Zermatt (Matterhorn) and Bern

To make the most of my train pass I used my first day for a huge train trip. First I went to see the Matterhorn from the village Zermatt. I took the longer train through Interlaken which is part of the Golden Pass. This is the scenic train route and Interlaken is a big tourist area. It was certainly very pretty, villages on grassy slopes below mountains (no snow, not high enough). The train was very slow and there were lots of stops. The train going to Zermatt was very full and climbed fairly steeply (the train needed cogs for certain parts of the trip).

Going to Zermatt showed higher snow-covered peaks in the distance. It has been raining for much of the time in Luzern but the weather was lovely. I could even view about 1/2 of the Matterhorn which was amazing.

The village of Zermatt also hosts a large ski area (like whistler) but it is much more picturesque. There is lots of green and the hills are undeveloped, and in Whistler they would be covered with condos.

Of course, this probably means only the very rich have access to those properties (ok, Whistler too, but there was a time when more normal people bought..). The houses on the way to Zermatt were also different in that they had slate? stone roofs. Some were very mossy and irregular and hinted at a long history.

I walked around Zermatt for about 2 hours, I wandered up some of the trails and through the backstreets of the town. This is clearly where lots of people come to go hiking, they all have mountaineering boots, two hiking poles and a short ice axe. You can access the backcountry using the ski lift but man there aren't any deals. At whistler they charged ~$26 for backcountry access but in Zermatt they charged ~$100 Swiss Franks for three days (no less) and much more for every other day you were in the backcountry. However, the winter skiing seemed reasonable and I would love to come back here and ski for a day. Certainly there were people skiing even now and they were taking the train back to Bern (with their skis on the train - that was interesting to see).

After visiting the Matterhorn I took the train to Bern. As it is Sunday, no stores were open but I wandered around the streets.

There were more stone buildings here and the old part of the city was high up above the river (on a peninsula/promontory). It was lovely to walk around for a few hours. Far off in the distance I could finally see the big mountains. They rose up in the distance like Baker does over Vancouver but there was a whole chain of them. However, I could only see them through the distant clouds so I didn't get to appreciate the chain. You think you see the mountains (dark line) in this photo but if you zoom in you can see the first bank of clouds is also mountains. Those are pretty impressive peaks!

I will be going to Geneve and Lausanne next so hopefully I will get better views. I should also be able to see vineyards, talk about a combination!