Zermatt in the summer

Our hotel 'The Couronne'

The Matterhorn

Maureen and I having lunch in Zermatt

View from the cable car

Relaxing on our quick tour of Visp

Waiting for our train to Milan

Maureen having lunch on the train to Milan

Met Maureen in Visp and we both travelled to Zermatt on a Matterhorn Express train which happened to be privately run (unbeknownst to us) and not part of the Eurail system.  So surprise, surprise, we had to pay an extra forty something Swiss francs for the privilege.

Our hotel "The Couronne" was quite nice but even though we asked for twin beds we got twin mattresses on the one bed.  It didn't worry me particularly because I had been sleeping around with lots of females over the last 6 weeks.  We wondered if the hotel management thought we were a couple......

The Matterhorn was right there in front of us and visible from most parts of the town.  Got up bright and early the next morning to take the cable car up to the top of the Matterhorn.  It was a 2+ hour event and we thought we could fit it in before breakfast.  Just our luck to find that one of the middle stations was out of commission due to technical issues, and so we could only go up a certain way.  If we had the time, the inclination and the hiking gear we could have walked the length of the incapacitated station up to the next one and then continued to the top.  However, as we had a train to catch we didn't want to take the risk.  The full trip would have been CHF90 but we could only take the CHF45 trip.  This was OK because we started panicking at one stage when the entire system stopped while we were midway between mountains and we thought we were going to be stuck up there.

Zermatt is a beautiful town in the summer and it would be spectacular in the winter covered in snow.  One of these days I'm coming to Europe in winter just to be in the midst of all the snow.  We ended up leaving Zermatt early so that we could spend a couple of hours sightseeing in Visp on the way to Milan (ultimately Venice).