When it finally came round to skiing in Zermatt, I just didn’t want to. I don’t even know the exact moment that changed but if I had to guess, it was probably when I put my ski boots on.
See, I have very wide feet and so I struggle to find, not just comfortable ski boots but shoes in general (in fact, my very last trip to Switzerland involved me having taken new shoes with me which I’d never worn before and having to get rid of them in Zurich).
Ski boots aren’t meant to be super-comfy, even at the best of times but unbeknownst to, I’d also done up my ski super tight – so tight that by the time I’d walked up to the gondola I’d given up on skiing for the day.
It was thanks to an AMAZING lady called Suzi who promptly sorted out my shoes and encouraged me try out the long slopes in front of us that everything changed. I was so close to calling it quits (I could barely stand in the shoes at the time) but once we hit the slopes, my gosh I was instantly addicted!
Skiing in Zermatt is absolutely AMAZING! And I’m not just saying that – there’s a lot of reasons why this is the case.
First off, the slopes are nice and long with lots of potentials for stops which means you never have to feel tired, or overwhelmed yet if you wanna just carry on without stopping, you can. The ski conditions – snow et al, are absolutely fantastic (which makes sense considering how high you are in the Swiss Alps) and the atmosphere is just brilliant!
All the reasons people keep raving about Zermatt just make sense as soon as you ski here and I found myself zipping back and forth through the mountains – pretty much screeching “Again! AGAIN!!!” once we got to the end, with the fervour of an excited 2 year old child!
Respecting myself (I did learn to ski as an adult), I tend to stick to Blue slopes (*I have done a red slope before and that was a.) Unplanned and b.) Had me screaming internally all the way down) but once we realised that the restaurants we were planning on visiting was accessible at the end of a red slope, we decided to intentionally tackle a red slope.
I was a tad nervous at first but my gosh, it was so much fun!
Once we started, every bit of caution I had evaporated and I had the most amazing time – so much so that without necessarily knowing where I was going, I started down a black slope, only realising in the nick of time that I had to turn left to carry on down the red one to the restaurant.
Funny thing is, the black run didn’t even look that scary to me at the time. Sometimes, I think skiing is part-skill and a large part-confidence (but don’t get me wrong, once I realised that was a black run, I quickly made my way over to the red).
In Zermatt, before visiting, I thought most of what would make skiing here special, would be all to do with the view of the Matterhorn but as beautiful as that mountain is, it’s the actual ski slopes here that made Zermatt feel so special.
The Matterhorn is great but if you skied here all the time looking at it, you’d probably end up hurting yourself so understandably, you pay less attention to it and more to the experience here.
Anyway, long story short – skiing here was great and definitely an experience that had us nice and ready for lunch at Paradies!
We opted for a seat out in the sunshine with a spectacular view of the Matterhorn and boy was the food incredible here! 😍 My experience of ski food in the past has tended to be underwhelming so Paradies was just such an amazingly pleasant surprise!
I’m just not that into cold cuts and cheese boards or many of the meals you find in restaurants up in the mountains (some of which I feel don’t even try that hard because you essentially have limited choice when you’re up there) but by the time I tucked into my lobster and prawn pasta, I made it my duty to ‘taste’ everyone else’s meals up here. 😀
Lunch over, we hit the slopes again, making our way down to the ski lifts which would take us to one of the other trains that zips down the mountain back to Zermatt.
Looking back, I couldn’t believe how much skiing we’d done – especially considering how I’d started off that morning and its safe to say, we left Zermatt later that afternoon with such amazing memories and a promise to come back again in summer to see how everything had transformed!
See you again soon Zermatt! 😀
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