Travel Log

Breakfast was provided in our new apartment in Zermatt - a continental base and custom options where the kids chose eggs, bacon, crepes. It was a feast of epic proportions! We ate half and packed the other half as lunch. So it was that we left for our day hike with overly full bellies and the dangerous promise of looming bowel movements!

We took the Sunnega funicular then the cable to Blauherd. It was a cool start to the day, but dry and partly cloudy. The Matterhorn north face was shrouded in cloud for the day, but the views were still great. We walked to Stellisee lake, a lovely spot but without the perfect Matterhorn reflection and with kids unable to regulate their body temperature (“I’m too hot, I’m too cold, my legs are cold, my butt is cold!”) we soon moved on. We took a rather steep trail down towards Grindjisee lake, losing our patience when Thea was fighting for the lead with a precipitous and rocky drop a foot off the trail! The danger was underlined when Jasper dropped his Rubik’s cube (don’t ask me why he was solving this on a mountain trail!) and it bounced some 100ft down before coming to rest on some scree. In a daring rescue Nick bum-shuffled down to get it.

The gradient eased and we had the chance to look up and saw marmots scampering around. As the day got hotter we reached Leisee lake which is basically an alpine swimming pool complete with a neat raft the kids (and adults!) can pull themselves across the lake on. We had a paddle then a play in the playground, enjoying the hammock, the archimedes water screw and the slide that was so polished you might have broken the sound barrier descending. We knew it was time to leave when 2 out of 3 of our children had hurt themselves.

Back in town we picked up some food for dinner (rotisserie chicken, corn on the cob, new potatoes) and headed for home. A quick pit stop to change and then back in town for gelato and the “goat parade” where the shepherds drive their flock of 70 goats right through the Bannhofstrasse, Zermatt’s main street. The gelato was good, the goats not so much but only because the hour long wait for them resulted in a bit of an anticlimax.

Of course we still had time for the hot tub before dinner, and I found the sauna too for 10 minutes of solitude without kids.