15 September 2026

 After a last breakfast at My Arbor (which we'd come to miss a lot in the coming days) we drove west across northern Italy, past Bolzano and Merano. Around lunchtime we stopped in the very pretty medieval village of Glurns or Glorenza (still the alternate Italian and German place names) -

Parking on the far side of the village we crossed a bridge over this clear mountain stream to pass through the fortified town wall

The saint (below) guarding the bridge, I learned, is John or Jan Nepomuk, appropriately the patron saint of drowning. I thought the name sounded familiar and discovered that he is the very same saint who is memorialised on the Charles bridge in Prague, having been executed by being thrown into the Vitava river. 

The church stands close by to his spot on the bridge, just outside the town walls -

In the village we found a lively, thriving local community and quite a lot of tourists -

We had coffee and strudel at this busy cafe on the main square -

with these views through the rooftops to the surrounding Alps.

Not long after that we crossed the border into Switzerland and climbed the Fuorn Pass from Val Mustair through the Swiss National Park. At the top of the pass we were a bit surprised to see we were as high as 2149 metres.

It was the usual bikers' stop at the top -

- and I got out to take a photo - first of bikers doing the same thing -

- and then of the view itself -

Winding along past Zernez, we reached St Moritz and finally Sils Maria.

But before entering Sils we stopped alongside the Silvaplana lake to do what's become a ritual pilgrimage of the walk along the lake to the Nietzsche rock -

Though this is at least our third if not fourth visit to Sils, this landscape never fails to feel special - these two natural lakes that lie at 1800 metres above sea level, or as Nietzsche said '6000 feet beyond man and time', that are towered over by the Corvatsch of nearly 3500 metres.

It was a hazy afternoon and the light was quite different from previous times we've been here, but the famous clouds of Sils Maria seem always to be present in that dip between the mountains of the Maloja Pass - 

The light made for some interesting extra drama in our photos at the Zarathustra rock -

How many times have we posed here? Yet it never seems to get boring, rather amazing each time to think of Nietzsche walking these same paths countless times, and the interesting and famous people (Rilke, Adorno, Hesse, Mann, so many others) who came afterwards to walk in his steps.

In Sils we made another ritual visit, to the Nietzsche Haus before it closed for the day -

I like this map on the wall of the area, marking all the relevant spots that inspired him, and pretty much all of which we've come to know -

These views outside the Haus also feel special despite being familiar, and there's comfort in the fact that they never change -

Finally we installed ourselves at the Edelweiss, where Lou Salomé stayed -

In the evening there was a new experience to enjoy. The Chesa Marchetta has only recently opened in Sils and we treated ourselves to dinner there.

In the middle of the village and unmarked, we walked past it without realising, so embedded it is in the old traditional buildings -

Like the exterior, the inside is rustic and authentic with a few idiosyncratic modern touches -

We had dinner in the rough plastered dining room by candle light -

Memorable and delicious.