Zermatt

After having one day of rest we hopped on the train again and headed to Zermatt – it was Christmas Eve. This is a very upscale little swiss village located nestled in the Swiss Alps and at the base of the famous Matterhorn.
We took the train from my sister’s apartment in Horw to Luzern. We got off in Luzern and got on another train to go to Bern, then to Brigg and once in Brigg we switched to the mountain train. This train chugga-chugged up through the mountains. There were several marvelous views from our train car. We were sitting in first class and unlike the crappy trains to and from France these were nice. Yeah, the Swiss take their trains seriously. I found they were always clean, on time and had friendly staff.
Here are some pics of the views on the way there:



Once we arrived we flagged an electric bus to take us to our hotel.


(Suitcase wheels do not do well on packed snow and ice – which was on all the streets of Zermatt – more on that later.) These little electric buses were about the only transportation in this little town – (and, I don’t say little lightly this time). We reached our hotel that was only about 2 blocks away. It was a nice bed and breakfast named The Rex. Easy to remember – no long German name strung together that one couldn't pronounce without spitting all over themselves.
By this time I had been in two countries that spoke a different language. Granted, there were more English speaking people in this town than any other we had been to so far. I noticed that when we were in Paris the language – well, it was more sexy. I wanted to learn words and one day my sister and I played a game of all the French words we had learned so far. It was fun. But, in Switzerland with Swiss/German – it no fun. Words strung together that my ears refused to learn. My sister kept saying phrases on the train and trying to get me to say them with her and my tongue just wouldn’t do it. By the end of the trip I was like “yeah, yeah!” every time she would do that.

Once checking in we went to our room and it was nice. It had two beds shoved together (hotels seem to like to do this in Europe) and a sitting area with a fridge (stocked full of booze) and sink. There was a separate room with a sink and toilet – which, had a heated tile floor and was THE BOMB! And, another room with a tub, shower and sink.

(this is our hotel - we had to climb these latter's to get into the room)

















KIDDING!! Haha! Below is our actual hotel.





Downstairs was the spa part. It had a full swimming pool that was enclosed in a stained glass area with two water spouts you could turn on. Unfortunately, we were so cold most times we couldn’t bring ourselves to get into the pool – even after sitting in the whirlpool and sauna. There was also an aromatherapy room that smelled really good and was sort of like a wet spa. Also there were several showers you could use to rinse off before going back up to your room. The hotel provided a nice robe and little shoes to wear down there. (After the incident on the train, I was REALLY relived that there wasn’t any naked men sitting around down there.)
Afterwards we walked around town. Here are some pictures:

Realizing it only took 15 minutes to walk from one end of town to the other after sitting down to dinner that night I turned to my sister and said “What did you have in mind that we would do for four days here?”


We decided to ski for two days since everyone else in town apparently thought it was a good idea. To be continued....