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Tillsonburg (see photo at top of this post) has an impressive main street: very wide, and a nice collection of old buildings. It clearly has been an important place for a long time.

Churros and ice cream! At the Rinconcito grocery store in Tillsonburg, Ontario

But, like other agricultural towns in this part of Ontario, Tillsonburg is not stuck in the past. It is alive with newer Canadians, including a sizable Latin American population. As a result, the Rinconcito grocery store has found a niche. We enjoyed some decadent churros and ice cream there, on another hot summer’s day.

Hard at work in Windsor

We didn’t take many photographs at our tournaments. However, we were very impressed with the lawn bowling greens in both Windsor and Woodstock. We look forward to returning for more tournaments next year, as each club is very active in hosting important competitions.

Adding up the score in Woodstock, Ontario

Once the tournament in Woodstock was over, we took a very indirect route back home to Kingston. Our first stop was in the historic town of Elora. In addition to an extensively restored downtown, Elora is also home to the Elora Gorge. My photo doesn’t do it justice, but it is an impressive sight that is still very close to the historic downtown.

Elora Gorge (Elora, Ontario)

We didn’t quite feel the hunger here, however, and pressed on to the nearby town of Fergus for lunch. Fergus was clearly a very Scottish place at one point, although it also had a Dutch grocery store. This was a recurring theme on our drive back to Kingston, as a couple of hours later we also visited a Dutch grocery store in Bradford. After those two stops, we didn’t need to visit the Dutch stores in either Whitby or Trenton. I now have enough atjar tjampoer to last at least until Christmas.

Elora Distillery (Elora, Ontario)

We had been on the road for nearly 8 hours by the time we stopped for dinner in Peterborough. After a trip featuring a lot of Latin American food, we both had a craving for something Asian…so we found a humble Thai restaurant and remembered what it was like to have one final meal on the road at the end of a long trip. It’s been a long time since we’ve had that feeling.

Elora, Ontario

So what’s up next? Canada’s advisory against non-essential travel has just been lifted. And as I never made it to the slopes last winter, a ski trip is looking really appealing now. There is more prep work required than “in the old days”, but it’s something I’m willing to undertake. It’s the only way to see if the pandemic has forever changed the type and amount of travel that I want to do.

Posts from the road

Western Ontario – Part Two

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

August was HOT in Windsor. It’s hard to tell from the Ambassador Bridge (linking Windsor and Detroit, Michigan) photo at the top of this post, but the afternoons were almost comically sizzling. Once the Windsor tournament had ended, we went on a little road trip in the southernmost part of Ontario.

On the riverfront in Amherstburg, Ontario

Our first stop was Amherstburg. The historic downtown core was very quaint, and the local merchants were having a sidewalk sale to jump-start the pandemic economy. I found a rare music book at a tiny record shop, before we rushed on to the shores of Lake Erie.

La Casa de Las Arepas, in Leamington

We decided to look for a place to eat in Leamington. This is farming country, with a particular emphasis on tomatoes. A lot of Canadian ketchup comes from here! Given that, we didn’t expect to see a very diverse collection of restaurants. But we were wrong. Canada has a shortage of farm workers, so a lot of temporary foreign workers from Central and South America live here during the warmer months. As a result, a very interesting collection of businesses has sprung up in towns like Leamington. We chose a no-frills Venezuelan restaurant that specialized in arepas, a pre-Hispanic food sometimes described as a “stuffed corn cake”. It was really messy, but also very good (especially with the mysterious unnamed hot sauce that appeared on the table).

“Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese” at the Joker’s Crown in Ingersoll.

The next day, we gave ourselves a lot of time to get from Windsor to Woodstock. We stayed in the nearby town of Ingersoll. Rather than authentic Venezuelan cuisine, my dinner that night consisted of “Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese”. Despite being a typical food of absolutely nowhere, I have to admit that I enjoyed it. The “buffalo” sauce had a nice burn and was suitably offset by the mild macaroni and cheese.

The Elm Hurst Inn, in Ingersoll, Ontario. We stayed here while competing in nearby Woodstock.

After a budget motel in Windsor, we splurged on a very nice hotel called the Elm Hurst Inn. Was it necessary? Maybe not. But it was a nice treat, especially as the temperatures remained ridiculously hot. And besides being a very appealing inn, it has a claim to fame: this property was where a 7,300-pound cheese was made in 1866! The mammoth cheese travelled the world, visiting Sarasota (Florida), London (U.K.), and Paris (France). The inn occupies a mansion built in 1872.

Somehow, we found ourselves at Otterville Park (Otterville, Ontario)

Our tournament schedule allowed us an afternoon off, so of course we went on a little road trip to explore the area. Our first stop was Otterville, which apparently was a stop on the “Underground Railroad” in the 19th century. It is a very quiet community today, but has a very scenic park/baseball diamond set in the middle of a forest. We saw no otters.

I wish I knew the story behind the “Johnny Guitar” house in Delhi, Ontario

We then stopped briefly in a small town called Delhi. The “Johnny Guitar” house (see above) continues to puzzle me. If you know the story, please post something in the “Comments” section. After Delhi, it was on to Tillsonburg. I only knew it as the subject of a Stompin’ Tom Connors song about the thankless job of picking tobacco. But Tillsonburg the tobacco town would continue the Latin American theme…stay tuned for the details in the next (and final) instalment of my Western Ontario trilogy!

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A cautious return to travel: Western Ontario

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

It’s been quiet on the blog for the past couple of months. But, after 17 months of pandemic restrictions…we were finally able to travel! I had some tournaments in the Toronto area, followed by a couple more in Western Ontario, marking the first times that I had been more than one hour from Kingston since March 2020. So, what was it like?

Our first out-of-town restaurant meal in ages: Thai cuisine from the Thai Coconut in Burlington, Ontario

In a word, “normal”. Yes, I had to wear a mask every time I went inside. And yes, I had to complete health declarations to compete in the tournaments. And many restaurants were still restricted to take-out only. But those restrictions seem almost normal too now.

Picked up some 45s at this record shop in Acton, Ontario.

The first trip was to a tournament in Burlington, followed by one the next day in East York. Booking the hotel was just like old times. However, I must admit that it was strange walking into a hotel again. Even though we are now being encouraged to “travel local”, there was still a lingering feeling of not having enough of a justification to be there. But being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 helped deal with that, and I soon forgot about it. As this first trip only took us away from home for two nights, we weren’t away for long enough to be totally disoriented.

Old mill in St. Jacobs, Ontario

After being home for a few days, it was time for the main trip to tournaments in Windsor and Woodstock. These were multi-day tournaments and took us about as far as we could go in southern Ontario without crossing a border. In fact, Windsor is so far from Kingston that we decided to stay overnight in Waterloo before making the final push on to Windsor.

Main Street in St. Jacob’s, Ontario

Once in Waterloo, we visited a nearby village (St. Jacobs) that we had never seen before…yes, a completely discretionary trip! ! The next day, we took a break from our drive to have lunch in the town of Tilbury…again, no special reason to go, it just happened to be there. We picked up some food from the grocery store and ate it on the lawn of the local library.

The Public Library in Tilbury, Ontario: our lunch spot

We reached Windsor in the mid-afternoon. We wanted to get some practice in before the start of the tournament the next morning. It was brutally hot, but we rewarded ourselves with dinner at a Mexican restaurant called “Palenque”.

Palenque Mexican Restaurant in Windsor, Ontario

So far, so good. After dinner, we took a walk along the nearby Detroit River. The park was filled with unusual plant sculptures. But the “Wow” moment was across the river. Across the Detroit River from Windsor is the (larger) American city of Detroit…and seeing a city from another country (see photo at the very top of this post) seemed very surreal after the last 17 months. True, we couldn’t go across the border (the U.S. land border is still not open to non-essential travel, even though their COVID-19 infection rate is far higher than Canada’s), but it was a taste of what we hope to experience again before too long.

My “Gringas” at Palenque

After a very brief period of adjustment, it wasn’t hard to get used to new things again. Stay tuned for more about our Western Ontario odyssey!

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Travel Flashback – Summer Trip to Switzerland (2006) – Part Two

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

My last post focused on the first part of our summer 2006 trip to Switzerland. Now it’s time for the second part!

We stayed in this farmhouse in the tiny village of Hondrich, Switzerland.

After Fribourg, we tried something completely different: a farm stay near the town of Spiez in the Berner Oberland. I had never heard of the village of Hondrich, but it became our home base for several days. We started each day with a hearty farm breakfast, with many elements (including the mint tea!) sourced from the farm itself. Our host even shared some amusing ads from one of his farming magazines!

At Kleine Scheidegg, looking towards Grindelwald (the mighty Eiger on the right).

Our first day trip was to Wengen, which I consider to be my “home” ski area. We took the train from Lauterbrunnen up to Wengen, and then further up to Kleine Scheidegg. While we continued to be cursed by cloudy weather, we still saw enough of the legendary Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau mountains to make it a memorable day. At Kleine Scheidegg, we were greeted by a couple of goats who were employed to greet tourists outside the train station.

Hiking down to Wengen…they were selling Alpkäse here.

After the obligatory goat photos (sadly, they weren’t very photogenic), we hiked down to Wengen. We retraced the route I have taken on skis hundreds of times…except the steep slopes were replaced by gentle paths and contented farm animals. It was hard to believe that this same terrain hosts the fearsome Lauberhorn ski race (and its 40 metre Hundschopf jump) every year.

The town of Spiez, as seen from our boat on the Thunersee

The next day saw us explore the nearby towns of Spiez, Thun, and Frutigen. We cruised on the Thunersee (Lake Thun), bought some classic R&B music on the Atlantic label (as one does in Switzerland), and ensured hydration through ice cream. Just for fun, we decided to have dinner in the “Cafe Restaurant Bad” in Frutigen. Named for the thermal baths in the region, the food was naturally quite good.

Cafe Restaurant Bad, in Frutigen (Switzerland)

Our next day was spent on a whirlwind tour of my ancestral valley: the Simmental. We started in Weissenbach: we would stay here in my grandfather’s chalet during family vacations in the 1970s and 1980s. We then hiked to the nearby village of Boltigen (getting licked by a cow en route), where we caught a train to Zweisimmen and then another one to Lenk.

My grandfather’s chalet (straight ahead) in Weissenbach, Switzerland

Lenk, as you may know, is my Heimatort (place of origin) in Switzerland. We hiked partway up the massive Simmenfälle (see also the photo at the very top of this post), where my ancestors probably wandered hundreds of years ago. It felt great to go “goating” here, and I wish we had more time to explore the beautiful mountains. Alas, we had to make sure we got back to our farmhouse before it was too late.

The Swiss Alps are dangerous, and I barely survived this close call at the Simmenfälle above Lenk

Stay tuned for the conclusion of our summer trip!

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Travel Flashback – Summer trip to Switzerland (2006) – part one

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

In the summer of 2006, I took my wife on a whirlwind trip through Switzerland. I wanted to show her some of my favourite places in the “motherland”, but also wanted to have a summer experience in some of the places where I had been skiing. Because it was such a fast-paced trip, we didn’t have a chance to meet very many friends/family while we were there.

Schloss Tarasp – near Scuol. We climbed to the top and went on a (German-language) tour.

We took full advantage of our “SwissPass”, which gave us free train, bus, and boat transportation throughout Switzerland. It also gave us free admission to most museums. It ended up being a remarkable bargain…something you can’t often say in high-priced Switzerland. If only it included food too!

Near our hotel in Sent, Switzerland.

The only problem with the trip was the weather. It rained a lot, and even when it didn’t rain, we rarely saw the sun. We made the most of it, trying to focus on indoor activities when the weather was truly diabolical. And that is why there are no photos of Glarus, where we started our trip. The photo at the very top of this post is from our very overcast trip through the Bernina Pass – you can see the glacier at the higher altitudes.

Hiking from Scuol to Tarasp, Switzerland

I had been skiing in Scuol in March 2004 and March 2006. My favourite skiing experience there was a piste that led from the top of the Motta Naluns area to the nearby village of Sent. It was called the Traumpiste (“Dream Piste”), and for good reason…it is 10 km long! The piste is so long that you need to take a bus to get back to Scuol. Sent was captivating in winter, so I just had to see it in the summer. We stayed in a quaint and ancient pension called Pensiun Plaz, which had arched ceilings and was obviously built at a time when people were a lot shorter.

The grounds at Vulpera, near Scuol

We were lucky enough to be in Sent for the Swiss National Day (August 1). We joined the festivities in the town square, where we feasted on sausages and local beverages. Sent is a Rumantsch-speaking community, so we didn’t necessarily know what exactly was happening, but it still felt good to be part of the event.

A statue of Freddie Mercury has become a tourist attraction on the Montreux waterfront.

From Sent (in the extreme southeast corner of Switzerland), we reversed course and spent a long day travelling to Fribourg, in the western (and French-speaking) part of the country. The rationale is unclear, but that’s where we ended up. Fortunately, it gave us easy access to the charming city of Lausanne…which remains my wife’s favourite Swiss city.

Me demonstrating the Olympic high jump record (as of 2006)

Lausanne is the home of many international organizations, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It is also home to the Olympic Museum. At the front entrance, there is a high jump bar to demonstrate the current Olympic high jump record. In the photo above, keep in mind that I’m 6’4″ (1.93 m) tall and can just barely reach the bar.

Stay tuned for more from this trip!