The town of Vals itself
has a population of less than 1,000 but is famous for its Valser
spring water, which is sold in grocery stores throughout Switzerland.
Ok, there is literally nothing in town! It reminded us of Roslyn, Washington, but much much smaller. We did a loop around town and found one cafe to get a snack, but that was pretty much it. We overnighted at the Hotel Therme, where the baths were designed by Basel-born architect Peter Zumthor. “Using 60,000 slabs of local quartzite and playing on light to amplify the feeling of space, Zumthor created one of the country’s most enchanting thermal spas”, which is now listed as a historical building. There’s a labyrinth of both indoor and outdoor pools of varying temperatures, watery nooks and crannies, drinking stones as well as purifying steam rooms. It was heavenly! Cameras/electronic equipment aren't allowed inside so we nabbed the below photos from online.
We relaxed in the baths upon our arrival Saturday afternoon when it was very packed, and again on Sunday morning, when it was open to hotel guests only, thus much less crowded. On Saturday afternoon it also started to snow….and never stopped. It was a lot of fun to swim in the heated outside pool to enjoy fresh air and let snowflakes fall on our heads! The hotel itself was very 1960’s (maintaining its original décor) and quirky though. It was pretty strange in my opinion and Matt felt like he was in a James Bond movie!
That night we enjoyed a fabulous 6-course dinner at the hotel’s Red Restaurant, feasting on tasty items like stinging nettles soup (warm and creamy), deer medallions (very tender) and a delectable selection of local cheeses. I wasn’t sure if the food would be as good as it was considering we were in the middle of nowhere, but it was truly delicious and the restaurant had a very cozy atmosphere.
Time to bring in the goats!
We used hotel brochures as mini-brooms
to remove the snow from the car and Matt used a plastic toolbox to scrape off
the ice! Yes, we had to improvise, and it
was really really cold, brrrr. . . . To
make matters worse, the door on my side wouldn’t open easily, so Matt had to
really pry at it. It finally opened, but
then it wouldn’t close! We were slightly panicked (ok, I was really
freaked out). Some doo-hickey was
frozen, thus prohibiting the door from closing all the way – it would just
bounce back open. Upon further
investigation we figured out the little latch inside the door had frozen and wasn’t
“catching”. We cleaned out all the ice
out and Matt manually opened the latch so the door could finally “click” and
close properly. Woo hoo, crisis averted! Now we
just had to safely get down the mountain.
On our way out we were lucky enough to pull up behind the town’s snow-plow, which we followed most of the way down, what luck. It continued to snow all the way past Zurich, but stopped about 30 miles from Basel (although the temperature never really got above 0° Celsius the whole way home). We were not expecting freezing temperatures and so much snow in October?!
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