Over the long Easter weekend we drove down to Zermatt for a little mini-holiday! Zermatt is a cute little mountain town at the base of the Matterhorn and is one of those places you definitely have to visit at least once when you’re in Switzerland! It’s about a three and a half hour drive or train ride from Zurich and if you drive you also get to go on the “car train” through the mountains. We hadn’t heard of this before, so we were in for a surprise when we drove up to what we thought was a toll booth and found ourselves in line for the train!
You can also take the train from Zurich and it takes about the same amount of time. There’s no cars in Zermatt, so if you drive you have to park in the garage at Tasch and take the train up to Zermatt from there.
Day 1
When we got there we settled into our hotel and then when exploring around town. If you go with kids, don’t worry, there’s a playground near the train station that’s pretty good! We got some beers at Coop (the grocery store) and headed to the playground for a little relaxing time before dinner. By the way, in Switzerland you’re allowed to drink wherever, so it’s totally okay to walk around with a beer or have a picnic at the park with some wine.
That night we headed to The Bubble for dinner, which was really awesome. Switzerland isn’t exactly known for it’s burgers, but this place had amazing ones! Not only were the burgers good, the salad, fries and dessert were amazing as well! Highly recommend this restaurant if you’re in Zermatt.
Day 2
The next day we took the cog rail train up the Gornergrat mountain to take in all the views. From the train ride you can see the town, Matterhorn and all the mountains around! It stops in several places along the way where you can get off for hiking, skiing and site seeing, but we stayed on till the top!
Views from the top of the Gornergrat! On a clear day you have a perfect view of the Matterhorn! There’s also a restaurant and gift shops at the top, as well as skiing. Since it was the Easter holidays a lot of people were skiing, including a fun group dressed in Easter bunny costumes!
As you can see there was plenty of snow, so be prepared with what you wear. Layers, layers, layers. I’ve also been here in the middle of the summer and it was even a little chilly then so bring a sweatshirt to throw on (and layers) even in summer! Even when it’s warm in the town, the mountains can get very cold and the weather can change very quickly.
Greetings from Zermatt!
After we’d had our fill of the top, we took the train back down several stops (to below the snow line) and got off for a little hiking! Carter later found this cave and decided it was his new house and told us we could just leave him there!
Carter, shockingly, hiked the whole time, even after we got lost (very lost) trying to find the elusive restaurant we had been told about. We ended up at another restaurant, but still had a good time exploring and enjoyed some nice Swiss mountain food!
Heading back into town we stopped and got some gelato to enjoy by the famous marmot fountain! The second night we had dinner at a really good Italian restaurant, Restaraunt Da Nico which just so happened to be right beside our hotel. The location was ideal, since it started pouring rain as soon as we got back from hiking! We had pasta and homemade tiramisu and Carter had a teddy bear shaped kids pizza complete with a kids ice cream sundae.
Although Zermatt is primarily known as a ski town, it’s definitely okay for non skiers as well! If you’re kids are outdoorsy and enjoy hiking and exploring then it’s perfect! Zermatt has some great restaurants and fun “on vacation” vibe as you walk around. There also looked to be some fun apres ski places, although with Carter we didn’t really take in much of the night life! I would definitely recommend booking your restaurants far in advance because they seemed to fill up quick!
Have you been to Zermatt? What was your favorite part?
