Monday 18th August: Cloudy and cool in Paris, Sunny and Cool in Zermatt 5°C to 20°
Brisbane to Zermatt: Flight Departed 12.45pm, Train arrived Zermatt 5.13pm:
Zermatt checking out puffer coats
Today we arrived to a warm afternoon in Zermatt, with a magnificent backdrop of the Matterhorn. At last the start of our hiking adventure after a 32 hour plane/train trip from Brisbane. Zermatt, a no-car town except for the electric service cars that hoot around the streets, is buzzing with tourists. It's almost a carnival atmosphere and the weather is much warmer and drier than the weather reports of last week had been predicting.
Zermatt is buzzing with tourists
The Matterhorn backdrops Zermatt
Our Hotel Dufour Traditionell
8pm - the magnificent Matterhorn
Can't get enough of the Matterhorn
We departed Brisbane at 12.45pm on Sunday with Etihad to Singapore, then changed to Air France to Paris before connecting to our Geneva flight. We like Air France is because their times suit perfectly with minimum disruption, arriving in Paris at 8am ready to start the day. Their business class seats lay down to an angled flat bed - great for putting your feet up but not so good when you continually slide down feet first. We're delayed in Paris an hour - someone was a "no show" and the crew needed to find and remove their baggage for security reasons. Geneva is a warm 20deg C when we arrive, initially stressing when our blue and white stripey bags containing our back packs fail to turn up. We don't have a Plan B, so we're relieved when they're the last to finally roll off the conveyor belt half and hour later.
There's no customs and it's just a few hundred metres walk to the adjoining train station where we buy tickets for the 1.23pm to Zermatt - $AUD238 - train travel in Switzerland is very expensive. After 3 hours, we change in Visp for the Glacier Express - it was this train that crashed just a few days earlier near St Moritz, its starting point. 10 minutes later the cogs latch on to the track and we're heading steeply uphill. 30 minutes later we enter the Mattertal - the valley of Zermatt - a narrow gully with steeply sided mountains on either side. We're a bit nervous as we keep and eye out for the Europaweg, the pathway we'll be taking tomorrow high in the mountains.
Finally our cog train arrives in Zermatt to swarming throngs of hikers and sightseers. The tourist office is of no help in assessing the state of the Euroweg, a recently manmad high walking path along the eastern mountain face and notoriously famous for rockslides and washed away suspension bridges. She tells me what I already know that the main suspension bridge is out but that the rest of the track between the Europahut and Grachen, our walk in 2 days time, is ok.
Then its off the the Galcier Intersport a sports shop which I'd earmarked as having isobutane gas bottles for our coffee making burner. None. But a little further up the street we're in luck. 2 Please. One to take and one to leave for when we return for the next part of the walk. The Hotel Dufour Traditionell is about 600 metres further on and easy to find. Thank you booking.com. There's unbelievable views of the Matterhorn at every turn of the way.
Unpacking, repacking, sorting and double checking our stuff - we'll be leaving some spare tea, coffee, soap and maps behind and to collect when we return in 10 days. A quick shower than its off for a beer. Th restaurants a chock-a block so we do the unthinkable and eat at McDonnalds - there's no one there. Clearly it's not the place to be "seen". But we only feel like a light meal and not a full blown Swiss restaurant 6 course dinner so it suits us. And it's warm. The night air is now cold and the puffer jackets - Parachute like material with and inner lining of super light and thin down.
Home to bed and an early night.