Day 9: Rest in St. Moritz
I'm going to keep this short, because my battery is going to die soon, but today was a rest day in St. Moritz. It was raining in the morning, so we waited until 10 for the rain to stop, then rolled out of bed and ate breakfast. At the campsite headquarters we found maps of the area and found a tram to take up to around 10,800 feet. After much debate, and realization that neither of the maps we picked were oriented with north at the top, we found the bus route we needed to take, and got ready to go.
Just getting the bus was an adventure. There's a bus stop right outside the campground, but we walked 20 minutes in to town so we could buy tickets at a kiosk instead of talking with a bus driver. Unfortunately, the kiosk's credit card reader was broken, and didn't accept credit cards. We tried putting the card in forward, backwards, and upside down. Whoops! The card got stuck in the machine upside, and required Matt to walk back to camp (40 minutes round trip) to get the leatherman while Nate and Mark explained in broken German/French/English that the machine was broken to others trying to use it.
The credit card came out with no issues when Matt came back with the leatherman and we waited for the next bus. Unfortunately, the bus only runs every hour, so we walked back to the campsite, just to eat up time, and waited for the bus there.
After 2 hours in total, we finally just bought our tickets from the bus driver and took the bus to the tram. We bought tickets for 69 CHF (gag) and rode two trams up to 10,800 feet. The tickets included lunch, so we got lunch and beer at the restaurant there, and looked at the beautiful view. (Well, actually the cloud, but every so often we could make out mountains).
After lunch, we met some other Midwestern folk from Iowa and chatted with them for awhile (during which we decided touring through Iowa might have been a better idea) and then took the tram back down and the bus back to the campsite.
In the afternoon we walked through St. Moritz. It's a really nice town. Every single designer brand clothing line you've heard of has a shop here, and some lines you've never heard up. We weren't that interested in spending more money today, so walked back to the grocery store, picked up some more beer, and walked back to the Doner Kebab cart for dinner. Dinner was Doner Kebab again, and afterwards we walked back to camp to drink some beers and relax.
Nate did some excellent repair on his panniers by sewing some patches on them. Matt attempted to repair his brake cable that was getting a little stuck (stuck shut, not stuck open, so that's good at least) and the great combo team of all three of us destroyed the brake cable, so first stop tomorrow is a bike shop. (We have some extra beers, maybe they'll take that?) but after that, we'll be on our way to Chur. Or maybe spend another, cheaper day in St. Moritz.
Anyway, my phone is nearly dead, so I'll let Matt upload photos. We're all having a great time! Nate even seems to be enjoying it, during the trip, which is a rare event. Until tomorrow, or in s few days when I get battery.