Malbun

Malbun is the principality's own ski resort, at the end of its only high valley: a bowl of Alps at 1,600 metres, half an hour above Vaduz by a road that switchbacks through Triesenberg, with a village of chalets, a chapel, three chairlifts and twenty-three kilometres of piste — the smallest ski area in the Alps and, by common agreement, the kindest to children, who learn here on slopes that end at the front door. In summer the lifts carry walkers to the Sareis ridge and its terrace, where Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Austria lie in one view, and the marmots whistle in the meadows.

The traveller comes up from Vaduz for a day, or stays a night for the quiet; skis the bowl in winter and, in an afternoon, has skied all of it; rides the Sareis chairlift in any season for the terrace and the ridge walk to the Pfälzerhütte, the mountain hut on the Austrian border; watches the eagles and falcons fly at the falconry centre; rides the summer toboggan; and drives back down past Steg's small lake and Triesenberg's views over the Rhine — the whole principality, from top to bottom, in a day.

The Guide's honesty: Malbun is small, and its charm is that it is — those who want a hundred lifts have Switzerland next door —; the ski season depends on a modest altitude and the snowmaking helps; the road up is closed in heavy snow and the bus from Vaduz is the sensible way; prices are Swiss francs and Swiss levels; and the pleasure here is a country the size of a valley showing you all of itself from a chairlift, which no other country can do.