Last week it was our fifth wedding anniversary and we decided to make something truly special to celebrate it. We spent the weekend in one of the most beautiful areas of Switzerland: Zermatt, a little town in the valley of Matter, in Canton Valais, surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the Alps and home to one of the most famous mountains in the world: the Matterhorn!
I know, for some people this may be a weird way to celebrate an anniversary. But I loved every minute of it! We spent three days doing what Swiss people do: sports in the morning, relax in the spa in the afternoon and a great dinner to finish the day! And repeat during three days! It has been exhausting and, at the same time, I feel that I have recharged my batteries in these three days!
To get to Zermatt, we got up very early to catch the train and arrive with enough time to hike that morning. Just arriving to the town is already a beautiful experience. From Visp, the train starts ascending 1000m altitude, running through a deep forested valley between some of the highest mountains in the Alps. And then, just before it arrives to Zermatt, you see it: the Matterhorn, dominating all the landscape around it.
Zermatt is a very beautiful town. It looks like all the buildings are as cuckoo clocks with their dark wood balconies with flowers… I might write a post just about the town! But we didn’t spend much time exploring Zermatt. Instead, we went directly for the first hike of our mini holidays. The chosen route was a combination of three different hikes: the five lakes trail, the marmot trail and the Alpine flowers trail…
We started with the 5-Seenweg Wanderung (the five lakes trail). As its name suggests, this route takes you along five different lakes, each one different in shape, color and size, and some of them even have reflections of the Matterhorn some days. I wasn’t very lucky with that, as the wind was lightly blowing and the mountain had clouds over its peak during the whole day (I started to think that the Matterhorn was a bit shy). Despite of that, the trail was beautiful! Everything was covered in colorful alpine flowers (we even found wild Edelweiss!!!) and hundreds of colorful butterflies were fluttering around us, while the Matterhorn was watching over us the whole day. We even saw a deer crossing our trail!
When we finished the 5-Seenweg trail, we took a small shortcut following the Murmelweg, the marmot trail. A short and very steep route where we were lucky to spot some of these rodents running around, while we enjoyed some of the nicest views of the Matterhorn and its surroundings.
After the Murmelweg, we started descending to Zermatt using part of the Blumenweg (the flower trail), walking through a forest covered in Alpenroses and other beautiful alpine flowers… And after a long day walking in the mountain, we arrived at our hotel, we enjoyed some relaxing time in its spa and we saw a beautiful sunset with the Matterhorn as main protagonist from our room… It was definitely a day well spent!! 🙂
Here are some photos I took during this first hiking in Zermatt. I have a lot more… But I think these ones are a good sample of all the beauty we saw that day. I hope you like them!
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