Day Two: Hiking in the Valüna valley

The weather forecast looked like it was going to be dry until around 4pm today, which was good news for us because we were planning to explore some of the scenery in this part of Liechtenstein. After a good breakfast in the hotel, we jumped on one of the local buses for a short journey up the mountain towards the small village of Steg.

We got off the bus beside a small stream.

We got a glimpse of snow on the mountains behind Steg, which was exciting.

The village itself was very small, with only a handful of houses.

We were soon leaving it behind, following the road towards the starting point of our walk.

The website of the Liechtenstein tourist board has loads of hiking suggestions for Liechtenstein. I'd spent ages looking at it and chosen a walk which I was hoping wasn't going to be too difficult. 

It did start by leading us uphill on a small road...

...but we were soon rewarded with some beautiful views  

As we climbed up the road we encountered our first cows of the day.

These ones were safely behind a fence, though.

The path continued upwards...

...and the views continued to be very scenic.

The good news was that shortly after this, the path flattened off for a bit. The bad news was that there were cows in the middle of it  

Luckily they let us get past without any difficulties  

The flatness of the path was short-lived and it soon started to slope uphill again.

There were some great viewpoints, though.

We could see down to this little lake in the valley, which was an incredible shade of blue.

Behind us there was a view of some really rocky mountains.

And in the other direction we began to get a view of the snow  

The uphill of the path felt rather relentless at times...

...but we definitely couldn't complain about the views...

...and we could see that we'd managed to climb up a long way from the valley floor already.

Liechtenstein is definitely a lot more scenic than Monaco!

Up until this point the path had been nice and wide, even if it had been a bit steep in places.

Soon it began to get narrower though.

And it didn't stop going uphill!

This walk was only rated 2 out of 5 for difficulty on the Liechtenstein website, so I was glad I hadn't chosen one that was 3 out of 5  

Still, we kept getting some really incredible views  

Eventually we reached the highest point of the walk; from here the walk was 100% downhill  

The path was nice and wide again now, more like a road.

And there were some beautiful Alpine flowers.

So many flowers  

I really loved these purple ones!

Every time I thought the views couldn't get any better, we'd turn a corner of the path and see the snow on the mountainside again.

We'd climbed up a long way and there was now a lot of downhill to do.

Eventually we made it down to the river on the valley floor.

The path was nice and straightforward now

We had walked around 7 miles by this point, so were starting to feel tired. When we passed a small cafe, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a sit down and a drink.

The final stretch of the route led us right alongside the water.

There were a few more cows to negotiate...

...and then we were back down on the outskirts of the village of Steg.

There is a really pretty little lake here called the Gänglesee, pictures of which had attracted me to this walk in the first place  

From here it was just a short walk back to the bus stop in Steg, followed by 10 minutes or so on the bus back to Triesenberg. Our Fitbits tell us we have walked 12 miles and climbed 269 staircases today, so we felt justified in having a rest in the hotel room before heading out for dinner at one of the local restaurants in the evening. Liechtenstein is a really beautiful place and I'm definitely glad we came here