Trip to the top of Punt Maragi at 7,370 feet!

Today we left Duffy and KC back at the hotel along with Annette and our sitter, Nichole.  KC is cutting 3 teeth at once and was running a fever and had a miserable night- which meant Annette got no sleep!  So the four of them stayed back.  Nichole took care of KC so Annette could grab some shut eye!

The rest of us met our guide (who broke his arm a few days ago at the curling rink) John Webster.  John has a titanium plate and seven screws in his right arm now!  But he was out of the hospital after two days and doing city tours.  We were glad to see him out and about.  He took us up the funicular to a lovely restaurant at Muottas Muragi..  But the REALLY exciting news of the day was that it snowed almost 15" last night.  Besides being just exquisitely beautiful, they closed the ski runs for several hours  while they worked on grooming and Avalanche prevention.  While at the top of the mountain we could hear them setting off the charges and then you could hear the snow falling down!  Gaby had a blast building a snowman and playing on the playground!  Uncle Grant went out to take a photo of the snowman creation and needed up falling into waist deep snow!  But he got the photo!  The scenery was just magnificent!   The sun peeked out from the clouds after lunch and the view was beyond amazing!  We had a wonderful time with our guide, John Webster.who just had surgery on his broken wrist  three days ago!  He was out of the hospital yesterday doing city tours!  Our lunch at the top of the mountain was delicious.  Most of us had a traditional Swiss dish called Rosti.  It's basically hash browns with a fried egg and bacon on top!  Yum!

This weekend is very important in St. Moritz!  Tonight is the White Turf Gala formal ball!  We can hear the music from the party down below!  Quite the affair!  They also had night time snow races with thoroughbred   horses racing on the Frozen lake.  They've been grooming the race track for the past several days!  They also had a 2 hour free event of entertainment on the lake which Annette, Duffy, KC, Gaby and I stayed back and watched from our balcony!  We saw a couple of races from our balcony!  It was beautiful watching the horses streaking down the frozen lake race track against the background of the mountains and the night sky!  Waiting to hear a report from Trey, Grant, Bill and Mimi about how it went!  

How fun is this?! We have a sterling silver wine goblet that was presented to Ada Norfleet (Bill and Mimi's grandmother) for winning the 1914 Ladies Open tennis championship at the Palace Hotel. We also have a child's 1932 croquet cup  with Bill's dad's initials on it.  We are going to return them to the hotel. (I think Bill's dad and Ada would be pleased that these trophies are returning to their origin!). After I told the GM that we wanted to give them to the hotel, they called and asked if they could invite the local press in for the "cup presentation". We said "of course!"  We've now been invited for a cocktail on Monday with the GM at 5 pm where the local newspaper will take the photo of us presenting the cups.  What fun!  There have been 5 generations of Fullers who have stayed at the Palace Hotel!

The trophy cups!

Feeling better!

Dinner time!

The Ancient horse they are constructing for the White Turf Race we are attending on Sunday.

Riding the funicular to the top of the mountain!

Pretty big snowball!

Gaby's snowman that Grant took a picture of after he fell in snow up to his waist!

Great photo you Two!  Taken by Uncle Grant!

Lounge chairs in the summer months!

Someone is having a blast!

John presented Gaby a small wooden St. Bernard!  She's thrilled!

We love St. Moritz!

We could hear the charges going off to prevent avalanches!

Hard at work!

Dinner last night!

From our balcony.