Thursday August 4: Lenk to Gstaad
We tried to get an early start today but discovered that the hotel breakfast didn’t even begin until 8. Oh well. We didn’t need hotel breakfast. We ate the bread and cheese left over from dinner on our balcony and then went downstairs for a quick coffee.
That was such a weird hotel.
Because today’s stage was nearly 23 kilometers, we once again availed ourselves of the cablecar, which we took to Leiterli/Betelberg.
We walked the most beautiful balcony path – which abruptly transformed into a terrifying exposed landscape of narrow limestone paths and deep sinkholes. This is known as the Gryden. No one else seems scared by this stuff….
Then we went through Trutlisbergpass. This pass wasn’t a big deal – we almost didn’t notice that we’d crossed one.
Then it was a sweet and easy descent into and through a long valley to the town of Wintermatt.
In Wintermatt, we found a busy country café still serving lunch. Families had flocked there in their cars, but it’s also possible to walk here from Gstaad, which is a little over an hour away.
We walked another hour and a half to reach Gstaad. Our route had us walking to Gsteig instead and taking a bus to Gstaad, but we saw no reason to do that when it was easy to walk straight into town and right to the Hotel Gsaaderhof.
Aside from its weird name, which is a point of interest in its own right, I only know Gstaad from 1970s and 1980s movies that invoked it as a marker of cosmopolitan sophistication. (See, e.g., this scene from Trading Places.) Also, Julie Andrews, Audrey Hepburn, and Peter Sellers favored it.
For our part, we found that we didn’t have the energy to do yet another exploration of yet another Swiss resort town, especially not one with a shopping street lined with outrageously priced designer goods that we had no way to transport. We just ate at the hotel and called it good.
