SNOW! MATTERHORN! HEAD EXPLODING!!! So.....a couple weeks ago we took a snowboarding trip to Switzerland. It was awesome. Seriously. We went to one of the most incredible ski/snowboarding locations in Europe, and it lived up to the hype. I'll get to all the details in a bit, but first, a little background on this trip:
Back when we lived in California, Gloria and I used to go on snowboarding trips at least once per year. Here we are on the slopes back in 2009.
We even finished our business school essays on one of our trips to Mammoth. No joke. We literally finalized them from the chalet, then went snowboarding. Good times....
Then, during business school, we managed one snowboarding trip out to Park City Utah, which was awesome except for the fact that I got a concussion while curling. Here's a tip kids: mixing beer with running on ice is a bad idea.
Since that time, we haven't been anywhere near a snow covered mountain and we were definitely itching to get back out there. Enter, Ryan and Laryssa. Laryssa is one of Gloria's coworkers who is in the same rotation program as Gloria, which means Ryan is a "trailing spouse" just like me. Since we both have all the responsibilities of unemployment, we grabbed the reins and planned out our trip.
We settled on Zermatt, Switzerland as our locale of choice. We figured we're living in Europe for one year, so we have to go snowboard at the Matterhorn right? Right. Away we go!
We hopped on a plane to Geneva, where we met up with Ryan & Laryssa. Then it was a lovely 3 hour train ride to Zermatt. If you've never been, Switzerland is a really beautiful place.
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| The view as we approached Geneva. Under those clouds is Lake Geneva, with the Alps in the background. Stunning. |
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| A few sights in and around the train on our ride to Zermatt |
Now, I'd like to take a minute (if you'll indulge me) to talk a bit about Ryan & Laryssa. Gloria and Laryssa met through work, but don't work in the same office. So prior to this trip they knew each other at a friendly coworker level, but they weren't super close. I had never met her or Ryan before. So for the most part, we were traveling together but really didn't know each other. And as anyone who has ever traveled with someone new can attest, you never quite know how those things will turn out.
As luck would have it, we seem to be the perfect couples to travel together. We're all pretty easy going and kind of just go with the flow, and everything just works. So much so that we're already talking about doing another trip together later this year. Woo hoo! Alright, now on to the good stuff!
We arrived in Zermatt, which is a really quaint town. There are no cars allowed in Zermatt, so the only way to get there is to park outside and walk in, or take the train. Once in town, there are electric buses and taxis.
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| On the taxi to our apartment |
Finally we arrive at our apartment.
It is located in a part of Zermatt known as Winkelmatten. It's a slightly away from the center of town, and a little quieter, but it's right by one of the gondolas. Also, it's super charming with its old wooden buildings and alpine amenities. I highly recommend it.
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| This was very typical of the area. Old mixed with new. |
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| These old wooden huts were all over the place. Notice that it's up on stone stilts. |
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| This was our hill to climb up & down every day. The gondola is at the bottom and our apartment was at the top. Damn hill! |
Since we had been traveling all day, our first order of business was to explore the town a bit and get some food and drinks.
It was right about now that we learned first hand that Zermatt lives up to its reputation as an expensive town. Our burgers were something like $20 each and the beers were pricey too. We decided right then that we'd cook most of our meals, which meant we go to experience Swiss grocery stores.
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| Gloria is suspicious of this mayonnaise-in-a-tube |
It was also during our first day that we introduced Ryan and Laryssa to some of the finest entertainment youtube has to offer. We mostly focused on Todrick Hall:
Ryan LOVED Twerking in the Rain. Seriously. LOVED. IT.
This one featured prominently as well.
We may or may not have watched these about a hundred times in 2 days, and then confused all the Swiss skiers as Ryan sang "I'm twerking in the rain" and we shouted "It's so splendid doe!" at random times. Maturity is overrated. Pop it!
I know what you're thinking: what about the snowboarding? Well you're in luck my friends!
The conditions in Zermatt were awesome. It snowed our first day there and stayed cloudy, so we had lots of fresh powder and not too many people. It was fantastic. Our only question was about the Matterhorn itself. We knew it was supposed to be really easy to spot, and our apartment was supposed to have good views of it, but we hadn't seen it yet. At the end of day one, it pretty much looked like this:
We knew it was out there somewhere, and we hoped to get a good view before we left. The next morning, HO-LY CRAP!
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| This was the view from our apartment. Yeah that's a picture. Insanely beautiful. |
Turns out our apartment DOES have amazing Matterhorn views. The next 3 days were spent snowboarding and pretty continuously being amazed by our views.
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| Riding the chair lift |
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| Oh hey Matterhorn! |
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| Quite the crew |
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| Perfect blue skies and stunning scenery |
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| That's the Matterhorn! Right there! |
There are so many great shots from this trip. That's just a sampling.
Another cool thing we found on the mountain is the igloo. They have this igloo that is actually a bar. It's a legit igloo made of snow and there is a bar inside. It wasn't running when we got there, so we had a beer outside and poked our heads inside to check it out.
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| Ice bar! |
In the end, it was an epic trip and we had a blast. Especially since Ryan & Laryssa share our oh-so-adult sense of humor.
I also have tons of video to go through, since both Ryan and I were wearing our GoPro cameras. I'll edit that together into something cool soon, but in the meantime, here's a little preview:
Not only that, it turns out another couple from Fuqua just moved to London. Erica Gellerman (class of 2012) and her husband Jordan (class of 2013-ish? Executive Program) just arrived in London a few days ago and will be living here for the next couple years. We're ecstatic to have new friends here, and as if things couldn't get any better, Erica and Jordan might end up be living in our neighborhood as well. How great is that?
Anyhoooo, we spent the weekend bumming around London, exploring the borough market, took a walk through Hyde Park and Speaker's Corner (lots of religious rantings), and we even made time for afternoon tea at Harvey Nichols.
We had an absolutely wonderful weekend with Allison, Erica, and Jordan, and now we're gearing up for another weekend of Fuqua shenanigans. Why is that you ask? Well, here's why:
