Hotel Des Alpes Crans-Montana

... another according to the train website the day before, but apparently not everything you see online is true. I had to make a transfer, but luckily, it turned out well. The ride into Brescia was stressful, the ticket man (I don't know his official title) was coming around to check our tickets but the man in the seat next to me didn't have his. A little argument commenced, then some all out shouting, and fingers being pointed and scary looks in angry eyes. I was a ...

... 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 ...

... one 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 ...

... our downhill journey we found ourselves on a path that would have been just as steep as our first path, only this time we were only going down it. Or so we hoped. We had just followed our noses to get there so I was dreading that we might discover at the bottom that we had gone the wrong way and would have to retrace our steps all the way back up!

We breathed a sigh of relief at the bottom when we found the sign pointing downhill to Zermatt. There were also signs ...

... took Evie back up via the Tram to the top of the Klein Matterhorn just before the last ride at 4:30p. Along the way, they watched a parade of swiss dancers with typical accordian players as they paraded down main street as part of an annual traditional festival.
 
                 

... 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 ...

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 ...

... train to 3,200 meters and hiking some of the way back down. The glaciers were impressive, however the views were muted as the weather was a bit cloudy.

                 

... oranges don't grow in the North of Italy, but the millions at the battle are imported from Sicily, and most are blood oranges, which makes the battle much more colorful, to say the least..) Then, about 18 teams on carriages (about 10 guys each) - representing the feudal lords - ride around town to the piazzas and basically get nailed by oranges from every direction by the "rebellious commoners" on foot. But don't worry, they have oranges to throw back, and ...

www.elodie50a.com

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