Our European Holiday Day 12 - The Matterhorn

We woke up this morning and watched the sun rise and illuminate the Matterhorn. It was a beautiful sight. We so enjoyed this hotel room that we briefly contemplated rearranging our itinerary and spending another night in Zermatt – unfortunately, the room we were in was already booked for the night. We will most definitely come back here! Since we could not stay for another night, instead we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at the hotel and then checked our bags so we could spend the day exploring.

We had a few options for activities in Zermatt. After some consideration, we decided to ride the Gornergrat Bahn. This is a very old railway (the original track was built in 1898) that chugs on up the mountain. It only goes 10 kilometers but gains 3000 meters of elevation. It doesn’t go very fast. The entire ride provides fabulous views of the Matterhorn and surrounding mountains. Alison and I enjoyed the ride. It kind of reminded us of the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland. It was slow and a little bumpy. The ride also takes you through some tunnels. The English language voiceover on the train also kind of sounded like the voiceover on the Matterhorn ride. It kind of felt like a Yeti would pop out from behind the next turn. Unfortunately for all of us, we did not see a real Yeti. It was a bit of a bummer.

We got off the Gornergrat Bahn at the second to last stop – Rotenboden. From Rotenboden it is a short hike to Riffelsee. Riffelsee is a beautiful lake that provides a reflection of Matterhorn peak. The hike down was through rougher terrain than either of us expected, but it was beautiful and the hike was pretty short. Since we arrived early in the morning there weren’t very many people there yet. In fact, there was a group camped out on the opposite side of the lake. This would have been a pretty incredible place to spend the night. We ended up hanging out here for around 90 minutes, partly because we wanted to see the view when the group cleared their campsite and partly because the view was so stunning. This ended up being our favorite view of the Matterhorn.

While we were hanging around here enjoying the view we made some friends. The first was a guy from Zurich. He was very friendly. We took a few pictures for him and he took some for us. He told us that it is expensive even for him to visit Zermatt, but he was making the most of his trip by going on some intense hikes. The day before he had hiked to the base camp of the Matterhorn (he showed us his pictures). Today after the lake he was going to hike across the glacier. We also made friends with a nice couple from Australia. They arrived right before a fairly large group of tourists showed up. They waited with us while the group across the lake finished packing up and left. We struck up a conversation because the guy from Australia was wearing a Park City hat. We talked to them about Utah. It turns out they love mountains. In addition to Park City and the Matterhorn, they have also traveled to the base camp of Mount Everest.

We caught the next Gornergrat Bahn to the last stop. The view was pretty good, but honestly, the view from the top was not as good as some of the views below. We spent some time exploring Gornergrat before heading back down the mountain. Before leaving we bought a treat to enjoy on the way down – a Toblerone. It seemed fitting since there is a picture of the Matterhorn on the packaging. There is an option to take the train back down or the other option was to hike. We opted for the hike. We read that the hike was pretty steep but we were not too worried about it because we have found that most of the time descriptions like these tend to overstate the difficulty. It turned out the hike was very steep (more than most hikes we go on) and it was pretty long. It did not help that we ended up taking a few turns off the most direct path. We weren’t too worried about it because it seemed like every road in this area leads to Zermatt eventually. All told we hiked about 8 miles back to Zermatt. It was through beautiful terrain. It was really nice too because we only saw a handful of other people along the trails. The first portion of the hike provided perfect views of the Matterhorn, while the last section was through picturesque woods. We were very glad that we decided to spend our afternoon in nature.

By the time we made it back to Zermatt, we were very hungry. We stopped by a little crepe shop on the main street through town. A lady was cooking up fresh crepes. Alison had a banana Toberlone crepe and I had a ham and cheese crepe. They were so very delicious. On our way out of town, we bought the cutest children’s book. It is Barry and tells the true story of a St. Bernard from the 1800s that saved over 40 people from dying in the Alps. It was time to bid farewell to Zermatt. We will with certainty come back here again. It was such a fun, romantic, and magical day in the shadow of the Matterhorn.

We bought a train ticket and we were on our way to our next adventure – Montreux. It only took a couple of hours to arrive. We checked into our hotel, which turned out to be a unique boutique hotel it was the J5 Helvetie. Alison always says she likes these kinds of hotels because they have a lot of character. This one was quite interesting. It had large rooms inside a fairly old-looking building. The rooms had been renovated so they were in fact pretty nice. It was also very near to the lake, which is one of the main attractions in this town.

After we checked in we went for a walk around the lake and watched the sunset. It was very nice. We weren’t sure how Montreux would compare to Zermatt, and while they are very different the beauty of the city of Montreux has pleasantly surprised us. Montreux is very French, which is different than Zermatt, which feels fairly German. It makes sense since Montreux is close to the French border. When we finished our walk we got some dinner – Alison had a huge plate of mussels and I had risotto. Then it was time to call it a night. It was a banner day and we were both exhausted.