The Beauty of the Alps
Getting there
Getting into Switzerland was probably one of the harder things to do on this trip. My first destination was Geneva to stay the night before continuing to Zermatt in the morning. I hopped on the train in Lyon and sat there for about 30 minutes before hearing an announcement and seeing everyone hop off the train. Turns out that one got canceled for some unknown reason. I looked at the schedule and saw that there was another one in 2 hours, so I sat down at a restaurant to wait. About 20 minutes before that second train was supposed to arrive, I see that it had also been canceled. I quickly looked up more routes that might be possible and found a very wacky route that just might work. This route was to go up to Bourg-en-Bresse, down to Ambérieu-en-Bugey, then finally into Geneva. After 8 hours of waiting between trains and on trains, I had finally reached Geneva. It was dark by the time I got there, so I just got some dinner and went to sleep.
The next day was much better! I woke up and met my sister and friend Laura at the Geneva airport. We would be spending the next 5 days in Switzerland together. The train ride through the Alps was incredibly beautiful as we made our way to Zermatt. I couldn’t believe my eyes!
These pictures don’t come close to displaying the immense scale of these mountains, but hopefully this is better captured in later pictures.
Arriving in Zermatt
We hopped off the train at about the middle of the day into a winter wonderland! All of the buildings looked vintage and cozy, covered with a layer of snow. No cars besides little electric taxis driving around. Everything about it felt like a fairytale, or at least a holiday story.
Here’s the buildings I was talking about:
Here’s the cars:
We stayed at Le Mirabeau hotel which was about a 3 minute walk from the train station (very useful). We went to check in, then went for a walk to explore the town. Every new view better than the last.
First night
We decided to go to Restaurant Du-Pont for dinner that night. I tried their raclette which was just a slab of melted cheese on a plate. I’m not gonna lie, it was amazing and I do no regret it one bit. I also got some macaroni which I quickly learned comes with applesauce which is a Swiss tradition in the alpine regions. The contrasting flavors were incredible and something I had never tried before. Here’s the raclette that I clearly loved:
Day 2
We woke up on day 2 looking up to see clouds covering most of the mountain range. This was a little disappointing, but we made the best of it. Our first outing was the Gornergrat train up to a summit that supposedly had the best view of the Matterhorn. Sadly the clouds were too thick to see any of it. The outing was still definitely worth it though and we got plenty of good views (and goats?).
After the train ride, we all got massages at the spa and took a nice nap before getting ready for our dinner and night out. We had reservations at Whymper Stube which is a relatively high end Swiss restaurant. We had to get the classic fondue and had an absolute blast with our Thanksgiving meal (yeah this was Thanksgiving).
We decided to end the night with some drinks at a nearby bar before calling it a night.
Day 3
We woke up on day 3 to clear skies and lots of energy to explore. We had planned to go up the gondola to the Glacier Paradise Point, so we quickly ate our breakfast and bought our tickets. This ended up being the most beautiful activity of the entire trip as we got to see the the immense scale of the Alps in the cloudless skies.
As we got to the 360 degree panorama view, we realized how cold it really was up there. We didn’t have an exact temp, but it didn’t matter. We had the most incredible view of the trip:
This is the kind of view that makes you think you’re in a dream or something. I truly could not believe my eyes looking at the seemingly infinite scale of this mountain range. The cold quickly caught up to us though and we scurried back to the warmth of the lodge.
Ice Museum
We were exploring the lodge at the top of the mountain and found the entrance to the ice museum! This is essentially a giant cave in the glacier filled with beautiful ice sculptures. It was quite the experience to be walking around inside a glacier.
Overall, I’d have to say the views up here were the best I’d seen in all of Europe.
