Swiss part deux

So after the awesomeness that was the north face trail we packed the car and headed straight for Zermatt. Of course this is Switzerland and there are mountains everywhere, you can’t go anywhere straight.


Our station wagon beastie

We had to go over the Grimselpass to get there, nice roads, winding switchbacks and the best scenery on any drive I’ve been on (so Rach tells me, I was a bit preoccupied with the next bend).

Winding roads of the Grimselpass

We got to Zermatt (which you can’t drive to, you have to train) only to find all of the hotels were closed for the slow season break. We ended up trudging round all the hotels that were open for about 2 hours, me holding the packs and Rach darting in to wrangle a room. Of course we did eventually find place, but the real reason we had come (Matterhorn) was still hidden in mist.

The next day was a corker, bright blue skies and crisp mountain air. We hired a few bikes and proceeded to ride up a trail below the mountain. Immediately after leaving the town we got lost and confused, finding what we thought was a trial up and following it.

Easy climb… right.

Rach, taking it easy

Jamie, not taking it easy

Not the best idea to follow the hiking trail as you would have had to be the best freestyle mountain biker to even make it up the rock steps slowly. As you can see from the above photo I ended up carrying the bikes for most of the way.

Eventually tiring from carrying something that was supposed to carry me we turned around to go back down only to find the right trial up (I still maintain it was not clearly marked). But as we had wasted all our energy we gave it a miss and bolted back down to the town.

Down is so much easier

So we’d seen the Matterhorn and expended a little too much energy so back to our car and off we went to Lukerbad, 1 ½ hours away. We were happily surprised to find that it was a thermal resort town and proceeded to soak it up in one of the hot pool complexes.

Lukerbad

Eventually we had to give up our wee beastie car and get back onto public transport. So after a night in Lukerbad we drove back to Lausanne (where we had picked up the car 5 days before) and got a train to Geneva.

Hanging out at the massive fountain in Geneva

We had pretty high hopes for Geneva, and it was ok but didn’t really blow our minds. We shared a hostel room with this paranoid American guy. It was like he didn’t have any bags as they were all in lockup downstairs, slept in his clothes with his day bag still on. Like we were going to steal his t-shirt or something.

Rach made me do this ‘artistic’ shot

We walked past the United Nations and went to the Red Cross Museum. There’s not really to much more to do in Geneva.

Red cross museum