Taking the Trains to Zermatt

This morning our adventure started at 5 AM when we had to get up a going for our day full of train rides to Zermatt, Switzerland. Our cab picked us up at 6 AM but they forgot that we had luggage going with us as well and needed a carseat for Harrison, so we jammed 6 people, the cab driver, our stroller, 5 suitcases and 3 bags in a Vauxhall Zafira which is like the smallest of mini vans. We hoped that this wasn't a precursor for how the day was going to go.

Addison and Harrison were bright eyed and bushy tailed for the first leg from Peterborough to London. Harry looks sad here but it's because he has a huge, fat lip from diving off the window cill in the conservatory and putting his bottom teeth almost all the way through his lip. The "fearless wonder" he is.

Addison wanted to help Grandpa out with his luggage as we got ready to check into the Eurostar.

Harrison wanted to help pull suitcases too but I showed him that it was much more fun to ride.

Here we are in St. Pancras International Rail Station getting ready to hop on our high-speed train to Paris Gare du Nord station.

We had a 2 1/2 hour journey to Paris so we broke out the DVD player for Addison while Harrison decided to take a little nap in Kevin's arms. It was a pretty nice ride like the Eurostar has been in the past. I really enjoy taking the trains much more than airplanes.

We had 1.5 hours to catch our train leaving out of Paris' Gare du Lyon station, so we made our way through the Paris Metro. Well, I wish we would have understood French, because a gentleman who we thought was hassling us was actually trying to warn us that the Metro line we were heading towards was shut down due to a strike. People could tell we were heading to Gare du Lyon because we had suitcases and said that we would need to go back up stairs and head to a different line. At this time we only had 40 minutes before our train was going to leave and I tell you I haven't been in so much panic on a trip as I was at that point. We caught a new train and made one connection than starting running like chickens with our heads cut off to find our way to the platform for our TGV train. We made it to our car with 8 minutes to spare...needless to say that I was sweating horribly and my heart was racing. This was our longest stretch from Paris to Lausaane, Switzerland so the trip would be about 4 hours. We ended up having kind of a private section of the train car with two groups of four, but we had two other people with us for about 3/4ths of the trip, but I don't think they minded us too much since they both sat on their laptops the whole time.

It started to get much colder as we got further south and with the sun down halfway through our trip through France we didn't get to seem much. When we got to Lausanne we had about a 30 minute wait for our next train so we tried keeping the kids bundled up since there wasn't much for inside places there. We took an InterRegional train from Lausanne to Visp which was about 1.5 hours. We had this really cool looking conductor guy come through to punch our tickets so I had to take his pic. During this leg we ate what we had left of our packed lunch, which was about a 1/2 sandwich eat and a few Pringles. We were trying to keep as much food available for the kiddos. Mike, Kevin's dad, was excited at the thought of eating food on the trains as part of the adventure but Kevin and I have done this enough times to know that you don't get much time to do that and relying on the stations to have food is not a good thing to do. I thought the cooler might be a pain to haul along with us but it was very valuable and all the goodies like banana bread muffins, grapes, sliced apples, ham/cheese and PB&J sandwiches, plus a bag of pretzels and Pringles.

Towards the last leg of our trip the kids were getting pretty restless, but for the most part they had been troopers during the whole trip. Our last leg of the trip took a little over an hour to get from Visp to Zermatt and we were delayed about 20 minutes. The hard part about the last leg was knowing that we were surrounded by these magnificent mountains and I couldn't see them at all. Our hostess, Ashley, met us at the train station and had a taxi lined up for us to get to the chalet. The funny thing about the taxis is that they are all electric and they look like extended golf carts with sides on them and a flat bed in back for luggage. Once we got to the house, we had a crazy set of steps to climb up...about 7-8 flights. Then at the house we of course were on the top floor so 2 more flights up spiral stairs with luggage and tired kids. But I have to tell you that it was all worth it. The house was amazing and Ashley was awesome. She had picked up a few items from the grocery store for us so we had some snacks and breakfast foods. Also the owner of the house left us a bottle of wine, a huge box of chocolates, a bowl of peanuts and chocolates, a big box of toys for the kids to play with and she had the place all decorated for Christmas. I knew that we were going to have an amazing holiday this week!!!