Our first hike

August 3rd--We slept really good last night. The apartment has the black out shades, so it was really dark and cool in the bedrooms. It was nice to not have the sun waking you up at 4:30am. Once we got up and going, we decided to head up the mountain to do a little exploring and hiking. We walked to the funicular station and took the funicular up to Sunnegga Paradise. The funicular goes up through the mountain and was only about a 5 minute ride. We exited and there was a restaurant located at the top of the stop. There was a bowl area below the restaurant that had a playground and small lake. There were also swings and slides placed all around the lake. So we headed down there to allow the kids to play. It was very cool up on the mountain today because it was overcast. The temperature was in the 40s, but felt cooler at times because of the clouds and wind. I thought I had read you could swim in the lake, but it was way too cool today to swim...or so I thought. An older man, probably in his 70s, strips down to his speedo and dives in. No kidding, everyone around stopped what they were doing and stared in amazement. After making our way around the lake, we headed back up to the restaurant for lunch. It was nice to get out of the cold and wind for a little while. At lunch, the kids were looking at a kids book they had picked up earlier in the day. It indicated there was a large playground a little higher up the mountain. So after lunch, we took the gondola up the mountain to Blauherd. Here we found a very large play area. It was spread out over a couple of acres and included everything from slides to zip lines to a large chess set. It had started to rain a little (more like a heavy mist), so we didn't get to play as long as we would like. The kids still had fun on the zip line...plus we had the entire area to ourselves. We had originally planned to hike down from here, but because of the weather, we decided to take the gondola back down. When we got back to Sunnegga, the weather had improved enough that we decided to hike back down to Zermatt. It started by a nice, fairly flat trail that took us about 40 minutes. It ended at Tuftern, where there was a little restaurant. We stopped off for a hot chocolate break. We then continued down to Zermatt. The next section was pretty rough terrain. It went through the forest part of the mountain and was a fairly steep decent. After about 40 minutes, we found our way back to a smoother path for the remaining decent. All in all, it was about 4 miles of descent over about 2000 feet. The kids did great and really seemed to enjoy the hike down the mountain. By the time we arrived back in Zermatt, it was after 5:30 pm, so I ran to the grocery store to pick up food for dinner while Amy and the kids went back for baths. I was able to find stuff to make tacos, so we had a good dinner after our long day on the mountain. Amy and I are pretty sure we found some muscles we forgot we had and are worried how sore we will be when we get up tomorrow.