Zermatt - Last Afternoon Tour

July 09, 2017

Zermatt Afternoon Tour Day 2

Amadé Perrig brought us to lunch at the Hotel Julen’s main restaurant.

We had eaten raclette at the hotel’s lower-floor Schaferstube Restaurant the night before, and found it very good.

But today, we would eat on the hotel’s patio, and with Amadé’s recommendation (along with that of Magalie Perren’s the day before), I just had to sample the lamb from the owner’s farm.

I ordered a salad that came with pieces of grilled lamb filet. I can honestly say that my lamb, roasted perfectly medium-rare, was divine.

Amadé had a red wine-braised lamb shank, which was fork-tender and smelled heavenly.

Suzanne, not a big lunch eater, tried the excellent cream of zucchini soup.

Amadé also asked for some “fresh” mountain guide’s bread for us to try. I say “fresh" because the extremely dense, whole-grain loaf could still be cut with a bread knife. Traditionally, this bread had to keep for months without spoiling, so it was allowed to dry-age until it became so hard that pieces could only be whacked off with a very sharp axe. I enjoyed the nutty flavour of the couple of slices I had, and knew it would go really well with some aged gruyère...and lots of wine.

If I might editorialize…Switzerland needs to ban smoking on restaurant patios, as it has already done indoors.

Right after lunch, Amadé whisked us to the south end of the resort to catch gondolas that would bring us to the top of the Little Matterhorn. The station at the top of this peak, at 3,883 metres, is the highest place in Europe that can be reached by aerial tramway. It gives quite a different view of the Matterhorn than from the village or the Gornergrat station. While it was sunny and clear where we stood, stiff winds kept bringing clouds that seemed magnetically drawn just to the Matterhorn…sigh.

The Little Matterhorn really does look like a miniature of its great namesake.

The neighbouring Breithorn peak and glacier. On our gondola ride back down, we met three climbers who had just tackled the Breithorn — all 4,164 metres of it!

A big group of visitors from Taiwan was standing with us on the viewing platform. Always engaging, Amadé immediately started up a conversation with a few of them...and then belted out a few melodic bars of yodelling to welcome the surprised and delighted group.

We enjoyed several other samplings of Amadé’s vocal talents, in places like long passageways, where his yodelling trills could reverberate and echo. And just how good is Amadé’s yodelling? Good enough to at one time be a contestant at the international yodelling festival.

There is a lot of development on the Little Matterhorn…yes, even a restaurant. Hidden under the glacier atop this peak is the unexpected and utterly magical Glacier Palace.

Yodelling acoustics are amazing!!!

It was a bit unnerving to see actual crevasses...from below...and to know that the glacier is always moving.

Still, despite the trepidations, we loved seeing the ice sculptures (some interactive) in many galleries and tunnels that had been carved out of the ice cap using big water hoses.

Ice wine, anyone?

The crystals forming on some of the ceilings are beautiful.

Here I am with a couple of fighting cows...of which we’ll have much more to tell you in upcoming posts.

Notice all the layers in the ice, each one some ancient snowfall compressed in gorgeous strata of turquoise and blue.

After an amazing day with Amadé, where we sampled just a few of Zermatt’s many wondrous sights and activities, we went on our own for supper at the Old Zermatt Restaurant,