SMS had wanted to visit Lichtenstein so I booked an overnight there on our drive from Germany to Italy. We had a delicious breakfast buffet, which we added to our bill. I am sort of in love with a breakfast of muesli, cheese and whole-grain bread.
I wanted to do more than just pass through Lichtenstein so we decided to do the Prince’s Way Hike. We drove through Vanduz, with its pretty terraced streets. We drove up to Gaflei where there was a small paved parking lot and little (clean!) bathroom hut at the start of the trail.
The views were very beautiful but there was a lot of loose rock. The trail was well-formed, but there was evidence of prior rock slides. Some of the trail hugged the cliff with some pretty steep drops. We were doing pretty well until we came to an area where the path had slid away. People braver (more fool-hardy) than ourselves picked their way across but we decided to turn back. SMS and I have done some stupid outdoor adventures in our time but neither one of us felt good about continuing the hike. SMS didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to have a panic attack halfway across the gravel-strewn “path.” I guess I didn’t want to die either.
So, that was that! Next up was heading into the Romansch-area of Switzerland. SMS had wanted to visit last Summer but we were unable to make it, mostly due to an episode called SMS and the Whole Wheel of Raw Cheese, where our valiant hero ate a lot of unpasteurized cheese at a grotto with unexpected (expected?) consequences.
Romansch is a language with several dialects across the region that largely developed due to the isolation of these valley towns. We drove to Vrin, a town where over 85% of people speak Romansch according to SMS’ research. We went to a coffee shop and had a delicious pastry roll with nut filling (yum!) along with our coffee. We heard a little bit of Romansch and SMS was a happy man. We walked around the village and then headed over to Trun, where we would spend the night and have an epic meal at Restaurant Todi.
We checked into the Casa Todi, took a nap and then walked around town. Our dinner reservation was at 7:30. We were one of two couples in the restaurant. We had an excellent waiter who spoke English with us and German with the other couple. Amazing. We ordered wine pairings with our meal based on his recommendations. It wasn’t a formal pairing but what he suggested by the glass based on what we ordered.
Before dinner, we each had a glass of local Riesling and a tiny chick pea chip for amuse bouche. For an appetizer, SMS had a tradition tattas dish, which were chard wrapped sausage and potato meatballs, for lack of better descriptor. The chef Manuel Reichenbach, who came out later in the dinner, explained that it was a traditional dish that was developed during wartime to stretch the food supply by adding the cheaper potato to create more of the filling. He said that you could tell a family’s wealth by the sausage to potato ratio. I had the steak tartare, which was absolutely amazing and intriguingly presented on a rectangle serving dish that resembled a shadow box so underneath the food, there were pine needles and small flowers. Wine for that course was a local Pinot Noir.
For dinner, we both got the trout paired with a white wine with a local grape and chardonnay. For dessert, we ordered a dish with a small creme brule, cake and scoop of sorbet. I ordered some grappa, which was an excellent nightcap.
Portmanteau Suitcase 