29/10/2010 ....
The train took us to Visp where we changed to the last leg up the Alps, it took bout an hour and had some of the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen but what was really amazing was that as we got higher there was snow. The higher we got the more snow there was, we certainly weren’t expecting this, as the travel guide had said there would be snow on the top of the Alps.
We arrived in Zermatt with the worst map for directions to get to our hotel ever, so seeing the tourist office was closed for another ½ hour we went & bought supplies to await there opening. Once open, we got directions & a short walk found us at the hotel – Le Mazot. There wasn’t anyone there, but a phone directed us to dial 4, which I did & a lovely gentleman told us we were in room 4 & he would see us for breakfast in the morning, strange. Room 4 was great, full bathroom, TV, but best of all we had the biggest balcony of the hotel & it had snow on it, so we were set, an esky on our verandah. We also had the perfect view of the Matterhorn unfortunately with a crane disturbing the view, but still impressive.
We were told by Pete in Paris that it always snows or rains in Switzerland but it is never fine, how wrong could he be, we sat on our balcony admiring the full height of the Matterhorn, with sunnies & hats on and only a t shirt, it was so lovely to enjoy some heat after 2 weeks of cold.
As we sat on the balcony the bell tower went off & we had to laugh, as it chimed the first 3 bars of ‘Three Blind Mice” - so European. After enjoying a couple of drinks we had to find somewhere to wash our clothes, we hadn’t washed since London. So we went for a walk, and heard a guy that was obviously a shop owner talking in English, so we went across and he directed us to the appropriate place. She washed ALL our clothes in 3 hours, and we were out of pocket $50, but the best $50 we spent the whole trip, it as great to finally have clean clothes.
We then went for a walk around the small village & realised very quickly that this was yet another tourist mecca, or in our terms a tourist rip off, but to sit on enjoy such an amazing view we weren’t the slightest bit concerned. We found a reasonably priced, if not still expensive restaurant & had Chicken Snitzel & Apple strudel for dinner.
Being primarily a skiing village there really wasn’t a lot to do, so we made our way back for the night.
30/10/2010
The morning was nice & slow, with breaky provided, the typical European breakfast of rolls, bread, cereal, ham, cheese, coffee & juice. We then headed out & booked our train tickets for the following day to Florence. That organised we headed to the other station for the ride up the Matterhorn on the Goltengatz train. Yep, right, $70 each return, that made me laugh, as if we would want a one way ticket to the top. Considering the weather had turned really foul and it was unlikely that we would have had much of a view anyway along with the exorbitant price, we opted not to do this attraction, so headed for the Matterhorn museum, which didn’t open till 2 pm, well that is Zermatt, if you don’t ride the Goltengatz, and don’t see the museum there isn’t anything else to do, except sit & look at the Matterhorn.
We wandered around a bit more and came upon a DVD rental store, so hired some DVDs & spent the day basically watching movies. It was great, very relaxing and as I said to Marty if we were down the coast we would spend days like this doing nothing.
We had dinner that night at an Italian restaurant – 2 glasses of wine each, small pasta for me & normal size for Marty, & I had Tiramisu, for the grand total of $75. But hey it was fantastic – probably the best meal we have had so far, bar the Beef & Ale pie in London.
On our return to the hotel, I rang reception to tell them we needed to pay as we were checking out early in the morning, she just took my credit card details & kindly informed us that daylight saving stopped that night, so we had to wind our clocks back an hour. So I did, and set the alarm for 6am and that is where the fun started.
31/10/2010
I was awake at 2.30 am, so read for a while & then eventually managed to get back to sleep, confident that we had the right time & the right alarm time set.
Then Marty wakes me & says that his clock says 8, which makes it 7, but my clock says 6, so who knows what time it was, but we knew we had to get going quickly, so we packed, dressed & walked very quickly to the train station, with about 15 minutes to spare, not bad seeing we only had 39 minutes to get from the hotel to the station, fortunately it was only a short walk.
The first leg took us to Brig, where we changed for the SBB train to Milan, and had the best coffee, it is obviously Italian, an espresso & much nicer drunk black, I think I am going to be converted to a proper coffee drinker after this trip.
Next leg was from Milan to Florence, once again very comfortable train, and only a short 1 ½ hour journey. The weather however was not looking good. I had written down detailed instructions on how to get from the station to our B&B by bus, but when we walked out of the station and were encountered by hundreds of people & cars & buses, and its was raining, we opted for a cab.
This B&B is family run by a young couple. Their parents live ground floor, our room is on the 1st and they live in the rest of the place. It is actually a huge property by European standards. The room is gorgeous with a long entry with single bed, lovely room and ensuite. Elena our host is especially nice, gave us all the info on how to get around and where to go etc. So we once again dropped off our stuff & headed out for supplies. It was much easier to start with, to walk as that way we get our bearings, and eventually after memorising land marks, found a little shopping area with ATM’s. Now you would think it easy but we went to 3 different ATM’s & tried both our cards but they kept refusing us money.
So we went to a shop to see if they took cards – no – but he advised us to go to the Post Office ATM, which we did & it worked. So back to the shop & made our purchases, then back to the bus stop, oops forgot cigarettes, so Marty went back to the shop, to find that no tobacconists were open today or tomorrow, but we could get smokes from the automatic dispensers, if we had an Italian over 18 card. Now this is getting challenging, so we hijacked a guy at the machine & he was happy to use his card for us.
We then caught the bus back to our rooms, had a couple of drinks etc, then headed out for dinner. We walked once again, in the rain, back to the same area, and found a lovely looking Italian restaurant, but they didn’t start serving till 7.30, so we kept walking and came upon & bar, had a drink in there while listening to Pavarotti on his TV, then back to the restaurant.
Unfortunately tomorrow is a public holiday but regardless, most of the attractions are closed on Mondays anyway.
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