Switzerland Day 6 - Today we took 2 trains for a 3 hour ride from Lucerne to Zermatt. I think this is the most magical place I have ever been to. When it snows here, it would look like a Christmas card. It has charming little Chalets, and churches all over. This is the day we were supposed to see the Matterhorn, but when we arrived, our local guide told us that the trains, cogwheel, and gondolas, had all been shut down because of the bad weather up the mountain. I was devastated. We knew the weather was supposed to be sunny the next day, so we were hoping we could see the Matterhorn from the village at sunrise before we left for St. Moritz the next morning. It would just be a view of part of it, but that would be better than nothing. The local guide took us on a tour of Zermatt. It is a charming place. We saw some of the old, old wooden original houses. There is one that has a wooden box on the outside and the guide said that was like a refrigerator. They would put milk and cheese in the box outside the window to keep the food cool. The roofs were mostly made out of tile. We stopped at a little cemetery where all the headstones were of people that had died while trying to climb the Matterhorn. There is a monument in town of Ulrich Inderbinen who climbed it 371 times, the last time when he was 89 years old. It was first climbed in 1865 by Edward Whynper, and the first lady to climb it was Lucy Walker in 1871. While we were on the tour we saw a bunch of elementary school kids getting out of school. They were all riding bikes down the streets in the village. My first thought was ...how lucky these kids are to live in the shadow of the Matterhorn. Tonight we had a traditional cheese fondue at a local place. I actually didn't like the flavor at all, and they served bread and some small weird tasting potato's. I wish we could stay in Zermatt for a few days. At dinner , our guide announced that she had gone and traded our passes and got permission for us to leave before light in the morning, and take a train up to Gornergrat to see the Matterhorn. I was so relieved. The picture with the Alphorn is where we would have been able to see the Matterhorn if the weather was clear!
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