Showcase Saturday - a short visit of Müstair

delishtreats (70)in GEMS • 4 years ago

On the way back home from Naturns we spontaneously stopped in Müstair to stretch our legs, walk around the monastery and get some fresh air.

Müstair is a small village in the canton of Graubünden right after the border with Italy. It is the most eastern village of Switzerland and it is situated in Val Müstair and surrounded by the Ortler Range of the Alps.

People here speak Romansh and it was interesting to hear this language for the first time. There are only around 60000 people in Switzerland who speak Romansh and let me tell you that I couldn't understand a word. Luckily, people in this region speak either German or Italian too, so at the end we were able to order some meals and fill our bellies 😊

ISO 200 1/200 sec. f/8 42 mm

ISO 125 1/200 sec. f/8 24 mm

It was late to go to the monastery as it was closing in 30 minutes, but we didn't mind that much as we didn't want to stay too long because we had to drive for another 3 hours and there was enough to see in the village anyway.

The church of St. John dates back to the 8th century. The monastery as we see it today is a mixture of different buildings and styles built over the centuries. Because of the different styles it doesn't even look like a monastery but it looks more like residential buildings were built around the church.

In 1983, the complex was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

ISO 125 1/200 sec. f/8 26 mm

We couldn't enter the exposition, but we could at least enjoy the monastery garden. To get there we had to walk around the monastery as not all buildings are connected.

ISO 125 1/200 sec. f/8 24 mm

Here we are! I was not as big as I expected but it was still charming...

ISO 125 1/200 sec. f/8 29 mm

I found many beautiful flowers in the monastery garden. The average temperature here is lower than in our region so we could see flowers that were blooming earlier this year in Schaffhausen. It was nice to see them again.

ISO 100 1/400 sec. f/3.5 62 mm

ISO 100 1/400 sec. f/3.5 70 mm

ISO 160 1/400 sec. f/3.5 70 mm

We were getting hungry so we headed to the village and hoped we would find a place where we could order something to eat. All restaurants were closed, but we were lucky and found a hotel that was open. It's in that yellow building.

While we were eating our meals, it started to rain. The distance to get back to our car was about 1 km and we didn't want to get wet because we still had a long drive ahead of us.

Luckily, we didn't have to wait for too long until it stopped raining.

ISO 100 1/125 sec. f/8 38 mm