Zermatt Day One...

Today was our first day in Zermatt. I was watching the weather and saw that weather was predicted to roll into Zermatt later in the week but that I was supposed to be beautiful earlier in the week. Well, there's not much to Zermatt for hikers when the mountain is clouded in so we decided to switch up our schedule to take advantage of the good weather.

We boarded the first train out of Munich in order to have as much time in Zermatt as we could. Well, we learned a few things on our train trip. One, there is no route from Munich to Zermatt that doesn't travel thru Austria and because our Eurail pass did not include Austria, the very nice ticket man made us pay for our two stops in the country (all of about 12 Euro). Two, our Eurail pass does not cover private rail ways (which we knew) and the trip from Visp to Zermatt was on a private rail way (which we didn't know). 50 EUR later we were all set. The ticket man on the train was very nice and let us stay in first class but only pay for second:) Thank you mister ticket man.

After all our that back and forth we made it into Zermatt safe and sound. The trip from Visp to Zermatt was amazing! The train is a partial cog rail in order to get you up the mountains (imagine the things you see that pull roller coasters up the hills!) Many times you had to stop and wait for the train coming down because there was only one set of tracks in places. It gave you all the more time to sit and bask in the amazing scenery.

We arrived in to Zermatt around 3:00pm and promptly found our accommodations for the few days we were going to be there. It was quite a hike up but it was worth it - we had an unobstructed view of the Matterhorn from our place. We dropped our big packs and switched to day packs and headed out to find some solitude! We headed out on a circuit hike that connected you to 7 or 8 huts if you did the entire thing. We decided to do the first two and then head back down - just a little bit to get us warmed up for our bigger hikes later in the week.

Well, trails in Zermatt are basically straight up! They must not have know about switchbacks when they cut the trail (or the Swiss are just that hard core!) I'm really glad we dropped the big packs because it would have been really tough. Walking stick are mandatory to save your knees!

The pain of the hike was washed away by the amazing scenery we were walking thru. Waterfalls, mountains, wild animals! As we crested the hill at hotel du trift the sun started to fall in the sky. We knew we only had a few more hours of good light so after a few pics, we turned around and high tailed it down the trail into town. We arrived just in time for sunset (which was something like 9:40pm!).

We'd not eaten yet, which was a problem since most places close at 5 or 6pm, but managed to find one place that had food. Lesson for tomorrow - either take dinner or be prepared to pay thru the nose! Tomorrows trip will be to the 5 Sweeweng (5 lakes basically)

Lessons Learned:
1. You don't need a reservation with a first class Eurail ticket in Germany or Switzerland on most all trains (unless you're going to Italy or France or something).
2. Don't listen to the guys in the main station ticket booth - they'll sell you anything! Ours validated our Eurail pass but still made us reservations in 2nd class on a train where reservations weren't required. None of which we needed.
3. Learn what trains are national rail vs. private rail and be prepared to pay for private rail. We got a discount but it was still not cheap!

4. Most places take Visa!

5. Buying bread, meat and cheeze at the grocery store was a great way to have a cheap lunch on the trail. The huts and inns you passed were quite expensive.