Our next stop in the Swiss Alps has been incredible! As I am typing the start of this post, we are sitting at 2,500m in the Berggasthaus Alter Santis. This is an alpine guesthouse located on one of the highest peaks in the Swiss Alps, and it is incredible! You can actually see 6 countries from the peak – Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France, and Italy.

This guesthouse has been on Mount Santis for over 150 years (but just underwent some renovations so it’s quite nice!). It is so beautiful, quiet and magnificent here. Literally, it is completely silent… no TVs, no Internet…. and just one lightbulb in our room.

We ate dinner at the guesthouse, and Ryan enjoyed traditional Swiss food! (You can also see my not so traditional Swiss dinner!)

Ryan’s view of Swiss Food

My view of Swiss Food…

I guess Swiss Hot Chocolate also comes from a packet!

We then headed out to watch for sunset and nightfall. It was only 38 degrees Fahrenheit (and to think we were over 100 degrees just a week ago!) so it was a chilly wait for the cloud cover to clear. The clouds kept floating in and out so that one minute all you could see was fog and the next minute you saw spectacular sunset and moon views.

There is a gondola down there

In fact, there was a full moon while we were here. Several locals had come up just to watch the full moon. We met one person who came up the mountain just to take photos of the moon and stars so he stayed out taking pictures all night at nearly freezing temperatures. Wow!!!

This has definitely been a very authentic experience as it sounds like not many Americans stay here! The locals were so surprised we were staying here but said that it is a true gem so we were so glad to have found it. It was such a neat experience as most guests had dinner in one large room and stayed there having tea, coffee, and hot chocolate for quite a while. We enjoyed visiting with several people before heading out to take pictures of the moon and mountains. Despite some cold fingers, it was wonderful! We were all the more thankful for a thick down comforter (in August!) since our room was about 55 degrees. 🙂

The next morning I woke up quite early to see sunrise. Our room faced east and overlooked the mountains so we couldn’t have had a more perfect vantage point. While its normally difficult to persuade Ryan to get up for sunrise, he only had to sit up in bed to see this one! 😉

Ryan loves to watch sunrise

In the bathroom we noticed that there was a box with a timer and 3 chips. Maybe this is common in Swiss hiking guesthouses or maybe something in German was written somewhere that we didn’t understand, but we had to guess at this one! We guessed it was shower related, and I got to be the guinea pig. I figured my best bet was to be really fast. It turns out you had 2 minutes and 18 seconds of water… At which point the shower completely shut off. Wow, talk about needing to move fast! It’s quite difficult to get water to the top of the mountain so it was important to conserve so we were happy to help… And I would say a 2 min, 18 sec shower will definitely conserve water!

After a breakfast of Swiss cheese, warm wheat bread, and yogurt, we hit the hiking trails again. Our morning hike was called Rotstein Pass, which has been rated as one of the top hikes in Switzerland. This hike crosses between two mountain passes on a narrow trail so you get 360 views of mountains for almost all of the hike. There are chains along about half of the hike so you can grab on to avoid falling, and we rented hiking poles as well. This is one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever been on! Here are few photos of the view:

To see more on this hike, check out: http://m.myswitzerland.com/en/hiking-the-ridge-between-mts-saentis-and-altmann.html

After heading back down the mountain, we drove into a small town called Appenzell that looks like the traditional Swiss town image you probably have in your mind. We enjoyed eating some local Swiss cheese and a hazelnut cake as well as strolling through the town.

We finished off our visit to the region with a short stop over in Lucern, a pretty city with both a lake and mountains. We dined by the water and then enjoyed walking across the waterfront and seeing the Chapel Bridge. This medieval bridge is over 800 years old and has paintings in the eaves that depict historical scenes as you walk. It also has flower boxes all along the outside. It was pretty!

Look for more updates from Switzerland soon!