Introduction - An Alpine Thanksgiving
Y’all, I am so overwhelmed you have no idea😭. It’s officially the second quarter of 2026, and I haven’t even begun to write the reviews for our Thanksgiving trip last year. DON’T EVEN bring up the half finished review series from our 2025 Christmas trip to Japan, 2024 Christmas trip to South Africa/Brazil and 2023 Thanksgiving trip to Peru. If anyone wants to pay my day job rate for me to finish my blog, my DM is more open than Bonnie Blue’s, uh, you know what💀. To make matters worse, my partner has on several occasion threatened to ban me from future trips if I don’t get my act together. So here I am, on a Thursday night, a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé in hand, desperately attempting to ignite my inner writing spark... Call me gay Carrie Bradshaw, if you will.
While we initially had no plans to go anywhere for Thanksgiving, since we had a big Japan trip on the books for year-end, my partner ended up on an extended business trip to Europe. My partner is a huge fan of Switzerland, somewhere I had actually never been to, not counting the non-Schengen terminal in Kloten that is. He suggested that I meet him there. Having now been a permanent Miami resident for a few years, the idea of going to a winter wonderland definitely had its appeals. Grass sure is always greener on the other side, innit?
Like everything else in our life these days, this trip was last minute. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, though. More accurately, Instagram told me exactly where I wanted to go. My feed bad been littered with “You. Me. St. Moritz?” reels for months. The closest international gateway to St. Moritz is Zürich. I’m spelling it that way because I will have you know that I speak (am bisschen) German and studied in Berlin. There were no reasonable points options to get to Zürich from Miami on such short notice. Lucky for me, but oddly enough, my ticket in Lufthansa first class there and Swiss business class back was $500 cheaper than if I had flown business class both ways. What caused this was that discounted business class was sold out, while discounted first class was not. Flying business class both ways would have booked me into full fare business class, which was more expensive than discounted first class. Regardless, the cost of the roundtrip was a gut-wrenching $13,500 - an amount I’d never pay (again) for Lufthansa, had it not been the only option to get me there at the same time as my partner did. Lufthansa has historically released unsold first class seats for redemptions. However, the Miami route is notoriously rare to have this happen, due to high premium demand originating here. In fact, I purchased the last seat on this flight in first class. I reviewed Lufthansa’s B747-8 on the same route from Frankfurt to Miami in business class a couple years ago. You can check out that review here.
There are many ways to get to St. Moritz from Zürich. By car, it is about two hours away. Swiss trains (SBB) of course provide good connections. Luxury hotels offer helicopter transfers. We were there before the season, so several helicopter companies I contacted still had their choppers in maintenance/storage. Alternatively, you can just charter and land at the airport in Samedan directly, which is only 10 minutes away from St. Moritz. Sadly, I blew our airfare budget on the transatlantic leg, so we had rent a Grecale Trofeo from Sixt… See how thrifty I am?! Never get any damn credit…
Booking a hotel in St. Moritz was easy, as only Grace La Margna was open. It’s the only luxury hotel in St. Moritz that operates year-round. Our rate for a base room was around $800, which isn’t offensive these days. Rates do go up astronomically during the season, as you can imagine. Given we were early, I didn’t want to stay in St. Moritz the entire time. I found that 7132 Hotel was not too far from St. Moritz. I came across it when I was researching helicopter transfers, since they had their own fleet. But I was then intrigued by its unique architecture by Peter Zumthor. Fun fact - 7132 is in the same town where Valser water is bottled. You can throw a rock from the entrance of 7132 and hit the Valser plant. 7132 is known for its natural thermal spring. It’s a one-of-a-kind property. Oh, there’s a two Michelin-star restaurant on the premise as well.
Lastly, we spent one night at the Park Hyatt Zürich on the way back - a sufficiently nice city hotel with beautiful room design. It did understandably pale in comparison to the other two hotels on this trip though. So in short, our itinerary looked something like this:
Review - Lufthansa First Class B747-8 Miami to Frankfurt
Review - Lufthansa First Class Lounge A Frankfurt Schengen (FRA)
Review - Grace La Margna St. Moritz, an SLH Hotel
Review - 7132 Hotel
Review - Park Hyatt Zürich
Review - Swiss International Air Lines Business Class B777-300ER Zürich to Miami
This may have been the first trip series on this blog with no points angle. I reviewed Lufthansa’s intra-Europe business class experience before, therefore I won’t rehash it. I will aim to publish the Lufthansa first class review in short order, which I have every intention to trash into oblivion. The rest depends on what other plans God has for me😂. I am leaving for Italy in a few days btw, so y’all just have to be patient, lol🤪.