Ambassador Zermatt

I am only stayin the night just to see the Matterhorn. The sun is out and I took a hike up nearby hill. It was about an hour and a half uphill walk with regular short stops to catch my breath. I think I have had enough of hiking now, I did 4 hours of it at Montreux as well, I must have the best **** at the moment. Spectacular view of the mountain at the hilltop though. It's less of a mountain and more of a giant pinnacle of rock. It looks menacing, to prove it there is a nearby graveyard full ...

... town of Zermatt and its Matterhorn views.

Zermatt is a very small town of only 5000 people with no petrol fueled vehicles at all. They have little electric taxis and horse drawn carriages to take people around. Very cute.

We made our way to our hotel which was unfortunately up a small hill. This would have been ok except for we took a couple of wrong turns and our backpacks were getting heavy!

The receptionist was a lovely guy and explained that the ...

... of which was obviously our target. With lots of sign language, some French mixed with German, we got the idea over, and landed the photo. But we couldn't persuade him to do the handcuffs, so we didn't push our luck.

We crossed the border into France shortly afterwards and travelled along the Col du Petit Saint-Bernard (which, for some reason, google maps won't recognise as a road, although it shows it as a walking route!), and found the ...

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 ...

Farmor agreed to watch Evie and Tyler for 2 days while Sue and Tom hiked to Hornlihut, the refugio at the base of the Matterhorn. Hornlihut is at 3200m directly below the Matterhorn (4400m) and serves as the base camp for those ascending the Matterhorn. When we called for reservations, they asked if we were ...

On Friday, we continued to "get the most" from our unlimited passes by taking the kids up to 3100m and the top of the Rothorn. Our journey took us up a Cog Railway (entirely inside a tunnel) to a Gondola. From ...

Sue and Tom decided late in the afternoon to take advantage of the Tram/Gondola/Train infrastructure of Zermatt and spring for a 4 day "unlimited rides" pass. We took advantage by taking the ...

... to the announcement for Zurich and get off. The station sign says Zurich. Something catches my attention immediately, and this is the fact that train stations usually are above ground, and we were not. Oh well, there is an escalator so we go up. Well, in the short span of time it takes an escalator to go up about 100 feet, my IQ went from that of a fairly intelligent person to one with an IQ of about ZERO.

When I got off the ...

... lady walked by with an expensive bag with two small foo foo dogs sitting in it, on laying on top of the other with their heads looking out. The Brit said, "Bet you don't see that in the States!!!" I then had dinner by the hotel, sitting outside around three hours later. The same couple spotted me and came over and said hi. The killer was the next morning I was in the hotel breakfast room eating and who stops by and says hi. 100 ...

... blue lakes and clear streams.... We drove around St Moritz... which is known as one of the ritziest ski resorts in the world.... Well the town did not impress us very much but the scenery sure did...even if there was no snow. We found a gorgeous camping sight and spent a very cold night in the mountains with a view of the town below... very nice. Day 207 - Friday 22nd September - St Moritz to Trento - Italy Today we decided to head towards Venice, as we are going to come back to ...