Back in Switzerland

August 2nd--We had a little bit of a hectic/stressful morning getting out of our apartment in Paris. Two reasons: We had to get up at 6:00 to leave by 7:00 and I was up most of the night sick with food poisoning. By the time we got everything packed up and the apartment cleaned, it was closer to 7:30 a.m. before getting in a taxi heading for the train station. We sweated out the ride to the train station for our train was departing at 7:58 a.m. We arrived at the train station around 7:48 and thought we had plenty of time until we realized that our platform was a good 5 plus minutes away from the entrance. We ended up running to our platform. We had 2 suitcases on the train, the kids and myself when the whistle blew indicating that if you weren't on the train, you better jump on. So, Mike threw the 2 remaining suitcases on the train and jumped on himself. We couldn't have cut it any closer. Once on the train, we were able to relax. In fact, I got to rest some since I didn't get a whole lot of sleep the night before. It was a 4 hour train ride to Lusanne where we switched trains. We were then on a commuter train that was about 1 1/2 hours long to Visp. Upon arriving in Visp, we got our first taste of the cool summer Switzerland weather. We got on a very nice train to climb the mountain into Zermatt. We arrived in Zermatt at 3:15 p.m. We have come full circle arriving back in Switzerland and it feels good. We loved Switzerland so much in the Winter that we wanted to experience it in the Summer. We exited the train station and got in a Taxi. Now this isn't your normal taxi because Zermatt is a car free city. It is basically a large, enclosed golf cart. We quickly made our way to our apartment where we were greeted by Christopher. He was very friendly and informative. The apartment here is awesome. We can see the Matterhorn from our window and although it's an apartment, it still has a chalet feel. After settling in, we made our way toward the grocery store. Since this area is so touristy, the grocery store was actually opened on Sunday. On our way to the store, we passed by an awesome playground and the kids begged to play on it. So, Mike continued onto the store and I stayed with the kids to play. We had only been here an hour and were already enjoying the area. After Mike came back to the playground with the groceries, we all walked back to the apartment. I gave the kids a bath while Mike went to pick up a pizza for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the weather, the view and some English television shows.