We ran into some closed mountain passes in Switzerland on our drive down. Rather than heading back up towards Germany then go around the whole country of Switzerland (quite a few hours out of the way), we found out about a train that we could drive the car onto, it would take us into a tunnel, go through the mountain, and would put us on a direct route to Zermatt. It cut off about 2 and a half hours from our trip and saved a ton of gas. It was something we had never experienced before, unfortunately it was dark by the time we got on the train and we couldn't really take pics, but it was definitely fun, and it felt so very weird to be sitting in the car while the train was moving.
When we got to Zermatt it was dark, so we couldn't really see any of the surrounding mountains. We checked in to the hostel we were staying in. When we woke up in the morning we were greeted with this sight...
Waking up to the beautiful scenery and such a beautiful day got us excited to get our ski stuff and get up on the mountain.
Matt had some difficulty finding good ski boots for his feet. Nothing seemed to be working for his flat feet and everything he tried on just wasn't going to work. Since the shoes were much more comfortable we came up the idea that he would make his first attempt at snowboarding...we had a lot of fun up on the mountain, and Matt really did great, he started picking it up pretty quickly, though he ended up falling quite a bit and definitely came down pretty hard on his tailbone quite a few times. I enjoyed the skiing, I wanted to stay with him, so it wasn't my usual "fast as I could go down the slopes." I had a nice gentle day of skiing, and was able to work on some technique stuff that I usually don't have the patience to work on! It ended up being great day! Here are some shots of us up the mountain!
Our next day Matt woke up pretty sore (understandably), and the winds up on the higher part of the mountain were getting pretty bad so all the slopes up there were closed. We decided to do some hiking instead of skiing, and we had a great time. We hiked up to one of the towns further up the mountain from Zermatt, it was called Z'Mutt (which I think is a great name for a dog!) there were hardly any people on the trails, it was so quiet and peaceful, though at one time I got freaked out when a bird ended up flying up behind me and glanced the side of my head...that part wasn't terribly peaceful! When we got to Z'Mutt we found that it really was just a little area with a Restaurant, a little Guesthouse, and a couple of barns, AND it was completely deserted, not one person in sight! It was just a really fun adventure. Here are some shots from our hike.
Our regular readers may notice that the first of our hiking shots is the same shot we took when we visited Zermatt in September on our Honeymoon! Very fun!After hiking we did a couple of other things on the mountain and after a few hours I unfortunately started to not feel too good. I had woken up a little stuffy and had a sore throat earlier that morning, I started feeling pretty good once we got out moving, but that didn't last very long, I really started to feel like a cold was coming on. Also, since it was starting to snow quite a bit, we decided to leave that evening instead of the next morning. We had quite a drive trying to get out of the valley Zermatt was in and onto the Autobahn, the roads were really bad and our car just wasn't handling it too well. What was normally a 30min drive took about 2 hours, but we finally made it too the Autobahn and the rest of the way home was clear, smooth sailing. We got home kind of late, but it was nice that we had the day a home the next day, I really needed that day to rest, so it was good!
It was a fun trip and we are so thankful for the chances we get to travel around!
I'm just glad that Matt was behind the camera and not the fireworks!