Switzerland - Oct 12 thru 15

Greetings! I've updated my blog thru Venice, but I can't stop without putting up just a few pictures of Switzerland. I arrived 3 days ago and have been staying with a Swiss friend from college; how nice to see a familiar face after 5 weeks! I've been able to catch up on some much-needed sleep (great to be in a room all by myself) as well as get a healthy dose of some serious mountains.

I will add more thoughts later, but I need to get to sleep... tomorrow I take the TGV (fast) train thru France to Barcelona for a day, then back to Switzerland before heading to Germany.

Swiss countryside on the way to Zürich

Zürich

Fall in the mountains on the way up to Zermatt
Swiss Chalet, satellite included
The Matterhorn, as seen from Zermatt. And as in my home state of Oregon, the mountain only comes out when it wants to... I was lucky to catch a glimpse! What a sight!
Zermatt is basically a high-altitude base town for all sorts of outdoor activities. Skiing and boarding are staples, but the summer months also see many hikers, climbers, bikers, etc. The infrastructure here is beyond anything I could have imagined... Gondolas whisk passengers up thousands of feet over some of the most extreme terrain I've ever seen... There are ski lodges, chairlifts, and gondolas on top of the most improbably difficult mountains... if the sky is clear one can literally look the Matterhorn face to face... at almost 13,000 feet! I was humbled just to be here.
Gondolas, going up up up up up.... and looking down on actual glaciers
At the very top of Kleine Matterhorn ('little matterhorn'), the Swiss have carved a tunnel and series of rooms so that one can actually walk inside a real glacier, at about 12,000 feet!!!

I really should photoshop the Matterhorn into this one... sans clouds it would be right behind me!

More mountains!




Looking down at Zermatt. You have to see this place to believe it! Even still.... it's pretty much unbelievable.