Emily and Chris’s epic adventure has begun! It is Saturday night at 7:38pm here in rainy Zermatt. We got here about 4:30 pm Zermatt time after leaving our house yesterday at 7 am mountain time. Needless to say it has been a long trip. Fortunately we were able to get our upgrade from Dulles to Brussels and as some of you know, business class is the ONLY way to fly overseas. If we can help it, we will not be flying coach again on any overseas (Europe) trips. The huge comfy seats that turn into lay-flat beds are worth the extra money by themselves! What really puts it over the top though is the excellent service you get in what United refers to as their “Premium,” cabins. Your choice of movies, real food, those little warm towels that you wipe your face and hands with…the list goes on. There was even fancy cheesecake and sorbet after the dinner. I could go on, but I figure you want to know a little about where we are.
From Zurich, we took a normal train straight from the airport to a town called Visp. At that point we switched to what I think of as more of a mountain train. These trains usually aren’t as fancy and they certainly do not go as fast due to the curves and the closeness of the rock walls the train is cutting through. Sometimes there wasn’t more than a foot between our window and the rocks.
The mountains here are extremely steep! Zermatt sits in a valley at about the same altitude as Denver. It is surrounded by mountains that go over 14,000 feet, which makes for quite the striking contrast in heights.
We can’t see the Matterhorn at the moment but the mountain we can see a little of, which is next to the Matterhorn, has fresh snow on it at the top. The rest of what we can see is about as green as you can imagine. Apparently Zermatt gets a good amount of rain at this time of year normally, but it seems as though this may be a heavier than usual rainfall year based on local talk.
We have big plans for tomorrow, and I am getting pretty tired so I’ll sign off for now and hopefully will have more for you all tomorrow.
