The third place where we’re dropping our luggage, after Lausanne and Sion, is Zermatt. We left Sion a bit later than we could have, because one of the train we could have taken was cancelled − but we still got the next one half an hour later. First stop, Visp, to change trains and train networks; the train from Visp to Zermatt was quite full (there were people standing in first class.)

I don’t know exactly how steep that train is, but it does have cograils!

The trip was beautiful and well worth the train ride itself, to be honest. We arrived in Zermatt early in the afternoon, dropped our luggage at the hotel, and walked to the funicular station to Sunnega.

We had looked at a hike that looked feasible for my small level of skill and my fucked-up knee − 5K, going down, with granted more downhill than I would have liked (~300m), from Blauherd to Sunnega, but it was advertised as “adapted for children from 4 year old”, so it looked okay. We took the cable car up to Blauherd and started the hike (after a bit of confusion about where it started exactly).

Don’t get me wrong: it was great. The Matterhorn was dominating the landscape all along, and that area is ridiculously pretty.

But that trail was definitely more challenging than we were both expecting. Pierre was surprised to see it marked as a regular yellow path; there were a few places that felt more exposed than they should be on such a path. And a couple of places were definitely more technical than I was comfortable with. But we saw goats.

Still, we arrived safely back in Sunnega after the hike, very tired but happy 🙂 We took the funicular back to Zermatt, got our hotel room (it wasn’t ready when we had first arrived earlier) and went for early dinner − some very generous (and tasty!) burgers at Republic Zermatt. We strolled a bit in town after dinner; I found Zermatt more charming than I would have thought (yes, there’s a lot of touristy stuff… but it felt like “not only”.) We went back to the hotel early, because tomorrow we wake up at 4:45: we’re going to see the sun rise over the Matterhorn, from a train!

After a pretty bad night (being in an unfamiliar room without a visible clock and needing to wake up very early relying on phone alarms is… not optimal for my sleep peace of mind, shall we say), we woke up and were out of the hotel at 5:20. The train was departing at 5:45, and we needed to be there 15 minutes before (and our hotel is, on purpose, very close to the train station), and we were sitting in the train at 5:27… and the train was full (we were indeed almost the last ones boarding).

The train left on time, they shut down the lights so that we could enjoy the early morning lights; the first sights of the Matterhorn were quite nice, especially as they confirmed that the weather was very clear, no cloud to be seen, and that we should have an amazing show.

We stopped at the station closest to the small lake in which the Matterhorn reflects (Riffelsee), we did a very short hike downhill to reach it, and we waited for the sun to rise. And rise it did.

I honestly cannot describe the amount of awe around this moment. We stayed out of the train for a bit less than an hour, taking pictures of the sunrise from different angles (… while never even seeing the sun!) and being just tremendously happy to be around such an amazing landscape. We were obviously very lucky with the weather, but with that caveat, Gornergrat sunrise train, 11/10, cannot recommend enough.

We then went back on the train to go to the highest point of the line, the Gornergrat itself, where we had a great breakfast and could continue an already superlative morning… all before 9AM. We took some time to stroll around the summit (which does hit 3000m − I don’t think I have been at that height that often…), took pictures of the glacier, and generally speaking enjoyed the surroundings (we both felt that it was quite harder to breathe there.)

We then took the train back down to the lake station, got some more pictures now that the sun was fully up, and started hiking downhill to the next train station, Riffelberg. It was a fairly short hike (~3km), and we both felt it was somewhat easier/less risky that yesterday’s, despite being graded higher (red/white vs yellow). It was very enjoyable and the sights were amazing – however, all of them are in my DSLR and I didn’t take any with the phone to share on this blog post!

From Riffelberg, I took the train down back to Zermatt, while Pierre ran all the way down. In the meantime, I realized that the above picture that I had posted on Mastodon had hit a tremendous number of people liking and boosting it, and some of them asking questions, so I guess I worked on my influencer skills a bit 😀

When Pierre arrived in Zermatt (honestly not that long after I did), we went back to the hotel room where I crashed for a nap − that had been a long day already. After that, we took it easy: we strolled in town, had a drink at a terrace, went to have a look at the church, that sort of thing. Next to the church, there’s a separate part of the cemetery for people who lost their lives in the mountains (most of them nearby mountains), which moved me. That stroll (and walking around town in general) confirmed my impression that I quite like Zermatt. I wonder how it looks at peak ski season, though; I expect the mood to be quite different. The city is car-free, which is very nice, but there are A LOT of small electric vehicles serving various purposes (many hotel shuttles and taxis, but not only), which was a bit complicated for me (I always felt in the way!)

We had dinner at Stockhorn, where we had great grilled meat, and shared some also great chocolate mousse − these folks clearly know their stuff.

Monday was our last morning in Zermatt, but we still ended up spending a large part of the day in the vicinity. We hesitated between going to the Zermatt canyon or taking a cable car to go up, and decided that we never regretted a cable car trip, so we did that. We first went to Furi, where we had a small hike around a suspended bridge.

We were once again puzzled by the hike classification, because it was marked as a T2 hike, which should have been spicier than all the ones we did in the previous days… and it was by far the largest, easiest surface path we saw so far. My best guess is that the bridge above is bumping the difficulty of the hike. We did go to a few spicier places during that hike, but that was mostly “exploring that loop that looks somewhat interesting” − and those side explorations were the most difficult part of the hike.

We then took the same cable car going all the way to the top (Trockener Steg) to get a closer look at the Matterhorn.

We did get a closer look, but it was also significantly cloudier than yesterday (we got VERY lucky with that sunrise, I think). We were, however, woefully under equipped for “3000m with dubious weather”, so we cut the “outside” part short, and instead had surprisingly decent pastries at the restaurant on top, and took the cable car down back to Zermatt.

And, after all this, it was time for us to take the train to the last destination of our trip, Thun.