Zermatt

About 36 hrs after I made it back from a quick theater trip to New York City, we left to go to Zermatt for the first time. Our friend and his daughter who were doing a 2 week tour of Switzerland were in Zermatt to go skiing, so of course Cass had to join.

These are my photos out of the train window. The scenery is spectacular everywhere, so you usually feel silly for taking photos out of the window, but sometimes you just can’t stop yourself.

Zermatt is very neat. Wikipedia says that Zermatt is a car-free zone to reduce air pollution that might obscure the view of the Matterhorn. However, there are these little work truck vehicles running around all over the place, so I wouldn’t exactly call it carless. It’s far more touristy than some of the other places like Grindelwald and Engelberg. It’s got a lot of shopping and restaurant choices that aren’t necessarily available in other places. You can tell by my photos that we arrived as the sun was going down behind the mountains. We walked through to the end of town to get our first glimpse of the Matterhorn.

The next day, the rest of the crew got up early and caught the train up to Riffelberg to hit the slopes. I stayed in the hotel for a while, then I got the train up to Gornergrat to get a better view of the Matterhorn. The train was packed, even in the middle of the day, and it stopped several times on the way up which made it seem like it took forever to get to Gornergrat. When I got to the top, I discovered that I had to hike up even further to reach the restaurant/store area. And once I got there, I had to hike up even further on a muddy trail to get to the highest observation deck.

After our experience on Rigi, I brought a thicker down jacket with me on this trip. Totally not needed, my light North Face jacket (with scarf) would have been fine. It was a clear, sunny day, and the temps were right around freezing with no wind. It was clear and beautiful. There are several glaciers in this area, and the one that you can see (but it’s covered in snow) in some of my photos is the Gorner Glacier. I sat up at the observation deck for a while and took photos from all directions.

Of note: the Matterhorn and several of the peaks near it are located just on the Swiss side of the Switzerland-Italy border.