Day 5, our full day in Zermatt, was rainy.

The original plan/hope was to take a train up the Matterhorn, and go for a hike around a glacial lake. Not only was it rainy, but there was still a ton of snow at elevation. So the glacial lake hike was out. Our hotel room TV had a channel that showed various webcams from the Matterhorn. Visibility looked to be about 4 inches from the camera, so the train up didn’t really make sense either.

We grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel, then we headed to the info center, to see if they had any rainy day suggestions. She told us about a short hike from town, Gorner gorge, and the climbers cemetery.

Stopping in Petit Royal Zermatt for a coffee and to plot our next moves.

It was very cool that you could see where the rain was turning to snow

There was an old historical street right by our hotel, the “Hinterdorf” or rear village, with buildings from the 16th to 18th centuries. There were barns, stables, and houses. Some were all three in one. I actually think the rain added to the vibe of the street.

Bottom right photo credit to Beth

We walked through the climbers cemetery, which turned out to be even more depressing than a regular cemetery. Lots of tombstones describing how such and such person died falling off of the Matterhorn. They were old and interesting, but also sad.

We walked around town a bit, the rain didn’t seem to be bothering anyone.

We stopped in for lunch (the place with the elk(?) looking at me) and had MORE CHEESE, as you do.

I’m apparently obsessed with the fountains as I took photos of many of them.

The middle fountain has marmots. As I mentioned yesterday, Beth thought she saw one from the train. Marmots are indeed a thing here, and she very well could have seen one.

We decided we would go check out the hike the woman at the info center told us about. She pointed to a map, said a lot of words, something about a lift to the start. Being that skiing is a big thing here, I assumed a SKI lift. No, she meant elevator. So that’s my first hike that had an elevator to the trailhead.

It also turned out to be a hike for families. Complete with a vending machine at the start that had some sort of kids puzzle, relating to stops along the way and Woolie!

Kids hike or not, we enjoyed ourselves.

Then we randomly saw a cat, in the woods. Pardon the zoom in, but it’s important you see the cat.

We also saw lots of flowers.

Photos: Beth posing with a giant squirrel, a deer, a glacial erratic, Zermatt from above, creepy weird Woolie guy signifying the end of the children’s hike.

We saw on the map, if we continued up a trail a little bit that there was a viewpoint. We arrived and saw a waterfall.

It was nice, but surprising that it was marked as a viewpoint. Then we turned around. Then we realized, if there weren’t any clouds that we’d be looking at an amazing view of the Matterhorn. Photo without overlay:

Photo with overlay:

From there, we were able to follow trails back into town on the opposite end from where we started. It was neat to see a less touristy part of Zermatt.

After that, we thought we’d walk to Gorner Gorge. Part of the walk was along the river. The day before, it had been glacial blue, but after the rain it was brown. Until we saw this part where another river was feeding in, and you can see that part is still blue, mixing into the brown.

We arrived at Gorner gorge, only to find it had closed about 15 minutes earlier. As we left, there was a cat blocking our way. A cat that looked oddly like the one we’d seen earlier in the day. Beth smartly asked permission to pass. As we passed, I asked permission to pet. Permission was granted.

After that we returned to the hotel area and went to the “best cheese house” for dinner, and more cheese, and more aperol spritz. Then we walked around town for a bit.

I believe it was around this point Beth stopped at the marmot fountain to refill her water, and we rubbed the marmot for luck.

All the way at the other end of Zermatt, back by the train station, we saw sheep on the hillside. We knew there were trails, so we went to see if we could see the sheep a bit better.

Pretty sure if the women by that gate hadn’t moved, Beth would have made them move. Ha! We watched the sheperd herd the sheep into their little pen. We also dubbed him “hot millenial sheperd” because he had a man bun, and was hot.

We continued to walk around exploring. It turned dark and all the houses lit up with golden light. I wondered if everyone had to buy “warm” lightbulbs in Zermatt just for the asethetics. The clouds appeared to be lifting a bit. In the far right photo, you can actually see the base of the Matterhorn, which we couldn’t see at all before.

We hit the hotel bar for a night cap, and then time for bed!