Day 12 - Tue 09 Sep 25: St Moritz to Zermatt

September 09, 2025

Tue 09 Sep 25: St Moritz to Zermatt

Another night with only a few hours sleep - it must be all this excitement keeping me awake. We headed down for breakfast at 0700, then returned to our room to collect our luggage and checked out at 0800. We walked the 800m with luggage in hand downhill to the railway station to eventually board the 0939 Glacier Express to Zermatt via Chur, Andermatt and Brig. Of course, in perfect Swiss timing, we departed on time. The world’s slowest express train takes about 8 hours through the Rhone Valley, over 291 bridges and through 91 tunnels. Unfortunately, we caught only glimpses of the scenery throughout due to the cloudy conditions. It did start to clear by 1230, as we moved lower onto the valley. Lunch was a 3 course meal which we pre-booked and were mostly disappointed with - it was a far cry from the gourmet experience that was promoted. During lunch as we started our climb out of the valley to the highest point of the journey at the Overalpass (2033m), we were clouded in again and had very little visibility. Over the other side of the mountain as we descended into the valley between Brig and Zermatt, conditions improved enough to see the very pretty landscape. Climbing up in altitude again to Zermatt through the Matter Valley was stunning, and for the first time today we actually spotted a glacier. Despite all the stops to allow oncoming trains to pass, we arrived in Zermatt as scheduled right on time at 6:07pm. Early in the day on the train I sent an email to the hotel requesting pickup from the train station, and within minutes I had a response confirming that they would be there to pick us up….and they were. Zermatt has no fuel powered cars allowed, and our transport was a small electric powered shuttle bus. Or hotel the Jägerhof Hotel is located about one km away from the railway station, and on the way to our hotel, it didn’t take long to get excited about spending 2 nights in this charming town called Zermatt. It is very pretty, and in the distance we even spotted the Matterhorn occasionally revealing itself through the clouds. We checked into our hotel, and quickly left Noel for a walk around before joining her back at the hotel bar for a couple of refreshments, before retiring to our room for the evening.