Sunday, July 4, 2010

Zermatt







This weekend was amazing! Lindsay (another design intern here) and I went to Zermatt early Saturday morning. It started off really rough though. Let me start back from Friday when I bought our tickets online to try to save some money. We were super excited because I found some really good deals. Then I purchased and printed them when I found out that I had bought 2 pairs of tickets going from Zermatt back home and none of the tickets were actually to Zermatt. So I told my boss Lori who said not to worry she would go down with us to straighten it out at the train station. When we got there with Lori and her husband Jon (the other boss), they said they could not do anything and Jon went off on them for poor customer service and the level of rudeness we were getting. I felt so bad that they were doing all this for me. At the end, we ended up buying another pair of tickets to get to Zermatt... meaning the super saver deal I tried to take advantage of online had been nullified. Great.



That night I set my alarm for 5:00 am to have plenty of time to get ready for our big trip. I was excited! Problem was, also that night, my phone died. So I didn't wake up until 6:10 and we were supposed to leave the hotel at 6:15! I scrambled together some stuff as Lindsay knocked on the door all dressed to hand me a plate of eggs. =\ i took a bite and continued to get ready for the next 2 minutes and ran out the door. We ran down to the bus station and got on just for me to realize I had left my half-fare card at the hotel. This card is vital to me being able to afford the trip so we missed that bus so that I could run back to my room and get it. I ran back to the train station since we now had to take the train instead of the bus and 5 minutes later got on the train from Gais to St. Gallen. We then got on a train from St. Gallen to Zurich which we caught just in time and then a train from Zurich to Visp which we also caught 7 minutes before it left. Then 3 hours later we took a train from Visp to Zermatt which we caught literally a minute before it left.


The train ride into Zermatt was amazing! Snow capped mountains, waterfalls, rushing streams, caves, beautiful small houses...just indescribable really. When we got there we had about 5 hours before we had to check into the hostel. We grabbed some lunch and took a train up to Gornergrat. The train wrapped around the mountain going up giving us a breath taking view. When we finally reached the top we couldn't even speak. We were just surrounded by this gorgeousness that was so overwhelming. I just sat there for awhile to take it all in.





Unfortunately I wasn't dressed appropriately and it started getting chilly and drizzled a bit. So we took a train half way down the mountain and hopped off to hike down the rest of the way. We came across the cutest sheep and they let us get so close to them. Then the trail down was pretty scary at first since it was pretty rocky and slippery and the whole left side of the trail was just a drop down. Of course my fear of heights didn't help but I did it! You can see from the picture below how far up we were. This is after about 30-45 minutes of hiking down already. The town we were hiking towards is at the bottom but not the one with the little roads connecting in the center... the town is behind that, very small and more populated. As you see we had a looong way ahead of us.











We decided to take a break and take in the scenery next to a small stream. We sat down on the side of the mountain on the softest and lushest greenery, surrounded by all these colorful wildflowers. We filled our water bottles with the water from the stream and it was ice cold and delicious! How could you beat water straight from the alps?









We headed down for another 3 hours or maybe even 4 I can't remember. It started raining and our legs, feet, and toes were seriously getting sore but we were determined to make it, especially since we had to check into the hostel by 6:30 pm. We finally got into town around 5:45 and we were cold and wet and Lindsay was a little sunburned too. We got a little lost looking for the hostel but we got there at about 6:20. We were doing this all day. Catching things at the last minute but we were doing well. We changed our clothes and went down for our free dinner. It was pretty good for a hostel, plus we really needed the recharge. We wanted to go see the glacier after dinner but unfortunately the lifts were closed so we headed into town. We had seen a bar named GramPi's when we first arrived and were determined to go there. That is where we found THE MOST INTERESTING MAN IN THE WORLD!!









I mean how great is he? That's Lindsay pretending to pose for a picture so we could get him behind her. It's hard to see here but his mustache is curled up on both ends! So we people watched for awhile there before we went to the bar across to see what was going on. Fifa. We pretended to be interested and scoped out if they had any hot guys. I proved my demographic to Lindsay when the only looks I got were from some old Indian man and a middle aged white man from across the bar. In my defense I was wearing sweats, a tank top, my hair pulled back, and no make up. But still that is my usual crowd. Not very proud of it. I was kind of cold so I ordered Tee Rum (rum+tea; please try it, its energizing and good). We weren't getting any free drinks looking like disgusting hikers so we went back to the hostel and crashed. The next day we caught 4 trains back to Gais and vowed not to use our legs for the rest of the day. We could barely get up and down the stairs for the trains.

2 comments:

  1. Nice pics, using the panorama feature on your camera I see.

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  2. Don't forget that African American men are also your demographic, not just old Indian men.

    ReplyDelete