Hotel Carpe Diem Saas-Fee

... is that? I'm naming my next dog that, no offense to him, he's a great guy, but I think as an American I could get away with naming a dog that, but not a child) had to work, so they dropped Meghan and I off at a little town called Orta on their way to work. Orta is on Orta Lake, a tiny lake in comparison to the others (Luisa didn't even know it existed), and is also freakin adorable. We got there early-ish, and as we were walking to the center I decided I needed to ...

... 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 ...

... So I was keeping an eye open for a policeman, and spotted a whole police station( or should I say Carabinieri)!! There must be one in there, we thought. And it's definitely worth stopping. We got a place to park (probably not very legal, but we were following the Italian rules of the road by now), grabbed our Landy Rally T shirts, and went on the hunt for points. It lookead bit locked up, but as we poked around the gate, a couple of people came ...

... 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 ...

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 ...

... on the snow with a lovely view from Mont Blanc on one side and the Italian plains on the other. In between there were dozens of skiers and snowboarders enjoying some summer runs. After our snow hike, we took a Tram down to do a 10K hike to Hornlihut, starting at 2500m. Tom was suitably freaked out by the ...

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 ...

... and buildings, you can't seem to park anywhere unless you commit to a expensive meal at one of the many water side bistros. We have been keeping a daily recording of our expenses and the old adage... take half the clothes and twice the money you think you will need is ringing very true. Case in point the laundry which means we haven't reached the bottom of our drawers or even close, and the realisation that France and Switzerland were more expensive than planned. Well actually if we ...

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Here is a video (sorry for the very bad quality)
http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=R5_9hODsqgs