Monte Rosa Zermatt

... used my final day of my eurrail pass for this trip only to find that the trip from Visp station to the Zermatt was not valid despite being told by two train operators that it was. I also couldn't get through to the girl at the station that my eurrail pass allows me discounts for the train but she kept telling me, 'no, no, you can't use anymore days it's full'. Today wasn't the first time I have been stuffed around by the Swiss. It's hard to believe that Einstein was educated here.

... to go UP it in 20 minutes!! Unbelievable!

On our walk back to the hotel we had our first of what would be many encounters with cows and their bells in Switzerland. There was a guy walking his cows into town and they all had bells around their necks making a clunky tune as they walked. It was so charming!

Back to our room and Witek was feeling a bit worse for wear seeing as he wasn’t 100% well before our 5 hour hike. We decided to just get take away ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

We took the equally gorgeous train ride back to Visp from Zermatt. It was pleasant to see the farmers out in the hills early in the morning, with the tips of impressive peaks looming overhead. We barely caught our connection from Visp to Zurich. This was about 1.5 hours, and we had very little time in Zurich before our direct train to Munich.

               I watched a Columbo on the train ride but had to stop in the middle of the second episode because I could ...

... Of course, the cow had her signature bell. Upon trying to pass ole' Bessie I asked whether the bell bothered her. Her "moo" sounded in the affirmative. The photos I took on my hike are my best effort to capture the beauty of this area. I saw probably six other humans during the 6 hours I was wandering trails. It was liberating (but possibly not wise) to have no itinerary and no schedule and to just take whatever fork in the trail ...

... remove it. Actually began to hurt a little come the morning, but i was able to find some tweezers to undo the damage. The other highlight of the trip was meeting Xavier. He was the mountain guide of the parallel group. Again that group consisted of 5 mostly older people, and he was their guide. Unable to talk in English or german, we found a common tongue in spanish and were able to exchange stories about argentina. I quizzed him about ...

... too. Finding the place isn't easy. The map on the website is very brief, and it doesn't tell you about a steep hill you have to climb before you get there. I spent a good hour looking for it because I was too stingy to pay for a taxi :) Local's directions were ok, except I was quite a bit aways at times, and I had to remember too many turns... and sometimes, the accent just killed me and I had no clue what they were saying. I'd highly recommend staying here ...