Dining in Klosters

Tuesday 13 August

Dining in Klosters

We had a catch up day today, catching up on sleep, catching up on washing, catching up on what's left in the bank (not much!), and catching up on emails, blogs, etc.

Penelope has become the self-elected chair of our morning meetings.  She gets the toy xylophone out and "bing, bing, bong (it varies!)" and we are all called to order.  It actually works quite well and we all get a turn at suggesting the things we would like to do that day, or the next.  It does mean that we are planning well and in agreement!

It was a bit cloudy and had been raining quite heavily, but cleared up during the morning.  David and I went down to the supermarket and discovered free wifi at the information centre so sat down for half an hour to 'catch up' on emails and blogs.  James had gone for a bike ride and fortunately came back safe and sound after about 3 hours.

Later in the afternoon we went for a walk to catch the blue gondola up to Madrisa again, it's a nice walk down hill to the terminal and takes about 20 mins.  

I couldn't resist taking photos of all the lovely houses on the way down, and because we are high up most of them have a fantastic outlook over the valley and mountains.

No big walks this time, although we did climb up a little way to see if there was a circuitous route to the restaurant/cafe.  There wasn't, but we did see the Swiss equivalent of a herd of cows being moved to a new grazing spot!  

We had a drink at the cafe and went to catch the gondola back down. When we got there there was a rather large group of tourists seemingly trying to organise themselves into sets of 4 to ride down, lots of arm waving and shaking of heads, two lots went down while we were waiting, and the queue behind us was growing, they were dithering so much about the third group that the empty gondola was almost on its way down when Rachel spoke up ,"if you don't want to get on, we will", and so we squeezed past them to their surprise and we jumped on on the nick of time before it descended.  She was our hero, so sensible, we could have been waiting sometime for them all to make up their minds!  

The children had fun at the playground at the bottom, and Jasper made a new friend 'Noah', neither of them could speak each others language but they certainly had a great time together.

David and I went out to dinner, there were a couple of restaurants within walking distance from the apartment.  James and Rachel had been to the Steinbock restaurant the night before, so we thought we would try the other one 'Sonne'.  

It was obviously open, the menu was outside, we tried not to look at the prices because it does spoil things so!  So on entering we were faced with two closed doors, we tried the one ahead and it lead onto the kitchen where the two chefs smiled knowingly at us.  So we backed out and tried the door to our right, that's better. It led into a rather downmarket but quite jolly looking area with tables and chairs, one of the tables was occupied by a rather rotund man smoking a cheroot and accompanied by a skinny lady.  We waited, and looking around on the desk was a photo of what I took to be the owner, and he looked remarkably like the large man at the table, sure enough there was a lot of scraping of the chair and with a struggle to get his gut off the table he ambled over to us and said "no smoking, upstairs", mm.. funny sort of greeting.  We climbed the first set of stairs and to our left was an open air area, there was however one table occupied - and they were smoking!  That didn't worry me as much as the  thought that it might rain and the temperature was decidedly chilly!  So up the next flight of stairs and through the door into what must be the restaurant he directed us to.  Looked ok, warm and quite cosy, a couple of tables already occupied, no one eating mind you.  Waiting, looking around, waiting, no one came, so we decided to get out while we could and as we reached the bottom of the stairs there was the fat guy with his arms akimbo and a surprised look on his face!  I just shrugged my shoulders and we fortunately chose the right door to make our exit!

Further along the road we came to Steinbocks and what a difference, as soon as we came through the door we were welcomed and shown or our table, it was quite busy and we had a nice cosy table in the centre of the action.  A very attentive waitress guided us through the menu and we had a most enjoyable meal finishing with a coffee made with schnapps and cream on the top (like Irish Coffee but with schnapps instead of whiskey).  This certainly had the 'Wow' factor and we floated up the hill to home!