THE MATTERHORN

We had an excellent view from bed when we woke up. I'd say it was right up there with the most impressive views I've even woken up to.

The view from our balcony that morning

Enjoying a true Swiss breakfast

Our hotel had an excellent expresso machine so we had quite a few cappuccinos before heading out for a day of hiking. I also tried their eggs and was thoroughly unimpressed. They were soft-boiled and just bad. Jackson got a real kick out of this.

Jackson leading the way to the hike

Ready for an adventure

Still in disbelief that the Matterhorn is behind me

THE MATTERHORN

The little church again, this time with Mattie

Jackson soaking in the view

When we started out that morning it was pretty chilly. As we got going on our hike all of our layers came off! This hike was going to be no joke. 

The meadows and the mountains?
YES, SWITZERLAND, YES!

Jackson taking it all in

Still so excited to be there

The trail wasn't ugly

There was beauty everywhere

Looking back towards town

A sheep house

It was like living in a screensaver

Jackson met a friend ;)

Yep.

Starting to feel the exhaustion 

The "ugly" side of the hike wasn't ugly at all

We made it to the little town we'd read about in Zmutt, a small village up in the mountains. We stopped in at the local restaurant Restaurant Dörflein Z'Mutt to use the restroom, get a drink and just take a rest. The restaurant had wifi available that was the fastest I've ever used and the water was free and very cold. The beer was ice cold and not too expensive so they had two very happy customers on their hands.

Jackson has never looked happier!

We eventually decided to keep hiking. We'd met a nice man on the trail, Pierre, who mentioned that there were two waterfalls worth hiking to so off we went.

We took all of these photos with just our iPhones. Imagine if we were talented and had good equipment how lovely the photos would be. Keep that imagination going because that will never be us. We like being relatively low maintenance by not lugging huge cameras around. We ended up hiking for a number of hours that day and covered over 8 miles. We saw the waterfalls and crossed over a few snowfields before deciding to head back to Zermatt. We stopped in at the grocery store on our way home to grab some light refreshments and got the best strawberries we'd ever tasted. SO GOOD! 

Those strawberries were amazing.

To be honest, I was not sure I'd be able to make it back down the hill from our hotel to get dinner that evening but I rallied. 

"Beer is cheaper than soda here"

My salad was AWESOME and Jackson enjoyed his burger

We decided on an "American" restaurant for dinner so I could have a salad and Jackson could get the burger he was craving. This place, the Brown Cow Pub, was not really American (no ice in my drink), but it was pretty darned good and reasonably priced as our dinner was right at $50! 

Petefish

These buildings in the village dated back to the 1600s

Selfie with Mattie

She was still hanging out when we got back to our room
for the night

We toured the town a bit after dinner to try to stretch our weary legs before climbing back up to the hotel for the night. We had a wonderful day of weather for our big hiking adventure. The weather changes so quickly around the Matterhorn that Jackson's big fear was we'd get all the way here and not even see it. Not the case! She put on quite the show for us and I'll forever treasure these memories. Jackson called this day one of the best of his life. I agree!

We woke up the next morning to rain. We again felt so fortunate to have had a good weather day to hike and explore. We had breakfast at the hotel again and then packed up and headed for the train station. It was time to head for France again!  

Headed down the mountain

This time we'd be headed to the French Alps, not Paris. We had about a two and half hour drive from the station where we'd left the rental car to our new hotel in Chamonix, France. The drive proved to be quite the adventure as it was through some pretty large mountains, but we made it without much issue. I'm so glad we were able to make it to Zermatt. The Matterhorn is truly a dream.