OK, so it may be taking me a while to get the blog updated, but on to the next leg...

Anyway, we left Geneva on our way to Zermat. The train transfers were easy, and it was nice to get out of French speaking parts of Switzerland and back into German speaking small towns. Zermat is most famous for being the nearest town to the Matterhorn as well as not allowing cars in the town. Pretty much any vehicles in town are electric with the exception of the garbage trucks... It is a nice little town - think ski resort sorta.

So, after getting there we stowed our luggage in lockers and caught the bus to the bottom of the gondola. It actually takes three gondolas to get from Zermat up to the Kleine Matterhorn. The last Gondola gets you up to around 12,500 feet. From there you can either do some skiing year round, or catch an elevator up a couple of hundred more feet to 12,736 feet. The view is pretty impressive from there; the Matterhorn itself is still 3000 feet higher. We made it up to the top of the elevator just in time to catch the last elevator to the top, get some pictures, and take the last elevators and gondolas back down. The weather was beautiful, perfectly clear, and something just below freezing. There were hundreds of skier kids coming back off the mountain and the gondolas were packed. The hotel in Zermat was probably the best we stayed at and most of the pictures are taken from our balcony.

From Zermat we caught the trains into Italy, stopping in Milan, then Florence, then on to Sienna. Not to discourage folks, but we were surprised at how bad the air pollution was, how dirty the trains and train stations were, and how bad the train stations worked. Of course this is all relative to Germany and Switzerland... The pollution was probably similar to Seattle on a worse than average day, but the trains and public transportation was still far better than Seattle. Anyway, more about Italy next time...