Day 3, 20 May 2008, Davos to Zermatt

Route

The morning started out rain free, so that's a good thing. We had a nice breakfast, bought some trinkets (a ceramic jam jar made by Mrs. Keller herself), and headed out. We got on the road by 10:30 or so. The drive was OK and by and large the weather held up. We crossed another high pass only recently opened called the Oberalppass. It was more otherworldly than the Fluelapass yesterday. There was tons of snow and once we crested the pass, we hit a very thick fog bank. We stopped in Andermatt for some lunch and to get some laundry detergent, since we needed to do laundry tonight. The one other high pass that we could have driven was closed, the Furkapass. Instead of driving, we loaded onto a car-carrying train for the journey under the Furkatunnel to the other side of the mountain. When we emerged on the other side, the sun was shining, there was blue sky, and we thought we had turned a weather corner. It was fairly smooth sailing to Tasch, except for some afternoon traffic issues in Tasch, where we parked the trucklet and boarded the shuttle train to Zermatt.

Zermatt is totally and completely tourist focused. There is really nothing of note here historically except for the stories of all the folks that have died trying to climb the Matterhorn and the other peaks around here. As if following us, the clouds obscured the visibility of any of the peaks around here and there is an on and off drizzle falling. Awesome. Maybe tomorrow will be better, although our hotelier says the forecast is for more of the same. I am afraid that maybe the cloud layer might be a little too low for our helicopter tour. Angela (and I, but mostly Angela) will be seriously bummed out if we can't fly because of the weather. Weather has been more than an inconvenience for almost every day of our last 2 vacations.

We ate an excellent, albeit very expensive, Italian dinner tonight. Like Davos, Zermatt is mostly closed now between the high winter season and the upcoming summer season. Tons of renovation work going on, with construction cranes everywhere. Zermatt is largely a pedestrian town, with neat looking electric taxis and delivery trucks. Only rarely do you hear the sound of a diesel motor.

Let's hope for some better weather tomorrow. If the clouds don't blow out (or at least lift higher), than this portion of our trip will have been a complete waste of time and money. I would have just rather gone back to Rapallo and the Italian Riviera, honestly.