Kevin's Day

Three days of skiing gets tiresome so Jason and I weren't as quick out the door this morning. It also snowed all evening and was still snowing in the morning so many of the lifts were closed to start the day. After a long breakfast, we finally headed out the door. Our goal was to cover as much mountain as possible while also exploring the many areas we hadn't skied. We started off the same way we did the first day, skiing through town to the bus and jamming ourselves in with way too many people on the bus to the gondola. This gondola is extremely long and ended up taking about 30 minutes. We then decided to hop on another gondola that would take us all the way to Italy.

It was amazing how different the weather was when we got to the Glacier Paradise peak in Italy. Sun and a few clouds instead of snow but extremely strong winds and it was cold. We plotted our course and spend the next 59 minutes skiing all the way down the Italy side to the town of Cervinia. The snow was excellent, the views were incredible and it was nice and warm at the bottom of the lift. Unfortunately, to get back to the Switzerland side required 3 different gondolas so it took us about 40 minutes to get back to the windy and cold peak.

We made our way across the mountain trying several lifts we hadn't yet taken and skiing all kinds of runs. We hit everything from easy groomers to deep powder in the off piste areas (unmarked runs). The snow was great but the weather was quite varied. We had strong steady winds then snow then fog then sun and everything in between often experiencing different weather all on the same run. We skied pretty hard for a total of 24 miles and about 24,000 feet in elevation.

Keely's Day

Rachelle and I had another relaxing morning. I looked up train schedules to Geneva, started packing our stuff up and read a little bit. Around lunch time we made our way into town to run a few errands, pick up some chocolate for the train ride tomorrow, and find a place to make dinner reservations. We also shared a ham, cheese and tomato crepe that was prepared in front of us at an outside stand downtown…delicious! Our day was relatively uneventful except for when a huge chunk of snow fell off of the roof of one of the buildings we were walking under and fell right on my head! Luckily it was soft snow and not ice, so it was not painful except for my slightly bruised ego.

Meet up!

At breakfast, the plan was for the girls to hike up to the champagne bar since it was on the run home and the boys still had an open tab from the day before. However, timing wasn't clear so when the boys said between 4 and 5 the girls heard 4 and the boys meant 5. The girls hiked up the mountain for about 45 minutes and were glad when they had finally reached their destination! They were quite warm and winded from the hike. However, after an hour of sitting out in the cold, Keely and Rachelle were happy to finally see Kevin and Jason (who arrived at 4:53 well inside the previously agreed upon window). We had dinner reservations at Restaurant Julen so to save time the girls rode on the back of the boys skis as we headed down the mountain (see the video of Jason and Rachelle!). People were either impressed or concerned - we didn't quite catch the German translation!

Dinner at Restaurant Julen was delicious! The Julen family is a local family that owns a large sheep farm, hotel and a couple of restaurants featuring the lamb that they raise. The girls both had salad bar and shared the cheese fondue. Kevin ordered the braised lamb shank, and it was fantastic. The restaurant had a great atmosphere with nice wood interiors and authentic Swiss décor. The waitresses all spoke at least 3 languages (German, French and English) and were quite fluent in all of them. Overall we were never disappointed with our food selections in Zermatt, everything was always outstanding!

Travel day tomorrow. We are sad to leave Zermatt but we head to Geneva to explore the town for a bit and then it's an early flight to Israel on Thursday.

Kevin & Keely