Alpenhof Zermatt

... the casualties of the Matterhorn.
Zermatt itself is tiny, with only electric taxis. It is much colder than Lauterbrunnen even though it's on the border of Italy.
Switzerland is strange. It has no language of its own. In Bern, Lauterbrunnen and Zermatt they speak German but in Montreux they speak French, even the train announcements change languages. It gets confusing, so I just stick to greeting people in English most of the time. When I had arrived here I was fuming a bit because I ...

... over his chair and almost fell over backwards himself! It was quite comical! He did eventually pay and walked out in quite a huff, we saw him further down the street still examining his receipt and shaking his head!

The first part of our journey took us to Visp where we boarded the ‘Glacier Express’. This train takes you through the mountain region below Zermatt and the Matterhorn and shows off some beautiful Swiss scenery before finishing in the ...

... mountain through Wengen and then into the tunnel that goes straight through the Eiger, arriving at the highest railway station in Europe. So amazing. No cloud, perfect weather and, even better, more things to see than 3 years ago! There is now a track to walk on along the glacier... turns out it goes to a hut that is 200 metres higher than the Jungfrau stop... we didnt make it all the way to the hut but we saw an avalanche! Well, maybe not an avalanche, more some snow cracked and ...

... of Seez. We must have taken some wrong turning around here, because the GPS went a bit mad. So we found a place to turn round (not easy on those roads) and went back until we could agree with the direction the GPS wanted to take.


We'd sent a text to Tom to say we'd arrive about 2 p.m, and could he arrange for some food to be left for us from the barbeque which had been arranged. He confirmed, and said he'd come down for us at that time.

We woke "late" (8am) and were the last to leave our bunk. Skipping breakfast, we began our 5 hour journey back to Zermatt. We chose a route that would give us a different view of the valley, but involved 1800m of decent. We paid for it for the next few days. We arrived at our apartment and ...

... to climb the Matterhorn the next day. If we had said yes, we would have been awoken at 4:30 for breakfast and began the 7+ hour ascent at 5am. Needlessly to say, we declined. 

Instead, we took the Gondola/Tram/Tram route to the top of the Klein Matterhorn (little Matterhorn) at 3800m for a short ...

... way up to meet Evie and Sue at the playground (after a 5 euro hot chocolate) and we all walked down through some delightful traditional Swiss towns.

                                                 

... garage. I ask if we could sleep in our car overnight if it is parked here and the guy says yes, like he really doesn't care. It is a lot warmer and dryer here so Len goes back to the campground to see if we can get our money back and move over here out of the rain. The man had already gone so we are stuck there as adding the parking fee onto the camping fee it would have been quite expensive.

It is now 6 pm ...

... issued me with a ticket, which was half price with my pass. At about 8 quid it was no skin off my nose as the views were absolutely amazing. It was a narrow gauge track, so sometimes there were huge drops just the other side of the window with water just cascading down the side of huge rock faces into the rivers at the bottom. Excellent. When I got to Zermatt (1620m above sea level) the hostel was quite easy to find and was very nice, modern and ...

... us... the only reason we got through the tunnel was because one nice old man on a vesper stopped the traffic coming the other way and we managed to squeeze through... The Italian roads really are quite pathetic and their tunnels are even more pathetic, tiny and falling apart with m************s in them and leaking water... it does not make you feel particularly safe. We decided to try and get back into Switzerland to get away from rude Italians and their terrible roads. We drove ...