Zermatt June 12-14

Zermatt was an experience. I can say I'm not a huge outdoorsy person. I was born in LA. The most rural place I've lived in was in Thailand where I lived on a golf course near pineapple plantations. Our past time was to play golf and go shopping... and eat delicious food. The next most rural place is in Michigan. Yeah, I consider the St. Joseph area rural. I could even consider Ann Arbor or Novi rural with where I lived in before. I'm not saying I hate the outdoors. I'm just not used to the whole hiking thing and not being near a ton of people. I'm also not a huge exerciser, so I wasn't terribly fit when I did this.

When we got to Zermatt, I knew this was going to be trouble. We were in the middle of the mountains. Gorgeous as it was, it had nothing really around it. After arriving at the hostel and getting settled in, we went to rent mountain bikes. Did I mention I haven't ridden a bike since I was 10? The first 10 minutes was fine. After that, I was too slow for Brian and Thomas and they didn't want to wait, so I let them go ahead.

Regardless, after the first hour, I couldn't ride up that hill anymore. And yes, it was uphill. Instead, I returned the bike and wandered around town. The town was a small, traditional Swiss town. It was quite cute. That evening, we had dinner at a nice Swiss restaurant where we had a lot of meat. I need to stop hanging out with so many guys who really are deprived of what they usually eat. I often feel subjected to lots of demands because I'm not in the majority. Oh well...

The next day, we went to the top of Klein Matterhorn. This is the smaller Matterhorn. I thought it would be a gorgeous glacier like Fox Glacier in NZ, but it was more of a dark tunnel. Definitely not worth the trip. Looking from the top of the Matterhorn was nice, though. I enjoyed that a lot. We went half way down and hiked the rest of the way. Again, a misalignment of desires. I'm slow, but Brian and Thomas are very fit and don't' like going slowly. It was not that enjoyable because I barely had anytime to look around and take in the sights. I was too busy trying to catch up with the guys. I think I won't really go hiking with them again and would rather go at my own pace.

After getting back, I needed to rest. We had a small lunch in the middle of hour hike and bought a few souvenirs. Overall, the views were gorgeous and the hike was wonderful, I think you just need to go with people who are similar speeds and align on what you want to do.