Europe > Switzerland > Swiss Alps > St Moritz > Skiing and winter sports > Articles > The Skier’s Nightmare

You face the frequent ski fanatic’s dilemma: all year long you fantasise about adrenalin pumping runs with mogul fields to die for, while your partner, frankly, doesn’t. Once again you find yourself trying to talk them into a winter holiday in your dream resort, only to be met with the standard and by now depressingly predictable "But I can’t keep up. You ski till you drop, don’t take lunches, and don’t wait for me. Can’t we go to the Caribbean instead?"

Can anything be as ghastly as the prospect of a week lying on a beach with nothing to do? However, there is an answer. It’s called St. Moritz.

High in Switzerland’s Engadine Alps, St. Moritz is the birthplace of winter sports. More importantly from your point of view it has something to satisfy any reasonable demand, as well as a large number that aren’t. Time honoured playground of the rich and famous, St. Moritz has seem them all come and go, from Astaire to Garbo to Hitchcock.

The champagne weather is legendary and should appease any winter sun-worshipper. If your partner enjoys a little gentle skiing, Corviglia, the home mountain, has beautifully groomed slopes that will make the most amateur performer look good. Conveniently placed at the top of the comfortable cable car is Reto Matthis’s La Marmite restaurant. Their Caviar and Truffle Menu lifts the skiing lunch into a new dimension.

There is no shortage of entertainment away from the slopes. Throughout the season there are regular sporting events run on the frozen surface of the lake below the village. High on the social calendar are the Cartier World Polo on Ice Championships and The White Turf meetings, both of which draw large crowds to watch horse-racing, trotting and gladiatorial contests played out by skiers racing around the ice track each clinging onto the lengthened reins of a galloping horse. Other events include husky races, greyhound races and cricket matches on ice.

For the action junkie, you can get your thrills watching the members of the St.Moritz Tobogganing club fling themselves head first down the Cresta Run.

If this all sounds too exhausting, St.Moritz’s narrow streets are lined with enough Prada, Hermes, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein boutiques to mollify the cravings of the most ardent shopaholic. And in case your partner doesn’t feel that they have damaged your credit limit enough for abandoning them while you go skiing, Christie’s and Sotheby’s run eye-wateringly expensive jewellery auctions.

St. Moritz is as alive by night as it is by day. There are bars in the Belle Epoque style for the grand and glamorous, others for the Cresta crowd, and underground music bars that bounce into the early hours. Amongst the many places to have dinner, Johri’s Talvo, an exquisite Relaix & Chateau restaurant, will take you to culinary heaven. There are nightclubs to suit all tastes, and you can lay your head in any one of sixteen four and five star hotels.

It is impossible to be bored in St. Moritz. The people watching is unequalled. Oh yes, and just in case you thought that your interests had been forgotten amidst this feast of hedonism, there is always the skiing: in particular the Corvatsch, with those knee trembling, stomach lurching black runs you’ve been dreaming about.

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