Hi everyone!
A bit of ranting today. I’m on holidays at a ski resort and we decided to explore the biggest ski field in Davos Klosters: Parsenn.
You go up from the city center with a vertical train. It all sounds very modern and well engineered, well Swiss style. HOWEVER something made me very angry and not want to go back there any more!
One big thing I hated: too much walking
Too much walking whether it’s with wearing skis or carrying them. Booo!
First you walk from the car park under the railways to the vertical train. That’s ok, it allows them to build a bigger cat park and fit more people. Fair enough.
But then, many slopes are very poorly designed with so sharp ascent that even with maximum speed momentum it’s impossible to go up the hill without pushing on your feet and arms ice skating style, duck style or even stairs style when you’re parallel to the slope and climb up one foot behind the other.
The worse was slope number 21. I’m usually very polite but I wasted 3/4 of the time on that slope swearing. Tell poor hubby about it!
Similarly at the end of slope number 24 if you don’t take the secret passage through a bump field you are stuck at the bottom and have to walk a fair bit to take the Shifer gondols back up. It’s very pretty as you cross a little river but I was too annoyed to enjoy the scenery and take a picture to share with you guys.
Then on the way back it was quite late and we decided to go down with the train but you had to walk again through long corridors. As I’m exhausted I discover there are no seats on the train so here I am at 4.30pm sitting on the floor of the train taking me down to the car park. NOT HAPPY JAN.
On the plus note though we discovered some amazing or pleasurable features:
Nice surprise #1: Iglu Dorf
Iglu Dorf is a hotel bar and restaurant totally carved in ice. It’s very impressive and what you can have for lunch is cheese fondue. When you step in you enter the bar room filled with wall sculptures. Around the central bar there are several mini rooms with big communal tables to have your meal.
Since pictures don’t do any justice here’s an original video with a 360 tour of the bar and restaurant area including a bit of German conversation with the bar tender, no not the first guy, that’s my husband!
Too bad we didn’t get a chance to visit the toilets and share with you how they’d work but here’s a pic of the outside.
Nice surprise #2: Chesetta hotel bar restaurant
I had been craving a chargrilled rib eye steak as a meal at a sunny terrasse of the slopes. That’s my memory of a typical indulging lunch over ski holidays. I was very disappointed yesterday as we ended up in a self service restaurant and I had to settle for a cheese burger instead of my craved rib eye.
Today was another day. When we saw the Chesetta sign post on the slope I knew there would be grilled rib eye. The red font gave it away: I could have my steak rare!
When we got there we were right! Rib eye was on the menu (along with grilled ostrich and truffle ravioli!!!) And the terrasse was covered with sunshine but it was too early for our stomach to eat and for our feet to rest so hubby and I decided to go up, further up, looking for an even nicer place at the top of the mountain. When I saw how foggy and cold it was I was adamant I’d rather wait until we reach back Chesetta and its sunny terrasse. When we finally did the weather had changed and the fog had dropped down on us! But I couldn’t be happier with my rib eye and humongous amount of Café de Paris Butter 🙂
Would have been perfect if wifi was not exclusive to hotel guests…
Will i go again to Parsenn? No way! Oh and parking for the day cost us 5 CHF.
But as I drove through the city of Davos I thought ooh the shopping is very appealing (H&M, Bally, Bucherer…) and the hotels look very luxurious. Next time, when the kids are older and we have paid work again, we could check out the Belvedere…
This time we chose a Kinderhotel. But that’s a whole other post…