Although St. Moritz is known for being a posh pristine mountain town for playboys to show off expensive ski boots, Zermatt is only famous for the rugged peak of the Matterhorn. Since summer season was still officially a week away, our hotel was underbooked and gave us a free upgrade to a room that could see the famous pyramidal-shaped peak that most Americans recognize first as the centerpiece to a Disneyland ride.
Zermatt has a more rugged and “authentic” atmosphere, full of old original looking wooden houses and livestock barns jammed up against hotels and watch shops.
Our hotel restaurant had an intriguing menu so we opted to eat in for dinner. We enjoyed one of the best meals of our trip; Sam ordered a baked local fish and I struggling to finish what I can only call MegaGrilledCheese Sandwich (a baked dish of bread, fried eggs, bacon, cheese and more cheese with a hearty herb-laden tomato soup).
To burn off those calories we headed for the Matterhorn trail, which began a short walk down the street from our hotel. We hiked up the winding trail, watching the peak get smaller and smaller as we got closer. That’s the way it works when there’s always another peak in the way.
Needless to say, we didn’t have time to hike all the way to the snowy slopes. After sunset, we stopped on one of the benches and watched a local sheep herd graze, just listening to the “white noise”-app-like sounds until darkness set in and the sheep wandered up to their barn.
The next morning we took the Gornergrat bahn up to the 10,000 foot top, which has 360-degree view of several peaks including Matterhorn.
On the way down we got off at the first station (Rotenboden) and hiked in the snow to the next.
We wanted to find the famous Riffelsee, a lake high in the alps that reflects the Matterhorn. We quickly found out the snow was so high it would be dangerous (we received numerous warnings about this) to move too far away from the train tracks over the hills into the unknown landscape of lingering winter.
It turned out later we had gone the wrong way anyway. The tourist maps showing the summer hiking trails are notoriously confusing about the location of the lake, so much so that the Glacier Express operator told us it was “wrong” – and he was right. The lake we searched for and considered risking our lives for was actually above us the entire time, a hike UP from Rotenboden, not down! However, due to recent snowfall, it wouldn’t have reflected any peaks that day, anyway.
Back in town, we decided to try the famous Swiss Fondue, ordering the white wine cheese pan. The wine made the cheese a little too bitter for our tastes and our enthusiasm for fondue withered and died faster than the bread wilted in the hot cream.
We spent the rest of the day looking at swiss watches and eating chocolate before heading up the Matterhorn trail for a second try at sunset photography.
