Five Alps mountain passes in two days, part 1

Like millions of people in 2020, due to the pandemic, we worked from home, stayed away from crowded places, and stopped traveling. Before the arrival of winter and the possibility of another extended lockdown period, we decided to go on a short road trip within Switzerland in September.

Driving your own car is safer than public transportation. And we believe it was safer to go up to the mountains as the summer holiday season was winding down. Since we had never been to the sparsely populated, mountainous Eastern part of Switzerland, it was time to explore.  To accompany this online trip, I chose a collaboration by two great musicians.

The easternmost point of this road trip was St. Moritz, the well-known, historical ski resort town in Kanton Graubunden. We took the scenic route from Lausanne via the Swiss Riviera, through the Rhône Valley and start ascending the Alps after Brig.

Starting at 9 am from home, we simply followed A9, mostly a motorway until Sierre. The drive was really easy up to here as this route was built to give quick access to all the major ski resorts in the Swiss Alps, such as Verbier, Crans-Montana and Zermatt.

Our first stop (not scheduled) was at a suspension bridge near Bellwald. It was a surprise discovery as the Hängebrücke appeared on our right after we left A9 to join Route 19. No longer in the French-speaking part of Canton Valais, these parts of Valais use a Germanic dialect.

Many suspension bridges in Switzerland are spectacular and themselves destinations, but they are not easy to reach. This footbridge is built to cross the Rhône River to connect Bellwald (1566 m) on the north bank to Mühlebach (1250 m) at Fürgangen (1188 m, not far from the small train station). Built next to a main road, it has to be the easiest suspension bridge to access for casual tourist like us.

After Oberwald, Route 19 becomes narrower and twisty as we slowly climb alongside the upper reaches of the Rhone River. Then we reached Gletsch where the mountain views become spectacular.

Gletsch at 1,757 m (5,764 ft) is a hamlet located 2.5 km (1.6 mi) below the edge of the Rhône Glacier. It is called Gletsch (derived from Gletscher, glacier in German), since the first building, the predecessor of the Hôtel Glacier du Rhône was built more or less next to the glacier’s mouth in 1830.

The glacier has been retreating from right to left in the above photo, leaving behind the a new section of the Rhône.  Gletsch is just visible at the right edge of the photo below.

Gletsch lies at the crossroads of the Grimsel Pass (leading to the Bernese Oberland) and the Furka Pass (leading to Andermatt where we stayed the first night of this trip).

We drove up to our first pass – the Grimselpass (Passo del Grimsel) at an elevation of 2,164 metres (7,100 ft).

There is a small lake, a cheerful, rusty sculpture, a restaurant and a hotel at the pass.

The pass connects the upper valley of the river Aare, with the upper valley of the Rhône. As the Aare is a tributary of the Rhine, the Grimselpass stradles the continental divide between the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

On the other side from where we came, a paved road runs 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Gletsch to Meiringen. The road is normally closed between October and May, due to the high snowfall on the pass.

Slightly below the pass on the north side are two lakes, Totesee (Lake of the Dead) and Grimselsee. The latter is artificial, created by a dam built in 1932 to generate hydroelectric power (operated by Kraftwerke Oberhasli (KWO) which now uses its local transport network to support tourism).

We descended from the pass to Grimselsee. From a distance, the light-green glacial water was perfectly calm and looked oddly solid.

Across the dam on the other side is a hotel.  One section of the dam allows vehicular traffic.

The hotel – the historic Grimsel Hospiz was our initial choice for lodging for the night, but its 28 rooms were all booked. There is quite a bit of history here – apparently, the first certified guesthouse of Switzerland was located at this exact spot, way back in 1142!  In more recent times, the hotel became a sensation in 1932 as the first exclusively electrically-heated house in Europe (when the dam for hydroelectric power was completed and supplied the power). Really.

Renovated in 2010, the hotel is now open during the summer from June to October and in winter from December to April – “Silent Winter Oasis” – while the pass is closed to driving due to several feet of deep snow, the hotel can be accessed by gondola and tunnels of the KWO power plant. The gondola which traverses a part of the lake was not running unfortunately as the summer tourism seasons just finished (or did not open due to the pandemic).

What a place to spend a quiet cozy Christmas !

Mariage Frères, London

This visit to London was made in December 2018. The post has been sitting around for a while. We hope the store survives the pandemic with enough local customers while the tourists who frequent Covent Garden are gone.

It was a long weekend. On our last day in London, we booked a place for brunch near Covent Garden. We were early and wandered around the area to discover a Mariage Frères shop.

The shop is very comfortably decorated with a cake counter upon entry, followed by a gallery which leads into a very airy salesroom.

This branch looks like the other shops in France, except it has a skylight which brings sunlight into the dark wood tea counter and wall of tea containers.

The shop has a tea house on the second floor but it was closed at that time. The tables at the tea house are lined up along the balcony which offer a view of the sales floor below.

According to Wikipedia, around 1660, Nicolas and Pierre Mariage began voyaging to the East on behalf of the French royal court. Successive generations of the Mariage family were in the tea trade and la maison was founded on 1 June 1854 by brothers Henri and Edouard Mariage.

It is France’s oldest importer of tea and in 1983 the company transformed itself from a wholesale import firm into a retail company.

The last owner descended from the founding family was Marthe Cottin. Born in 1901, she headed Mariage Frères until 1983. The year before, she found a Dutchman Richard Bueno and a Thai man Kitti Cha Sangmanee to carry on the legacy of Mariage Frères.

Competition in a tea-drinking country like the UK must be fierce. We saw but did not visit the huge TWG store near Leicester Square. TWG is established in Singapore just 10 years ago and has 70 branches, mostly in Asia.

Old-fashioned but effective. We did not see anyone using the scale but we suspect it is used for loose tea leaves.

The company has developed some 250+ tea blends based on tea from around the globe.

With so many varieties to try, it was hard to resist .. we managed by reminding ourselves that we have not finished some of their teas back home.

There is no Mariage Frères shop in Lausanne where we live, but we have a Kusmi store, a rival Parisian tea seller originally from Russia.

The tea house offerings look attractive but we already made plans for brunch. Well, next time.

Maison Assouline, London

Another post on bookstores.

Assouline is a publisher of books that serve as luxury lifestyle accessories. They are based in New York but the flagship store is in London, opened in 2014.  We were in London during Christmas 2018.

The store is situated between two other book-lovers destinations – Hatchards and Waterstones – mainstream bookstores. I made a post on Waterstones before – click here.  The Maison announces its presence on Piccadily in a large sans serif font. While the signage is modern, the interiors of the store is not.

The Maison Assouline did not feel like a bookstore at all with its high ceilings and wood-paneled walls. I do not remember seeing any window that looks out to Piccadilly. A passerby will have no idea what is behind the door.

The heavy walls and doors effectively blocked out the traffic noise, transporting the shop to a seemingly less busy locale.

The store felt like a library at first until one sees the nice bar (Swans Bar) which also serves coffee.

The subject matters of the books are fairly homogeneous – images of luxurious travels, designer clothes, jewelry, and various kinds of objects of desire. They created this company to be the first luxury brand on culture. They wanted to supply everything for a contemporary library for the well-healed.

The publisher has a rather small catalog. I see multiple books about Dior and Chanel.  Yawn … .

They don’t waste shelf space to sell books by other publishers – so it seems.

Opened for browsing are copies of “The Impossible Collection of Design” and “The Impossible Collection of Art”.  It is certainly impossibly heavy and beautifully presented. Quintessential coffee table tome.

I wonder what is the average word count per page of the books published by Assouline.

Assouline claims that their boutiques are “where one can discover a world of good taste, excitement and intellect, a place where “culture can be acquired” within a luxurious environment.” They are pretentious and honest about their intention.

We have observed a growing trend in many bookstores around the world – many other lifestyle items are often sold next to books. In Maison Assouline, I think the ratio of books to other items is skewed more towards the soaps, scented candles, furniture, etc.

Given the small number of books and their prices, one has to wonder which is the profit driver – the accoutrements of a good life or the books (they are not mutually exclusive as some books can fill that role).

We did not see the rest of the shop but there are two more floors of luxuries, including not only rare books, but also service –  library interior design with bespoke furniture.

Contrast this store’s concept of exclusivity against the commonality of Amazon Books in Walnut Creek – click here to see that post.

 

 

 

 

Amazon Books, Walnut Creek

We have posted on this blog many pictures of bookstores, and lamented the fact that brick-and-mortar bookstores are becoming rare and possibly extinct in certain cities. In the US, this trend is driven largely by the advent of e-books sold online. Amazon started their global online business with this retail concept.

By chance, we came across an Amazon bookstore in California, in Walnut Creek, a suburb of San Francisco. It has a store front and live employees inside.

It looks like a normal bookstore but with far fewer books on display. They display multiple copiess of a select few books on the shelf. The front covers are displayed rather than the spine.

Let’s take a look around. The books are displayed according to the subject and its popularity by some measure.

There were 3 full shelves of cookbooks compared to one shelf of Art & Design or Computers & Coding.

Surprisingly, they have a small section for Dungeon and Dragon tabletop games as well as graphic novels.

We suspect what was on display was determined by analytics of the local customers. Just showing what your neighbors are reading. This is Amazon where data drives everything. By the way, we visited the store in 2019, so the best sellers shown here are out of date.

The review written by Amazon customers are reproduced along with star ratings and the number of reviews to convince you to buy – similar to the online experience.

Did you know that even the highlights you made in a Kindle could be used by Amazon to sell books ? They are monetizing your attention and recollection. Instead of having a knowledgeable employee in store, they are leveraging Kindle readers. Amazon is the only company that have access to such unique data.

The store also sells their Amazon-branded products, particularly electronic goods, like tablets and smart home gadgets.

The store also sell other products that are popular on Amazon, e.g., travel essentials.

Yes, they have a coffee shop inside as well.

The store has a cashier, presumably accepting cash for payment.

This is clearly an experiment on the future of retailing: how to extract synergy from a brick-and-mortar store format when it owns the biggest online store in the world. Amazon is not hesitating to disrupt itself for the future.

“Their Morocco” by Mehdi de Graincourt

This is our last post on Morocco which we visited in January/February 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe and Africa. The tourism industry suffered enormously worldwide.  We hope the lodgings and services we had enjoyed can bounce back quickly in 2021.

We close this series with a softback coffee-table book I picked up at the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech.  I checked its availability online while at the shop. To manage luggage weight, following IT’s advice, generally I check bookdepository.com before buying any books while travelling. It is a way to suppress that otherwise untameable shopping impulse. The English version of “Their Morocco” is published by the Fondation Jardin Majorelle (where we were visiting) but I could only find the French version “Leur Maroc” online.

The byline of the book is “The Kingdom Seen Through the Eyes of Artists, Writers and Explorers from Other Countries.” The Foreword is by Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent’s partner – see our earlier post here about their museum and garden.

The people covered in the book include more than 60 notable characters divided into 3 periods- before 1912; 1912-1956; and 1956 since independence to the present, and the characters are presented according to their time of arrival. I have picked a few who resonated with me to share here.

René Caillié (1799-1838) – he was the first European who documented his travels in 1827 on the Caravan route, from Guinea up the the Niger river to Timbuktu (Tombouctou see drawing below), then crossing the Sahara from south to north to Fes, and eventually Tangier. His travelogue was published by the French Geographical Society in 1829, and he was awarded the Légion d’honneur.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) arrived in Tangier in 1912, became obsessed with the blue Moroccan sky and was dazzled by the lush nature and vibrant colors. He spent months in Morocco producing a collection of paintings heavily influenced by his sensations of the country.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) – American writer, famous for her diaries and erotica, first visited Morocco in 1936. This book reproduced short passages of her diary describing her arrival and discovery of Fes in poetic, exquisite details  … “I was overwhelmed by everything I saw. Mystery and labyrinth. Complex streets. Anonymous walls. Secret luxury. … The birds do not chatter as they do in Paris, they chant, trill with operatic and tropical fervor.”

Joséphine Baker (1906-1975) was an American-born French music hall entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. In 1925, she was renowned in Paris as a dancer, performed the Charleston in a costume, consisting of only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace. When the Germans invaded France, Baker campaigned against anti-Semitism, and eventually left Paris to the Château des Milandes, her home in the south of France where she housed resistance fighters.

In 1941, she settled in Marrakech and taking advantage of her singing tour, she met informants and ambassadors in Casablanca and Spain; she entertained British, French, and American soldiers in North Africa.  After the war, she received the military decorations, Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance from France.

Paul Bowles (1910-1999) wrote The Sheltering Sky which was my (Chris) book for this trip – see earlier post here.

Orson Welles (1915-1985) started making the film Othello (based on Shakespeare’s play), between 1949 and 1950 with a team of 50 people in Essaouira for the outdoor scenes. But its Italian backer declared bankruptcy and Welles had to use local tailors and blacksmiths to make costumes and armors for the film.  In 1952, the film entered the Cannes Film Festival under the colors of the Moroccan flag, and won the Grand Prix.  In 1992, King Mohammed VI inaugurated Orson Welles Square near the walls of the medina facing the port, and just outside our hotel (see later post here).

Dalida (Iolanda Gigliotti ,1933-1987) – French singer and actress, born in Egypt to Italian parents, very popular international artist from the 60’s to the 80’s, made pop, disco and easy-listening songs with audiences in Morocco to Egypt to Lebanon, in France, Greece, Israel, and Turkey.

Salma ya salma sung in arabic (Track 6) was played when Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president went to Israel for peace talks in 1977 – apparently the first arabic song played on israeli radio.

I still have a few more people to read up in the book – Pierre Loti, Colette, Gertrude Stein, Marlene Dietrich, Alfred Hitchcock …  A fascinating book about Morocco, times and people.

We thoroughly enjoyed our somewhat hectic 2 weeks – like always, in retrospect we now wish to have spent more time at certain places or pay closer attention to things we had only a fleeting look. Well, one day we will go back, may be to see Tangier and the Mediterranean coast.