Pierre & Vacances Cervinia Due Breuil-Cervinia

... control recently has broken down, this was the perfect sign to follow, where I planed to cross the border to Switzerland.

Just arrived in late afternoon to Aosta, I was not only already entered to the italian part of the alps but also to the point of good bye. Here I decided not to spend another night in Italy and crossed the border to my homecountry Switzerland a hour later at Calle del Gran San Bernardo.

BIENVENUE EN SUISSE - WELCOME TO SWITZERLAND

... 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 ...

... saying that this was the World Downhill Mountainbike Championship trail. I can tell you that they are a brave bunch! Some of those hills are STEEP!!

The rest of the walk was quite pleasant and importantly, all downhill! We found a sign at the bottom that said that people walk up the same trail for training to climb the Matterhorn. It took us about 80 minutes to walk down and the sign said that the climbers that are fit enough to conquer the Matterhorn should be ...

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 ...

... it a pot full of melted cheese. The custom is that losing one's piece of bread in the pot, obliges the loser to buy the next bottle of wine. We didn't do that, but we did tease quite a bit! Jean-Marc served the fondue with pickles and pickled onions. The meal was accompanied by a very nice fendant wine. We talked, and laughed, and ate until we couldn't eat any more, then after a brief pause, the Swiss chocolates came around: dark and ...

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