St Moritz to Zermatt

 Dear Gentle Readers

I have only one thing to say about our journey through Switzerland - wow oh wow! Look I can take pictures for you but they do not capture the grandeur of the Swiss Alps. We could have taken pictures until our cameras melted down but still not do it justice. However I will try my best.

Woke to this in St Moritz this morning. Just stunning images of snow-capped mountains behind St Moritz.

The Winter Olympics have been held here twice. Up on the mountains I counted four ski lifts and a monorail.

We caught the train to Chur to pick up our car. Here it's going around a bend over a viaduct. Unfortunately we were sitting on the wrong side of the train to capture the famous Landwasser Viaduct where the train comes out of a tunnel, crosses the viaduct then plunges back into another tunnel. I did see it briefly as we passed it but the moment was gone and I had waited the whole train journey just to capture it. Damn!

Here you can see the forest reaching up until gets to the snowline then surrenders to the snow.

Then we saw towering cliffs like these.

These were fantastic but when we got to Chur and picked up our car, a nice Skoda Octavia, our minds were really blown by the scenery on the drive to Tasch and Zermatt. Try to imagine valleys, verdant and lush, sandwiched between high snow-capped mountains on either side, reaching impossibly high.

You can't, you just have to come here and drive it yourself. It's a life-changing experience in so many ways.

This picture tries to capture the immensity of the view but fails dismally. But it's pretty with the water in the foreground. Victoria took this on her phone.

We stopped for lunch here and took this picture.

and this one too.

The roads were just amazing, zigzagging up and down huge mountain sides, as you can see in the picture, the road in the foreground took us down to the valley floor and the road in the background took us back up into the dizzying heights. I lost count of how many times we climbed up to heights before descending again. The trip to Tasch took four hours, not because it was a long distance but because it was a slow drive! Max speed 80 km/h with many, many towns on the way where the speed limit reduced to 50 and sometimes 30 km/h and of course, all those hairpin bends.

Of course we found some snow. Here I am standing on some, first time in nearly 50 years.

Here's Victoria tentatively standing on the snow bank.

This snowbank was taller than me at the bottom and stretched way back up the hill.

A typical village nestled in a valley between soaring mountains on both sides. Impossible to capture both, you just have to imagine it. Or come see for yourself, you won't regret it.

We have been upgraded twice from our original hotel in Tasch and are now in the Aspen Hotel and Spa in Zermatt itself. Tomorrow we take another train up the mountain to see the Matterhorn, the most famous of the Swiss Alps. Stay tuned.