The Scroop's European Holiday: Day 27 Zermatt:

Today we wake up to a carbon copy of yesterday, blue skies and perfect weather. Since we have been in Switzerland we have been blessed with the weather. We get ready and head down for our breaky and clear the breakfast bar of croissants before walking up to where the cable car ride will take us to the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise. We buy tickets for the Glacier Paradise and for Schwarzsee. To get to Schwartzsee we will have to come back down and take another gondola on a different route but first, it’s the Matterhorn!!! We get on board the first ride which is a gondola to Furi and swap over to one of the big cable cars. These things are a pretty hairy ride dangling by a wire and every time you go over one of the main towers the cable car rocks back and forth for a bit. The first one takes us up to Trockener Steg 9642ft (2939m) above sea level. We get off and we are miles in the air and we think thank god I thought we were going to hit the sun and then we realise there’s more to go!!!! So we follow the masses around the corner and there s another big cable car. We climb on board and head off and this thing is insane, it just keeps going up and up and right at the end it feels like it’s going vertically up as it’s hugging the side of the mountain. We arrive at the Glacier Paradise and we are 12739ft (3883m) above sea level. We get off and starting walking through the tunnel inside the mountain that takes us to the snow fields, this is probably a 150m – 200m walk and we are finding it tough to adjust to the altitude. We walk out of the doors and WOW, what a view and people are skiing and snow boarding it was awesome. We’re standing there for a bit and we get talking to this bloke who works there as a ski instructor or something. He gives us some advice on where to wander to and what to see and how much fun we can have, a really good bloke, so Kris says “thanks mate” and we head off into the gift shop!!?? After the compulsory souvenir buying we take a wander along the ski paths and just admire the views. The Matterhorn doesn’t look as impressive from behind or this close up, it loses its grandeur a little but there is plenty more to look at that is impressive. We spend some time up there and it’s freezing. The sun is belting down on us but it is still freezing. It was that cold I even wore the gloves that no one else would wear (see photo). After that we went down this lift that took us inside this glacier cave. This is pretty awesome and they had ice sculptures in there and they had this ice slide that you could slide down and pop out of the mouth of some animal ice sculpture. We give this a shot, the kids are having a ball, and I happen to see the dude who was playing the alphorn yesterday up at the Gornograt standing next to me. I tap him on the shoulder and sign language to him with a series of head movements and eyebrow raises “hey mate, check out the photo’s on me camera I took of you yesterday playing your alphorn” (because you just assume everyone around you can’t speak English). It turns out he does speak English, just, and he’s stoked at the photo’s and before you know it he’s organising our next holiday and we are staying with him and his wife at his wife’s mothers cabin in the mountains of Interlarken!! Lovely people. We get out of the glacier cave and take another wander around the snow before heading back down the mountain. The ride down isn’t any less hairy but we get down safely. We change at the bottom and take the series of gondola’s back up in a different direction to Schwarzsee. Even though we weren’t going as high up this time, the trip on those gondolas was the scariest of all our rides up the mountains since being in Switzerland. At one point while we were going up and I mean way up, it slowed down to a stop and I’m thinking “holy crap we’re doomed”. I tell you what, it’s really hard when you’re a fully grown man and you’re pack’n ya daks but you have to stay calm so the kids don’t freak out. Anyway, we are all still alive and we made it up the top safe and sound. We have a look around, not much to do up there but it was an awesome view. We head back down and stop off half way and I have my 98^th Apfelstrudel (apple strudel) since being in Switzerland and then we make our way back to the bottom and home again. We are beat and our hotel has a wellness centre downstairs with a sauna, jacuzzi, steam bath, spa showers. So we get reception to bring us up some robes and we strip off, robe up and whack on those silly little slippers and we all rock on down for an hour or so of solid relaxation and revitalisation. AWESOME. Now it’s off for dinner and into bed. Tomorrow we need to be on the train at 10 for the Glacier Express ride to St. Moritz.