Switzerland

We left the lovely Le Faucigny Hotel and made our way to Zermatt, via Tasch, where we left our car and took the train to Zermatt. 

Zermatt, Switzerland is a "car free" town. Which means there are no private cars for regular people or tourists to drive, but the business owners and city workers have electric cars and small buses that are quiet and quite quick. 

While I admire the idea of a "car free" town, I cannot say the current practice of driving silent electric cars through throngs of tourists very quickly is a safe practice. We did not see or cause any accidents, but they sure snuck up on us a couple times. 

The drive to Zermatt was less than three hours. Roundabouts seem to be the way in that part of the world. We went through so many roundabouts it's surprising we found our way with nary a wrong turn (Noah was driving, good thing). Roundabouts through the mountain towns was especially interesting. 

The train ride from Tasch was about 30 minutes. 

And thus, we landed in Zermatt, home of The Matterhorn. 

We were let off the train in a bustle of people, luggage in tow. We found our hotel using the handy dandy GPS on Noah's phone. It really wasn't far but there were a lot of people and so many shops that caught our eye. 

We stayed at the Hotel Beau Rivage, owned by a former olympic ski champion. We had a delicious lunch in the hotel restaurant and got our first taste of OH MY GOSH SWITZERLAND IS EVER MORE EXPENSIVE THAN FRANCE!!!!!! 

The day before, in Chamonix, Noah had gone biking up and down the mountain and was worn out. I, on the other hand, had gone shopping, and was ready to climb something. 

I talked Noah into a "short" hike (according to the hotel concierge) up a tiny bluff. Man, were we out of shape. 

We started hiking on this paved trail through the town that went up and up through the neighborhood until the neighborhood ended as well as the pavement and we were on a foot trail. We looked up and saw this funny little building WAAAY up on the bluff. We couldn't imagine what it was, and didn't think we would ever really know. 



Until 45 minutes (ish) later we reached it. It was a restaurant called "Edelweiss" way up there on the bluff. Quaint. Quite quaint. 

And not the top of the climb.



We walked through a beautiful mountain forest. Always going ... up. 

 The trail kept going up and up and the scenery through the mountain forest was beautiful. I was hoping to see The Matterhorn, pictures of which abound on the Internet, but didn't yet know where it was perched. 

We kept walking the trail and slowly came around a bend. 

Finally we cleared the wood and were in an open area, at the top of the rocky bluff. 

Yeah, we walked along the top of that. It looks really high up but it's just a baby mountain, really.

Noah was grumpy because he was tired. 

I was happy. 

And voila! There it was! OMG, so close! 

We slowly made our way down the mountain and saw some very interesting things.

Evidently there are natural Artesian wells in Switzerland, and they've created these natural spigots out of hollow trees to draw the water up. They just run naturally all day long. 

 Back at our hotel and discovered that right next to it was a river and on the bridge that went over the river was a perfect view of The Matterhorn. 

Later that night, when we were trying to sleep, we discovered that the bridge lookout was a very popular place for late night party goers.

Next installment, the Klein Matterhorn - the highest mountain lookout in the Alps at 12,800 something feet. It was very cool. Literally. 

Lac Bleu - Even Better than Lac Blanc

After taking a day to recover from our ascent on Lac Blanc, we got up early in the morning and took the cable up the mountain. Lac Bleu just happened to be up there, evidently not a big tourist attraction because there was only one other person there besides us, and we walked horizontally-ish across to the other mountain, where I saw Les Drus - the mountain I totally fell in love with. 

This is a photo of Les Drus that I discovered in my favorite shop in Chamonix. It is a huge photo; 4-5 feet across and about 2 feet tall. It's very impressive in person and I agonized my whole time in Chamonix as to whether to spend the $500 for an unframed photo. I decided that I needed to go check out this mountain in person before making the decision.

After getting off the cable we walked along a lush green meadow to reach Lac Bleu.

Then we reached the Lac. It was still quite early in the morning, and the colors were intense, the air was cool, and the sun was coming up behind the mountain.

 The Lac was surrounded by gigantic boulders. We decided we were going to walk around the lac; it was a smaller lac, and got halfway and realized the error of our ways, but were committed by then. 

Here's Noah walking around the Lac. See how big the boulders are?

From where he was standing

As we traversed the beautiful mountain we saw the sun trying to peep over the mountain. 

Yep, that's snow. 

It was beyond words beautiful. 

Then we got to walk across the mountain to Les Drus. We saw many amazing sites, including Aiguille Du Midi.

There is a look out on top of Du Midi. We didn't go up there but now I wish we had. From there it is supposed to have an amazing view of Mont Blanc.

I guess we save that for next time. 

But we saw other amazing sites.  

And a series of photos that brought the sun up over the mountain!

 Just starting to peep out around the mountain...

Oh my gosh, here it comes! 

There is is! 

That may have been the best part of my vacation. Such stillness, clarity, quiet beauty.

Ok, so, as usual, we had fallen off the path and had to find our way back to it in order to get across the mountain to see Drus. This included climbing on gigantic humongous rocks. 

Through beautiful wildflowers and rivulets.

A view across the valley where we stopped to snack. 

 Our path ahead ....

Looking across at the other side of the mountain and the village of Chamonix. 

  

 This side of the mountains are very green, lush, serene. 

 We had the most beautiful walk across the mountain to the other side where we met Les Drus, and took the train down the mountain. 

We saw lots of beautiful flowers. 

 A lovely spot at the lookout to Les Drus, full of wildflowers, rocky spaces, and amazing views of the mountain and the glacier in the mountain valley.  

And alas, my mountain!

I couldn't take enough pictures of my favorite mountain. 

It had a little pet cloud that day. 

And here is me with Les Drus!

And here is its glacier. 

 What a wonderful day that was. Probably my favorite of the whole trip, and that's saying something. 

And I was decided. I went to the shop to purchase the amazing, gigantic photo of Les Drus. To discover that it had been sold earlier that day. 

The photographer was up on Mont Blanc and couldn't get me another one before we left the next morning. 

Ah, well. 

Next installment will take us to Zermatt, Switzerland ... where we climbed to the base camp of The Matterhorn!