The plan for Saturday was to spend a night in Switzerland; Jamie had dreams of seeing the Matterhorn and Heidi frolicking in the mountains. Unfortunately, due to our last minute reservations and the sheer expensiveness of Switzerland, we were not able to find accommodation in our price range. Instead, we decided to stay in Northern Italy. This decision actually worked out for all of us - especially Jamie. The town we stayed in, Valtournenche, was directly south of the Matterhorn. We were able to drive just a bit up the road from our hotel and get an amazing, unobstructed view of the iconic mountain. When we first saw it on our drive up - I immediately recognized it as the "Tolberone" logo.

While the mountain air was fresh, and the scenery was breathtaking, there were some downsides to staying in the mountains - mainly the getting there part. The mountain roads are very windy, so it's not so easy on the stomach… and the climbing altitude wasn't easy on the ears. Mom is afraid of heights, so she was quite nervous the whole way up.

The worst part of the journey was a mistake made by the GPS. I had programmed the GPS to take us to our hotel using the hotel tool. What ended up happening is that the GPS brought us to a ski resort with the same name as the hotel "Etoile de neige". When I asked an employee of the resort if we were in the right place he said "You are on the wrong mountain". It was literally one mountain too soon. So we had to go back down the winding road, over to the next mountain and up another mountain road. Certainly an adventure!

We had a nice night walking along the river and taking in the beautiful scenery. Lots of pictures to come!