Scuol & Sent: Days 11-13

The car ride into Switzerland was certainly memorable.  Jenna put on quite the rap performance and gave Missy Elliot a run for her money.  Who knew you could "shake it like a pom pom" while you're sitting in the middle of the backseat in a 5-passenger car??

More car-ride fun

We arrived to the middle-of-nowhere, Switzerland, otherwise known as Sent.  It's quite a charming town on its own, and since it's not quite "tourist season" yet, it was even more charming since it was empty!

Scuol, which is more well-known and touristy, was only about 10 minutes away.  We spent the afternoon there enjoying the spa, which was quite different than the Turkish Bath experience.  It was more like a collection of pools (warm, normal, and cold) plus a steam room.   It worked out great for me, since I can't be in really hot water for very long.  It was warm enough to be pleasant and we could stay in for several hours since we didn't dry out so fast.  Despite our fears of having to shed all our clothes, we all remained in our swimsuits. :)  (There was another area that we chose not to use that required you to bare all... maybe we'd have more sense of adventure if we weren't traveling with family??)

view of the pools behind us

At 5pm a man came into the pool area wearing tight neon exercise clothing, and started motioning for us to gather around.  The 90's exercise tunes came on, and he started leading group water aerobics. Despite the fact that most of the people participating were in their 70's, we had fun exercising a la Richard Simmons.  The instructor kept looking at us and smiling and laughing as he was teaching, and we couldn't tell if he was trying to flirt with Jenna, or Jeff.   The 20 minutes of exercise probably did us some good after so much power-eating.

Scuol:

Sent ended up being the perfect place to relax.  To even reach it we had to drive waaaay up the side of a mountain.  Remote and quiet would be two good words to describe it.  The lady who ran our bed and breakfast didn't even speak English (we were sure glad Jeff knew German!)  For breakfast there were several types of cheese we could try, along with the bread and meats.  We had three separate rooms, with an adjoining common area.  We could read books, play cards, eat chocolate, go for walks, etc.  Looking out our bedroom windows we had views of sheep and cows.

One morning Jeff and Amie decided they wanted to do a hike.  My response was, "No thank you."  Instead, Jenna and I took our time waking up and eating breakfast, and then did our own version of hiking: basically just walking far enough up the mountain to get a beautiful view.  It only took 15-20 minutes, and I took my sweet time getting there.  We arrived back at least an hour before the other group, and I'd venture to say we enjoyed ourselves just as much!

Looking down on Sent

Uhh... the hills were alive.  Not much else I can say about this. 

You can see the dairy cows up on the hill

One of the many water fountains we found.  This had normal water on one side, and mineral water (bubbly) on the other. 

We took advantage of having car and drove around several of the other little towns nearby.  We saw [the outside of] a castle in Tarasp, which was a bit of a hike up a hill.  And it wasn't even open, but the view was pretty.

Matt struck this pose first... all by himself... while pondering nature.  Then Jenna tried to copy it. [fail] and Amie discovered that it was an easier position where the wall was shorter. 

 We drove through Ardez, to see a house with a mural of Adam and Eve on it.  (uhm, not so thrilling, but we were in the neighborhood.)  We continued to follow the high-on-the-mountain country roads that connect small towns instead of the main road below the towns.  The road took us to a place called Bos-Cha.  Odd name.  It fit the town perfectly.  It was tiny.  With cows everywhere.  Narrow roads.  Tiny.  [To give you an idea, I just searched for the neighboring town on google maps, and then had to zoom in 3 times to even get Bos-Cha to show up!]  We discovered that to "keep going" to the next town we had to go down a "one-way" street (ie: the width of a single car) that was indeed meant for both directions of traffic.  Part way down the road we had to back all the way up to allow a car to pass.  On our same tour we drove through Guarda and saw more cute Swiss houses.  I was happy to make it back to our hotel alive.  I'm glad I wasn't the one driving.

One last story from Sent.  One of the mornings Amie and I woke up before everyone else, so we were pretty bored.  When Matt was finally ready, we wanted him to come entertain us.  So from Amie's little bedroom we started calling out to Matt, hoping our voices would carry through the common area into his bedroom.  "Maaaaatt.... Maaattt."  No response.  We tried a few more times in different pitches, because that's what annoying sisters do.  Then through the window we hear the sheep responding, "Maaaaaaa!  Maaaaaa!"

Well hello there, sheep!

They're hard to spot, but they're there.