Zermatt: Home of Winter

With COVID making travel for yet another holiday season unpredictable, we decided to stay in-country for Christmas and visit one of our Swiss bucket list locations: Zermatt!

Zermatt is a village in the canton of Valais, in the southern part of Switzerland very close to the Italian border (so close that you can ski to Italy). It is a carless town. There are electric taxis and buses and a very small number of residents are allowed to have vehicles but otherwise it is a walking town. Visitors can park as close as the town of Täsch and then must take the train the rest of the way.

We opted to take public transportation the entire way in. Our train route had us go from Bern to the city of Visp, just on the other side of the Bernese Alps. In Visp we changed to a different train that took us all the way to Zermatt. The Visp to Zermatt route is also part of the Glacier Express panoramic train route. The views are lovely. The normal second class cars on this section of the route have massive picture windows so if you want to have beautiful mountain views without paying for the panoramic train prices, you can.

The village of Zermatt itself is not particularly big. There is some shopping but the main draw is of course the mountains, in particular the Matterhorn. Zermatt is situated at the end of a mountain valley. Monte Rosa, the highest mountain in Switzerland, is nearby. There are numerous outdoor activities one can do in the mountains surrounding Zermatt. In the summertime visitors can hike, visit the lakes, swim, mountain bike, paraglide, and rock climb. Thanks to the high altitude, you can even ski during the summer. During winter time, snow sports are king. There is of course ample skiing and snowboarding. If the slopes aren’t really your thing, you’re still in luck. Switzerland has a fantastic network of winter hiking and snowshoeing paths all over the country, and the ones in Zermatt are fantastic. This is what we opted to do. If none of that appeals to you, there is a very convenient system of funiculars, mountain railways, and gondolas that can take you to the tops of some of the nearby mountains so you can still enjoy scenic views and even a nice meal or a cup of coffee.

We stayed in Zermatt for four nights at a very tiny AirBnB in the middle of town, about a five minute walk from the train station. According to our friend Wikipedia, about half of the apartments in Zermatt are vacation apartments. There are also plenty of hotels if that is more your speed. The city isn’t very large and even the outskirts are reachable by foot. We arrived the evening of the first night and settled in (day 0). Day 1 was spent taking the Gornergrat Railway up to the top of the Gornergrat viewing point and taking two snowshoe trails down to Riffelberg. We then headed back into town for dinner. The next day we took the same railway up to a lower stop at Riffelalp and took a different snowshoe trail to the town of Findeln for a late lunch, then followed a winter hiking path back down to Zermatt. We opted for a light meat and cheese plate at our apartment and a nice bottle of wine. The third day we took a gondola and visited a different part of the mountain range and took a snowshoe trail down part of the mountain, then followed a winter hiking path back into Zermatt, passing through the very tiny hamlet of Zmutt. The next day we slept in and then made our way back to Bern via the train.

We stayed in a little apartment in a historic building that was once the home of an old local mountain guide

A couple notes about Zermatt:

I’ve heard people in the past talk about how expensive Zermatt can be. Granted, lodging can be pricey, especially around the holidays. But I found food and beverage prices comparable to, and sometimes less expensive than, other cities in Switzerland. Overall, I think Zermatt is one of the few, or only, experiences some tourists have with Switzerland. Really it isn’t Zermatt; restaurant prices are just higher in Switzerland as a whole compared to the rest of Europe.

Because it is such a heavily tourist trafficked town, we saw something that we haven’t really seen in Switzerland: everything was open on Christmas and on Sunday. So if you find yourself in Zermatt over the holidays or on a Sunday, fear not. All the restaurants and shops are open, and the grocery stores as well (there are two, a Migros and a Coop, in the city center). If you try go go shopping in most cities in Switzerland on Christmas or on a Sunday you will be completely out of luck.

Viewpoints: you can see the Matterhorn from town at certain locations. I found this list of viewpoints from various points in Zermatt and other surrounding areas. My favorite viewpoint in town is this one because you also get a view of the village in the foreground. The view from Kirchbrücke is also very good.

Finally, meals. As with other places in Switzerland, if you make a reservation you have the table for the night. It is not uncommon to have a full three course meal with multiple glasses of wine. If you are like us and haven’t made reservations, you may still be in luck. The restaurants we tried still had tables open for walk ins. One restaurant also seated us because we ate dinner early enough that we would have time to leave before the 8 pm reservation arrived. At least in the winter, it seemed that skiers came down from the slopes around 4 or 5 and hit the bars for aprés ski drinks and then have dinner at a later hour. This worked out great for our American habits as we were usually some of the first people sitting down to dinner. There are also some fantastic restaurants in the mountain towns. I’ll talk about it more on the Day 2 page, but in particular I can recommend the restaurants in the town of Findeln. They cater to hikers and skiers in particular and we were able to grab a table for a later lunch with a fantastic view of the Matterhorn. You can also reach the town by taking a funicular up and then walking for a little bit on one of the hiking paths. The town of Zmutt is also supposed to have good restaurants but everything was closed the day we went up (the exception to the rule for the area it appears). You must walk to Zmutt. There are also plenty of bars if you care to partake in after dinner drinks or aprés ski. Harry’s Ski Bar down the street seemed very popular with the latter crowd. Some of the bars are also open very late for Switzerland. We visited the Hexenbar (witches bar) our first night. It is decorated with witches and has fun witch themed drinks on the menu.

Click the following links to read about what we did each day!

Day 1: Gornergrat to Riffelberg

Day 2: Riffelalp to Findeln

Day 3: Schwarzsee to Zmutt