Davos and Klosters marriage by trails
The Swiss resorts of Klosters and Davos are only about a half-hour by train from each other, but worlds apart in their town experience. Klosters village spreads with wooden chalets-style buildings and Davos is square, concrete and urban.
What these two ski towns (or should I say ski village and city) share is the Manhattan-sized snowfield, the Parsenns. From Klosters, the Gotschnagrat cable car rises from the town to the Parsenn snows and from Davos, the Parsennbahn whisks skiers to Hohenweg where an extension of the bahn continues to the top of the Weisflugifel. Other than the sharing of the Parsenn snowfields, there is not much to unite the two population centers.
Their altitudes are different and their climates vary significantly. Spring begins far earlier in Klosters than in Davos. Klosters (above) has a heritage that hails from the Swiss German part of Switzerland. From an appearance point of view Klosters maintains the small wooden chalet atmosphere that most Americans and British associate with skiing in Switzerland. Davos architecture comes from the Engadine or the Italian/Romansh side of Switzerland — even its name is Romansh, meaning behind or beyond. The buildings started out to be modeled more on the Italian palazzo plan with larger stone houses. That architectural heritage traced to today is dramatic as anyone traveling the half hour between the towns.
Davos (left) is urban skiing and riding. Klosters is our fantasy of Swiss village skiing. Next year they will be married in a marketing pact. It will be interesting to see how two such different experiences can be marketed together as one.
I didn’t end up skiing during this March trip. Unfortunately I was faced with three days of rain. Of course, in the evening when the temperatures dropped, it began to snow and then invariably the snow ended and the skies cleared for sunset. Oh well. It gave me more time to explore hotels and restaurants.
In Davos, because it is basically a large Alpine city, prices are actually a bit less than in snowsports-only towns. Here menu-of-the-day prices are about Sfr15-20. On the mountain the gourmet sit-down restaurant is flat out expensive with entrees in the Sfr30-35 range. In the cafeteria at the highest point on the mountain the prices are more down to earth at Sfr19.50 for spaghetti Bolognaise and a bowl of soup for Sfr8. The restaurant at the middle station of the Parsennbahn, the Hohenweg, is even a better value — my favorite is the speckramspatzli mit Davoser bergkase (left) cooked in an iron pan for only Sfr19.50. It will feed two people easily. I would make this a must stop for lunch on any day skiing on the Parsenn.
In the past, I discouraged visitors from taking half-pension when visiting ski and snowboard resorts, however with the current exchange rates half pension is a bargain that makes the trip more affordable. The Sfr30 or so that U.S. skiers can save over lift ticket prices back can feed them at most 3-star hotels when they sign up for the half-pension program. After sorting out everything and comparing costs associated with skiing in Switzerland with those in the U.S. pricing comes out to be about the same. The biggest difference will be based on airfares. Keep an eye on low winter airfares. Many are less than $500. With a bit of planning or by using a package tour operator like Adventure on Skis it may actually cost less to ski in Switzerland, France, Austria or Italy than flying to Canada or Colorado.
Next: A couple of days in an Engadine village staying with friends in a 1300 house that they recently restored.
Photos by Charlie Leocha
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