These first 2 pictures are still at Lake Como.
We went through lots of tunnels like this.
Out of all the pictures I took and all the roundabouts we were on, this was the only decent picture of that experience. Stop lights were rare. This was the usual option for an intersection.
The closer we got to Switzerland, the worse the weather got.
As soon as we could find a place to do it, we stopped and got the required sticker for driving in Switzerland. It's another country where there can be heavy fines if you don't have one.
We also had to get Swiss Francs. Switzerland doesn't use the Euro. I had some left from when I lived in Germany. They still spent just fine.
Along the way, we encountered very old and very new structures.
Trout loved this bridge.
He also made sure I took the picture of the Dodge Ram pickup.
You can't actually drive to Zermatt. You have park your car in Tasch and take a taxi or take the Tasch-Zermatt shuttle train. We opted for the shuttle. I bought our tickets and noticed that they were round trip and that they lasted a month. Too bad we had only 2 nights to spend there.
We had a great room at the Hotel Daniela. They promised a Matterhorn view and they delivered.
This is one of the few pictures of me. I'm on the balcony off our room. It was hard not to look at the mountain.
These are more pictures with different weather conditions.
I had planned for us to take the Gornergratbahn up to have lunch and view the Matterhorn. You can see it through the trees here in a picture from our balcony, but the weather was so iffy, we decided to not spend the time and money to do that.
Instead we decided to walk around town and explore. We ran into the usual tourist activities.
We got glimpses of the "old" part of town. More about that later.
Some are lived in and rented out. I loved this one with the TV aerial.
This restaurant in the Hotel la Couronne was just around the corner from our hotel. It was at an intersection with the river and had a view of the Matterhorn. We had lunch there twice. Trout got the same thing both times, a fabulous veggie plate. I got two different things, one of which had so much cheese it needed to be shared so multiple people could have heart attacks together.
The shop across the street was a small market. As with most stores, it closed mid-day for lunch and a nap and reopened later.
This is a view of the Hotel Julen where we had our dinners. We had breakfast at our hotel. For the first time ever, I chose the half-board option and we weren't disappointed. If you click on the link, you will see the dining room. Those chairs were weird and not very comfortable, but the food was great.
This shows the view of the Matterhorn from the La Couronne restaurant. We opted to sit in the shade rather than in the sun.
This is the dominant church in town, St. Mauritius Catholic. Our first morning there, we were having breakfast at our hotel and a parade came right down the street we were on. I didn't have the camera and was afraid I'd miss something if I went up to the room to get it. It turned out to be for the Feast of Corpus Christi, and it was quite a long and solemn procession.
We didn't spend much time in the really touristy part of Zermatt with all the expensive shops.
As soon as we could, we turned off into the "old" Zermatt. This is actually a village within Zermatt pulled together with old buildings to illustrate typical buildings from past centuries.
The signs are in German, French, English and Japanese.
We wondered about the structural integrity of some of the places, and why the entrances were so high.
Our best guess is that it's due to the amount of snow each year...
After our little walkabout, we walked back to our hotel. You can take taxis around town, but the town is really small. There are about 6,000 year round inhabitants and the number swells to about 20,000 during ski season.
This is our balcony from below.
These are typical vehicles. They are all electric. We did see a few fossil fuel powered trucks, but they were only for heavy work around town. No personal vehicles are allowed.
The most fascinating thing for us was the graveyard. Right next to St. Mauritius is an area reserved for people who died on the Matterhorn.
Across the street were the family plots. At first I thought Swiss women kept their maiden names when they got married, but upon a little research, I learned the following: 1.) Only civil marriages are recognized in Switzerland. They take place at the Registry Office. A religious ceremony may follow the civil one. 2.) The couple takes the surname of the husband, although they can take the surname of the wife with advanced permission from the Registry. 3.) The wife may keep her surname but only if it is hyphenated and/or precedes the husband's.
In this cemetery we saw lots of hyphenated family named plots.
Trout thought these markers were some of the most interesting he had ever seen. He said he saw one where the woman had 3 husbands, but he never could find it again for me to shoot.
This is a good example of a hyphenated family plot.
This was an interesting stone. These may be brother and sister. Note the woman's "married" name is in smaller letters. If you look at the tourist street scene picture above, you will see the Darioli name on a shop in town. Graven is also a common name in the cemetery.
We saw this memorial and had no idea what it meant. When we got back, I translated using Google translate: Mountain guide victims of their profession. Here we lost the life. There we found it again. On the sacred mountain of the Lord.
This is a close up of the earliest plaque on this monument. Note the Graven name.
Trout enjoyed our time in Zermatt more than I did. He said he would like to go back sometime. I'm not so hot for that. I'm more about our next stop, Annecy, France.
