Zermatt, Switzerland
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Woke up this morning and was welcomed by the tip of the Matterhorn shining in the early morning sun. As the sun rose Miss Matterhorn shone more and more. I booked the room we stayed in for the fact it advertised a view of the Matterhorn. Yesterday was so snowy and closed in we did not even get a glimpse of this famous peak we travel so far to see. Our "one horse open sleigh" man last night was a bit of a character and he said that Miss Matterhorn (as he called the famous peak) was very tired from dancing all the previous evening and was having a rest and promised us that she would show herself in her full glory tomorrow morning and he sure knew his mountain well. The view of the peak was breathtaking with the sun illuminating the rock peak to a warm glow and glistening on the brilliantly white snow covered mountains. At 10 am we boarded the Glacier Express train that took us through the Swiss Alps over hundreds of bridges and through numerous tunnels with a new magnificent view at every turn. This is a very relaxing train ride with a three course lunch and drinks served at your seats while you watch Switzerland pass you by. We arrived at St Moritz with only a few hours stay before we had to board our overnight train to Salzberg, Austria. Switzerland was wonderful with it snowing most the time, it was an experience we will never forget and never experience in Australia. I will leave you with an image of this beautiful country, imagine hundreds and thousands of huge pine trees standing straight and tall on white mountains with their branches laced with snow just like hundreds of huge decorated Christmas trees. And a statistic of Switzerland is that it has a very efficient rail network and which we were informed that 96.2% of all trains and 95.9% of all trains running on workdays have less then 5 minutes of delay. Something Sydney Rail should look at.
