Zermatt

Our third trip this summer was our first transatlantic flight with a child. We chickened out and only brought one. I wanted to bring the child who could fly free but C wisely said we should bring the child who may remember this trip (and would be easier to placate). So yes, we were headed to Zurich but planned to spend a few days in Zermatt - land of the Matterhorn. My trip synopses are taking forever to write so this may be a less verbose.

Wed:
7pm flight. Timing worked out great. We had dinner in the airport while Hannah went back and forth on the moving walkways. Then we tricked her into trying to find the pilots in the cockpit so she stared fixedly at the window for a while in the waiting area as we waited to board. We had told her about the inflight entertainment system and movies on the plane so she was super excited and even wanted to put her headphones on for once. But of course, it turned out the back of the plane had broken inflight entertainment systems. Curses. But probably for the best since we had the same movies on the way back. Luckily we had a tablet with movies which saved us. After dinner and 1 movie, I just told H to go to sleep and she did. She probably had the best sleep out of the 3 of us! Amazing. When we landed I had to practically shake her awake.

Thu:

On the way up to the Matterhorn

Zurich arrival. Luckily we brought the stroller because H couldn't walk for very long. Up to what age do kids need strollers?? We barely made the 4:30 train though I had planned to catch the 5:30 train but we got out of the plane faster than anticipated. We ran to the platform 2 minutes before it was slated to arrive and then just threw ourselves and the luggage in. Unfortunately then I dragged C through a few cars before I finally gave up on finding a good seat. He was hauling two big pieces of luggage. It was 2 hours to Visp and then the 1 hour train ride to Zermatt was super scenic. Unfortunately at that point, H had lost patience and demanded another movie so she missed out on looking outside the train sadly. Our room had a marvelous view of the Matterhorn from the balcony. And you would think I would know by now but this was our 4th trip to a mountain resort in the summer and these hotels/houses never have A/C and are so hot.

Fri:
It was a beautiful clear day so we knew we should go up to the matterhorn which required a series of gondolas. Apparently children under 3 are not allowed up there due to the danger. They didn't elaborate on what that would be but maybe altitude sickness? The gondola ride was pretty interesting due to the nice views and also there was a german family in our car and the kids were very curious about H and her chatter. I could hear them asking their Dad what various phrases meant.

Looking down at the Gorner Gorge

On the way down, we stopped off at Furi stop mid-mountain and had lunch. The whole thing that C had heard about with regards to zermatt was that there were mountain top restaurants everywhere so you could hike from restaurant to restaurant. (Turns out this is a swiss thing and not just a Zermatt thing).

We decided to hike down from there to the Gorner Gorge which was a super cool canyon.

Alpine playground

Sat:

We headed up another side of the mountain via the Sunegga express. This side was apparently very family friendly and we discovered an awesome alpine playground with slides integrated with boulders and no children in sight. I think all the kids were down at the lake that was up here. We started hiking the panorama trail but H wasn't terribly cooperative and then C thought it would take too long/be too difficult since we started going uphill. We turned around and instead hiked down the Marmot trail. This turned out to be a pretty steep downhill and it's rated for 4 and up! Clearly european children are like mountain goats.

The rest of the trip involved me working and it wasn't terribly exciting but C was on his own with H and looks like they explored all the kid activities in zurich...