Day 3 – Our Return To Zermatt

Today’s Blog Entry

On Wednesday Cindy and I took a 3 hour train ride to Zermatt for a walking tour of this quaint village at the base of the Matterhorn. We have visited Zermatt many times over the years and have spent somewhere around 45 days there in total. Our first visit to Zermatt was on our honeymoon in 1985, so this outing was in celebration of our 23rd wedding anniversary Technically our anniversary was the following Sunday, but since we’d be on an airplane back to the US on that day we figured that this was a much more appropriate way to celebrate!

We left Grindelwald on the Berner Oberland Bahn regional train for a ride down the valley to Interlaken where we boarded a Deutsche Bahn (German State Railway) InterCity train for Spiez. In Spiez we switched to another DB InterCity train, an impressive double-decker, for the short ride through the mountains to Visp. I say “through the mountains” because this leg took us through the nine mile long Lötschberg Base Tunnel!

In Visp we boarded another regional train, the Brig-Visp-Zermatt Bahn or BVZ. This narrow gauge cog train makes the 90 minute trip up the valley to Zermatt through some very spectacular countryside. In a nod to the outdoor orientation of many visitors to this region we noticed that most of these train cars have special fittings inside for skis in the winter and mountain bikes in the summer.

The weather did not cooperate while we were in Zermatt as there was a mix of light rain and some flurries most of the day – too bad because it meant that we did not get to see the Matterhorn. No visit to Zermatt is truly complete without at least one look at the Matterhorn – it’s a spectacular sight that should be on everyone’s “bucket list”. Fortunately we’ve been blessed with some spectacular views over the years.

After a nice lunch in one of the hotels near the town center we did a little souvenir shopping and then boarded the train for our return trip to Grindelwald.

Today’s Map

Today’s Photos