What are the main things people always think of when they hear the word "Switzerland"? Chocolate, watches,cheese, knives, banks, and the Matterhorn. We have been to a couple chocolate factories, a cheese factory, a bank (haha), and have a huge collection of Swiss army knives. But I have never been to the watch museum in Zurich or to the Matterhorn. Well, up until yesterday anyway. Now I just need to get to that watch museum and my life as a Swiss tourist will be complete.
We have planned many times to go to the Matterhorn in the 8 1/2 years we have lived here. They have a special train called the Glacier Express which goes from St. Moritz over to Zermatt, traveling past several famous mountain peaks and Alpine glaciers on the way. It only runs in the summer, for obvious reasons, however. I always thought it would be a fun thing to do for my birthday, which also happens to be in the summer. So every fall I would plan that next summer we would go. But for 4 of those summers I was extremely pregnant, the other 4 summers we had a wiggly 1 year old, and so spending an entire day on a train just didn't seem like a very prudent thing to do. But finally, it all came together. We still didn't go on the glacier express, but I did get to see the mountain peak I most wanted to; the famous Matterhorn.
We took the kids out of school on Tuesday, using their second joker day of the school year. Monday was a holiday, but we didn't want to go when there was a chance we would encounter huge crowds. Of course, there are always people going there every day, but we wanted to go when there would be as few people as possible. We were officially on the road and under way at 10 am, slightly behind schedule of our proposed start time of 8 am. But honestly, when I said that, I knew in my heart it was a best case scenario and extremely unlikely to happen. We let the kids sleep until they woke up naturally, not wanting to have a bunch of tired, grumpy children on our hands. We packed a big lunch and brought along the portable dvd's and a wide selection of movies. These things are key to ensuring a positive outcome to any activity involving a long drive.
It took us much longer to get there than it did to get back, mostly because we kept stopping. We had almost no traffic, and managed to time our arrival at the "Autoverlad" or "car train" as our kids called it to 2 minutes before departure. So no time lost there. This car train was the only way to get through a huge mountain and continue on the road through the Alps toward the Matterhorn. There is a road you can drive on, but it was still closed due to snow and ice! I am glad we had the chance to take the train, though, it was seriously quite an adventure in itself.
The kids loved the fact that we got to drive right on to the flat car of the train. We let them unbuckle and walk around inside the car, since it wasn't moving, the train was. But as we got going, we ended up decided that buckling up was safer. This train gets going pretty fast, through a very narrow tunnel. There was a lot of rocking back and forth. And it was almost totally dark with just a few small runner lights on the edge of the train to break up the blackness. Nicholas and I decided that if we had been in a convertible with the top down, it would have been just like riding Space Mountain at Disneyland. The train went that fast and shook that much. No upside down, though, of course. 🙂 The journey through the tunnel took about 25 minutes there and 15 coming back. The second driver was really putting the pedal to the metal. Perhaps he wanted to go home right on time?
I had brought some cross stitch to work on during the estimated 3 1/2 hour drive, but never got it out. The scenery was so incredibly beautiful and always changing the entire way there, that all I wanted to do was look out the window and try to soak it all in. In some spots, it was just so amazing, it looked like a painting, too perfect to be real, yet it was! We drove past gorgeous lakes, tiny mountain villages, awesome waterfalls, and fields of wildflowers. The kids didn't even ask us to turn on the movies until we had been driving for almost 1 1/2 hours. It was seriously that engrossing.
We arrived in Taesch, and parked our car in the very clean parking garage they have built just for people wanting to go to the Matterhorn. There are no gasoline powered cars allowed in the town of Zermatt, so everyone parks here and rides the shuttle train in. As we came around a curve in the track, I caught a quick glimpse of the Matterhorn just before it went out of view behind the train's roof. I seriously got butterflies in my stomach, I was so excited! But we didn't see it again until we left the train station and walked across the street. Then we looked back behind us and there it was. So pretty, but too many buildings in the way to do it justice, so we forged on ahead.
We had read about a cute little trail in the newspaper a few days prior, where you could find wooden tree sculptures, and also see marmuts in their natural habitat along the way. We decided that this would be the perfect activity for our family. We were only going to have about 90 minutes in Zermatt itself, before we would have to start heading back home, so this sounded ideal. The trail was on a mountain just across from the Matterhorn, so we would be sure to have a good view of it as well.
When we got up there, we discovered that perhaps the newspaper ad was just a tad premature. The trail was still under construction, and although the advertised playground was finished, there wasn't any way to get to it, except crossing a muddy construction area. But we didn't let that get us down. The weather was absolutely perfect, the clouds cleared often enough around the tip of the Matterhorn for us to get some great photos, and we did see a couple of marmuts. We also heard the cute whistling sound they make quite often. Our snacks even tasted that much better since they were seasoned with Alpine air and a fresh breeze.
Eventually, it was time for us to head back down the mountain, riding in our almost completely vertical cable car. When we returned to the village, we headed over to a playground that was already finished and let the kids run around for a bit longer. We had seen enough of the town to realize that it would be really fun to come back at a later date and stay overnight, thus enabling us to do and see even more. But that will have to wait until Alexandra is a bit older.
As we walked back to the train station to head home, Sophie and I went into a little store to pick up some postcards for the kids' collections. There was an older English couple ahead of us at the register, and they seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time to pay for their trinkets. I started to pay attention and realized that he didn't have enough Swiss money and was trying to give her Euros instead. Knowing that we only had a couple of minutes before our train left, I reached into my bag, pulled out a Swiss franc and gave it to the shopkeeper. Then I turned to the couple, smiled and said, "Welcome to Switzerland!" We were finally able to pay for our own postcards, ran back to the train station and were able to get on our train in time. Whew!
This train was very full, and we found ourselve surrounded by a large group of French speaking retirees. They were smiling very nicely at Alexandra and Noah, who made a great show of acting shy and then peeking up to give a quick smile back. That game kept everyone entertained until we were back at the parking garage. And since we used them both directions, I just have to give a shout out to the ultra clean, free bathrooms they had at this place.
We raced back home, only stopping once to grab some dinner at the Burger King drive-thru in the same town that William Tell lived in. Just as we were getting closer to Kanton Zurich, a light rain began to fall. It only lasted for a few minutes, but it was long enough to create a gorgeous rainbow that escorted us home. A perfect way to end a perfect outing.
Of course, the kids didn't end up getting to bed until almost 10 o'clock that night. I told them they could sleep in and I would drive them to school, rather than the bus. This gave them an extra 30 minutes that they desperately needed. Even so, Sarah told me that during recess she didn't go outside to play, she just laid her head down on the desk. It was so worth it, though. And definitely worth the 8 1/2 year wait.
Oh wow! What a great day! You guys are so adventurous to go do something like that even if it is in your neighborhood. I have never been to Arches or the 4 corners despite living in Utah my whole life so I know how it is to live close to something and not see it. I'm glad you finally made it up there. It looks like it was just amazing! I can't believe you took that picture, it is so beautiful! It can't be real!