Zermatt

Well, it's happened again: Too much has happened in the time between my last post and now; I can't even begin to remember everything. I suppose the main event that I haven't posted about (although it actually happened before my last post, but in the interests of continuity I decided to post about stuff in chronological order, foolishly believing that I'd get around to posting again in a day or so!) Oh well. Zermatt was excellent, Toni and I were so glad to get out of the sometimes depressing confines of this little room I've been living in for the last few months. And Zermatt, with its incredible views of the Matterhorn, and the vast, hard-to-fathom vistas on offer at the top of Gornergrat, was the perfect antidote to the slight cabin fever that can build up when you're living in a small room, with no private living area.
I suppose the original idea was to stay in the cheapest place available; a hostel or something similar. But, when we started looking up places to stay, "the cheapest available" got progressively more luxurious - the conversation went something this:

"Well, for a few more francs, we can get our own room"
"Actually, if we're going to do that, we might as well get the room with the balcony and the view of the Matterhorn"
"And it would be nice to go somewhere with a spa, you know, when we're tired after a long day's walking..."

So we ended up in a fairly nice (although is has to be said, it still was definitely at the cheap end) hotel. The room was nice and big and it did a decent breakfast, although the Jacuzzi etc was a bit of a let down.

Zermatt exists solely due to tourism thanks to the Matterhorn; you might think this is a terrible thing, but in reality it's quite pleasing to be able to get any kind of food, and anything you need, in a place where everyone speaks English and isn't bitter doing so. We were there in the off season, although some of the ski slopes had begun to open. It was fairly busy, although in a month or two it probably would have been much worse. I didn't really take many pictures of Zermatt itself, but here's one or two:

Zermatt is all about the Matterhorn; there's not really any other point to the place. But when you see it, you see why.

These horses were in the employment of some fancy hotel - Zermatt is car-free, so horses or electric vehicles are the only sources of transportation. Sadly, most have take the less interesting option.

We didn't really do much the first day - we went for a short walk but unfortunately the evenings close in fast at this time of year. We were going to have to have a few early mornings if we wanted to get the most out of the trip!

The next morning we got the Gornergrat Railway to...Gornergrat, suprisingly. This was included in the price of our tickets, as there was a special offer on at the time. It normally costs about 80 francs! The Gornergrat railway is a steep railway track, that goes up to a high point of about 3200 metres - that's pretty impressive. It takes 1/2 hour or so, and the view from the top was...

Well it was..

Ok, here goes. The view from the top of Gornergrat was...

Feck it, just see for yourself:

There. I hope that gives you some idea of what it was like.

The highlight of the day (and probably of the whole trip) was walking from the top station, down to the one below. It's actually a snow shoe trail, and it was completely, absolutely deserted. The snow was not too thick, but thick enough to cover nearly everything, and it was a lot of fun to walk through. It was perfect.

Toni grew a lot while we were there. Must be all that mountain air...

After this trip, we were exhausted, as you can imagine. Tired, but definitely happy.

The second day, we went for a big long walk around the woods surrounding Zermatt. Unfortunately a lot of the trails are closed for the winter (for good reason, we were to find out. We walked up one trail until it was too dangerous to go any further - it was covered in extremely slippy ice, and on one side of the narrow path, there was a sheer drop of a couple of hundred feet down to a gorge!) The mountains were very peaceful, we even managed to see a bit of Switzerland's shy and very elusive wildlife.

I don't really have the energy to write any more (or the memory, really!) It was an incredible trip, though.