Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Zermatt

The next part of our tour was going to be on the Glacier Express, so here it is waiting in the station. The Glacier Express is arguably even more famous than the Bernina Express, and is one of the slower "express" trains in the world, although probably not the "slowest," as its advertising claims. The large windows wrapping around the roof indicate its real purpose, as a scenic, but modern, tourist train. It is jointly operated by the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn and the Rhätische Bahn, who also operate the Bernina Express, connecting in Chur. We ultimately took the Glacier Express to Chur, but skipped the Bernina Express on this trip.

This was another photo I took. As with most very high mountains, the Matterhorn is harder to photograph as you get closer to it, so the later photos didn't come out as well.

The Matterhorn may be my favorite mountain. To me, it looks more extreme, dramatic, and unique than any other. It's so steep that it's cartoonish, yet otherwise its proportions are, at least from this angle, almost as perfect as they could be. In fact, if it weren't for those kinks on the side, making it resemble a shark's tooth, it wouldn't be so distinctive anyway. On this trip, I wasn't prepared to summit it (The Matterhorn is 4,478 meters, or 14,690 feet high, and the steepness of some of the faces, particularly the summit, is obvious here.), so I began hiking up it, but gave myself (and my Mom) a time limit of about a half hour. This is one of the photos I took.

Zermatt isn't the only city I've been to with a lot of electric vehicles, but it is the first I've been to where other motor vehicles are banned (with the exception of the fire department, who have Land Rovers). Most of the existing electric vehicles aren't private cars, though, but taxis like these. In overall terms, though, even these are unnecessary, as Zermatt is small enough to be walkable in its entirety, and has good rail connections to just about everywhere Switzerland.