Time to play catch-up, as our past week was crammed with activity as we ventured from Zermatt, Switzerland, to Venice for Carnevale. After almost missing two separate trains, we made our way from Rome to Switzerland.

Zermatt exceeded my every expectation. Erin had pretty much arranged all our activities, so I wasn’t 100% sure what to anticipate, since its top selling point is its skiing venues, and I don’t ski. I just figured it would be somewhere cool and different in a country I’d never visited, and was fairly easy to build into our trip to Venice.

The food was delicious, though heavy in a way that I’m thankful our trip was only a few days. Cheese is serious business in Switzerland, and I indulged in cheese fondue twice, tried the raclette with bread and lingonberries, and wolfed down some tasty fontal and gruyere every morning at our hotel breakfast buffet. There was some great smoked trout in the buffet as well; I ran out the door our last morning stuffing trout on toast in my mouth as we rushed to catch our 7:30 train. My two favorite dishes of the trip were lamb fillet with garlic herb sauce and rösti (basically a stack of butter-fried hash browns, yum), and a salmon barley ravioli. I hit off all the other checkmarks I wanted to hit while in Switzerland, too; chocolate fondue, check; apple streudel, check; sausages, check; pretzel, check. 

Our first full day in Zermatt, we took a train up one of the slopes to Sunnegga, one of the major ski sites in surrounding the town. The view was simply stunning.

We hiked around a bit, gave Emi some time to play in the snow (her #1 wish for Zermatt), and had a late lunch at Restaurant Paradies, a little way down the slope.

After we got back, with hit the pool, which was one of the coolest hotel pools I’ve been to, much to Emi’s delight. She got to show off what she’s been learning at her school swimming lessons while we were there, so it was a good situation for us all.

Day two was the big grind. With a morning photo hike behind me, we took a couple crazy-long gondola rides to visit Matterhorn Glacier Paradise at the summit of Klein Matterhorn (not to be confused with THE Matterhorn).

After about an hour of breathtaking views as we climbed the mountain, we arrived at the peak and headed up to the panoramic platform to soak in the full view of the Alps all around us from 12,739 feet up.

Once the subzero temps had rendered my fingers useless for photography, we headed inside to check out the Glacier Palace, a large system of tunnels carved into the glacier at the top of the mountain. Inside were ice sculptures, naturally occurring formations, and an ice slide that we all tried to go up the wrong way. Whoops.

Another gorgeous gondola trip later, we arrived back in Zermatt where we prepared for the second part of our day. At 7:30pm, we boarded the Gornergrat Bahn train to Rotenboden (elev. 9,235 feet), and got stepped out into complete darkness with a group of other folks for late night fondue at Iglu-Dorf, a small hotel and restaurant made of snow and ice that’s rebuilt from scratch every year after it melts in the spring. Getting there required hiking down about 20 minutes of snowy mountain slope with only a few other hikers’ headlamps to light the way.

When we arrived, we got hot drinks and a tour of the hotel, including the suite, with a big opening that looks out onto the Matterhorn. Gorgeous as it must be in the day time, I’m not sure I’d be cut out for sleeping in subzero temps for the night. Anyway, after the tour, we all dug into a big, bubbly pot of fondue and listened to some dude with a guitar play a bunch of American songs (Sidenote: I don’t really get why so many performers bust out English-language songs in Europe. We’ve heard different renditions of Hotel California in 4 different foreign countries now.)

At 10:15pm, it was time to hike downhill to the next train station. Neither Erin nor I quite knew how involved the hiking was going to be, and thus were among a small handful that didn’t have winter hiking boots, crampons, and/or hiking poles, any of which would probably have prevented me wiping out on the side of the mountain. It wasn’t all that slippery, but the angle of descent was pretty sharp for some stretches, and full-on sprinting down a dark, snowy mountain was often the only thing I could do to stay upright.

Overall, it was an awesome excursion. The hike was definitely a bit stressful, and the cold was challenging at times, but it was a blast otherwise. Emilia handled it all like a pro, which is pretty impressive given that by the end, she was up several hours past her bedtime, hiking a pretty intense path for a 5-year-old, and doing it all in a pair of leggings because we sometimes we’re sucky parents.

The last day was largely a day of rest, casually strolling through town and squeezing in more pool time, to recharge our batteries before a day of travel. Coming soon, a recap of Carnevale in Venice.