We left Brig this morning in a very light drizzle, a harbinger of what is to come. A train ride, a bus ride and a second train ride took us to Zermatt, the almost home of the Matterhorn. (There was restoration work on the line between Brig and Zermatt so we couldn’t make it the whole way on one train.) We then transferred to a cogwheel train for the final leg to Riffelalp, our viewing point for the famous mountain.
A cogwheel train, like the cable cars in San Francisco, has an attachment that can grab onto a very heavy duty chain to pull it up a slope. Interestingly, the train went faster when it was attached to the chain than when it was not.
Finally, we arrived at the Matterhorn viewing point. The entire mountain was covered with cloud, but as we waited, it started to clear. It never completely cleared, but we were able to see quite a lot of it.
Here are a few of the mountain views around the Matterhorn.
The trip to and from Riffelalp on the cogwheel train was quite lovely, passing through forests of larch and pine. It reminded me of the Lawren Harris painting Winter Morning minus the snow. See the video below.
Back in Zermatt I got cholera at lunch. But not to worry – cholera is a traditional Swiss pie. It dates back to an uptick in cholera when people couldn’t go to the market and had to throw together anything on hand to put food on the table. Most people had potatoes, cheese and apples so that is what is in cholera pie. It was tasty but a bit bland and I would’ve liked to match it with some salsa.
Zermatt is like Whistler. It doesn’t look the same, but it has the same vibe.
Onto Lausanne requird a return trip on a train, then a bus and another train to reach the train through southern Switzerland, which is right next to northern Italy and picturesque terraced grapevines. Eventually we made it to Lausanne.
We are now in French speaking Switzerland, so rendez-vous demain pour une balade dans le vieux Lausanne. 😊
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