The Scroop's European Holiday: Day 26 Zermatt:

I wake up this morning, it’s about 6:30ish and I take a look out the window. The sun hasn’t quite come up yet, a couple of stars are still in the sky and it is clear blue, not one cloud and this is what I see

It’s like the Matterhorn is looking over me. It is incredible, what a view. As the sun rises it shines on the Matterhorn and that mountain is like a god. It’s almost like the sun is not allowed to shine anywhere else until the Matterhorn is fully ablaze. This experience has surpassed any other for me on this holiday so far. I am watching this from my bed........admittedly I’m standing on my bed but still, it’s from my bed!!!!

Of all the things we have seen so far on this holiday, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the things we still haven’t seen like the Colosseum in Rome and the Duomo in Florence, I don’t think anything can beat this. There were two reasons I wanted to come to Zermatt, one was the Glacier Express and the other was this. What a way to wake up and what a way to start our day. Today we will be going on the Gornergratbahn. This is a train that takes us from Zermatt up the mountain to Gornergrat 10,170ft (3089m ) above sea level, the highest we have been yet. The ride will take us about 40 minutes. First though it’s breaky and although this hotel is 4 star and pretty luxurious the hotel we stayed at in Lucerne, which definitely wasn’t 4 stars, had a far better breaky set up. Never the less we still had a pretty good feed and then we took the 30 second walk to the train station for our ride to Gornergrat. This is a very steep train ride that hangs on to the sides of mountains by its nurries and gives you the most amazing views of the Matterhorn and of Zermatt. We get to the top and the views are pretty good but we have been spoilt over the last couple of days and this just doesn’t quite cut the mustard not to mention the kids are disappointed with the lack of snow. There is a heap of snow on the mountains we are looking at across the glacier but none where we are standing. We look around for a while and decide to grab some lunch at the serve yourself restaurant they have up there. The prices are obscene so we’re looking for the most cost effective option. We spot a “large” self serve salad for 16 CHF (AUS$18) and some chicken nuggets at 1.10CHF each to share. Now there was no instructions on the limits of how “large” this salad coud be so Kris piles this plate up and by the time she has finished this plate is starting to resemble the Matterhorn. We go to the cashier and she gives us this sideways look as if to say we had exceeded the “large” limit but lets us through anyway. Another “way to go Kris” and we are feeling good. We finish up and decide it’s time to go back down the mountain. There are several stops along the way and I’ve decided bugger the fact we have just forked out 180 bucks on train tickets, lets walk down to the next stop!!!??? The kids are keen but Kris is giving me that sideways look that the cashier just gave me. Anyway, we start walking and we all agree this is a lot of fun and I take a squillion photo’. We even see this dude playing the Swiss alphahorn (refer photo) which we sit and watch for a while. I don’t know how far we walked as we were snaking our way down the mountain but it was a 935ft (285m) vertical distance. We get to the next train stop and jump on the next train. We are all shagged after that and just want to get back to the hotel. On the way down I suggest what if we get off at the last stop before Zermatt and take some photos!!!???? Everyone’s now giving me that “cashier look” but they follow me off the train anyway. We start walking and before we know it we have walked another 1,640ft (500m) vertically down. This was an extremely hard, steep, winding track and we still have miles to go to get to Zermatt and then, all of a sudden Mia spots a sign indicating another train stop. We all throw her in the air like that kid on the “Old El Paso” TV advert and we take the short walk to catch the train. We get to the bottom tired and ready for a feed and a good lie down. We will need the rest because tomorrow we’re going higher again to the Matterhorn!!!