6:15AM to get our Eurail Passes validated and to be ready for our 7:58
train to Zermatt. A good plan, leaving plenty of time to deal with
long lines, finding the right platform and whatever unforeseen
situations might arrive.
I set my iPhone alarm for 5:00AM, time for showering andcatching the
metro to the train station. I plugged it into yhe bathroom outlet to
charge it's depleted batteries and fell exhausted into bed at about
midnight. I feel asleep instantly. I woke up at what I thought were
hours later and in my stupor grabbed the iPhone from the bathroom to
put it next to the bed so I was sure to hear it. What I did not
realize was it was only a few minutes and the phone had not charged at
all. I fell back asleep and the phone promptly died.
I groggily woke to notice daylight coming in through the curtains and
panicked. What time was it? Cindy woke to my thrashing and announced
6:15. Yikes! We were supposed to already be at the train station!
We quickly three together our bags and ran through the streets of
Paris, caught the metro and arrived at Gard de Lyon at 6:35. Try that
in Seattle during morning rush hour! The lines turned out to be
surprisingly short. We were validated and buying breakfast croissants
by 7AM. A leisure hour of munching and reading the departure schedules
and we were on our high speed train to Laussane, Switzerland.
The Swiss are reputed to run their train schedules with the same
precision as their watches. Our arrival time in Laussane was stated to
be 11:58. About an hour and fifteen minutes after leaving Paris it was
announced we arriving in Dijon. A quick check of our map showed we
were already more than halfway to Laussane. Momentarily, we were
mystified as to how it was going to take nearly twice as long to go
less than the distance we had already covered. This is when we
understood the manic of high speed rail. We had been zooming across
the French countryside at 180 mph. The last portion of the trip was
not on high speed rails, hence the longer travel times.
We switched trains and enjoyed a nearly empty train up the Rhone
valley to Visp. Here we switched trains again for the final ride to
Zermatt.
Sally spent ten days in Zermatt in 1973. She was enchanted with the
car-less town, the tremendous hiking, the quaint nature of the town,
the horse drawn carriages-the essence of Switzerland. She was hoping
to find it unchanged. The Zermattians have sold their soles. New
hotels are everywhere. Electric and noisy gas fired utility vehicles
zoom up and down the streets. Thousands of tourists bustle about. But,
that which put Zermatt on the map, the Matterhorn, is worth the
annoyance. And, as I was to find out, the Matterhorn is just the tip
of the iceberg of the fantastic array of dynamic peaks that form the
cirque that Zermatt sits at the bottom of. The reason all the hotels
and people are her is because there is something worth visiting.
We left the train station and walked to the campground, a small grassy
area wedge between a hotel under construction, the train station and a
parts store. We pitches our tent in the grass, then headed through
town and up the river to see more of the bally the town sits in. A
late afternoon rain shower forced us to cook our dinner under a tin
leanto attached to the shower/restroom, where we met Dan and Heather,
two 21 year old students from England camping in the campground and
hiking or climbing each day. We had a hilarious dinner with them. They
said the weather was totally predictable, as they had been here a
week. Perfectly clear in the morning, the clouds start showing arouand
noon, with afternoon rain, followed by evening clearing. Their advise-
take the cog train to the gornergrat to get great early morning views
of the area, then hike down to Zermatt before the rain starts. We
trusted their observations and made plans to ride the cog train in the
morning.
Chuck
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