Last Days in Zermatt

Today's Friday and our last day of skiing....We woke up to find it snowing lightly and the mountains were enveloped in cloud but we were going to ski no matter what! We headed up to Riffleberg ski point to try the slope we'd done the day before - we could hardly see anything the cloud was so thick...this meant for a challenge ski down the mountain. Here's the view from the cable car - gives you an idea of the height of the cars... Off we went and it was a very different experience to the day before when we'd had clear blue skies. We were all very cautious and did lots of traversing to control our speed as we had no idea of what the slope was like - if the snow was smooth, rough, uphill or down - it was horrible. I couldn't wait to get down but the good news is we all did it without a stack despite the conditions - that's impressive! Anyway we reached the bottom and I said I wasn't doing anymore skiing until we could see where we were going - here's a photo taken from outside the restaurant towards the slope - visibility was about zero! However Mase and Jo were keen to retry and then Sam and Matt agreed to go too. I stayed in the warm restaurant and waited for them to finish. This time visibility was even worse and all the children stacked it in some way or another (Sam in particular completely missed a turn and shot off the side of the run!) ... Well we'd had enough of Riffleberg and so we decided to go back Sunnegga at Matt's request because as he put it 'I've got that track all worked out in my mind and know how it goes and I just want to do it'. I opted out of skiing until conditions cleared and spent the morning wandering round Zermatt village - seeing the old wooden style houses they lived in, the church, the patisseries, the tourist trinket shops etc - quite boring all on your own but I got a feel for the place. It's a car-less village but they do have taxis and buses so it has quite a quaint, old worldy feel to it in some ways. The snow covered paths that were steep made life interesting and I slipped and nearly fell over a few times. At 1.30pm we all met for lunch at Sunnega - rosti and egg or ham and cheese - is a very traditional Swiss food and is served in all the ski restaurants. We shared a couple of plates between us and it was nice - a little bit oily - but otherwise nice. Rosti is basically seasoned grated potato and the kids liked it so much that I've promised to make it when we get back to Perth God willing. After lunch, as conditions had cleared and there was a nice blue sky I joined the children skiing down Sunnegga beginner's slope and Mase headed off to Rothorn to try an averagegrade slope on his own. He made it from the top of the mountain to the bottom without stacking it (a vertical drop of 1700m) - so that's an achievement in 4 days. He did admit to having pretty tired/sore legs by the end of the run. Apparently the views were magnificent up there - way up the top of the seeable world, on a snowy white mountain top with cloud below - sounds spekky. Meanwhile the children and I went down our slope three of four times and I only stacked it once. The kids took the steep slopes faster than me but my greater weight would catch them up on the slower runs, so generally we finished about the same time which I was very pretty happy with. Jo's fastest time was 4.22mins to do the whole run - Mase did it in 3.20mins. The rest of us didn't time ourselves but approximately 5 to 6 mins would be fair for me - so we've all improved and had a great day. So that's it for skiing - we've returned all our hire gear and now are resting our weary legs.
Friday night was our last night in Zermatt and we decided to have a Swiss meal. We shared a cheese fondue - served with bread and steamed potatoes to dip in the cheese - this was a new experience for all of us. Jo and Matt didn't like the fondue so they ate bread/potato. Mase, Sam and I thought it was alright but nothing to rave over. As Mase said, it's just another excuse for the Swiss to eat bread and cheese. They eat it for breakfast, they eat it in rolls for lunch and for dinner as fondue. But back to our meal - Mase and I tried veal sausage with rosti and salad for our main course. Jo and Matt had chicken schnitzel with rosti and salad, Sam had ham and cheese rosti. Over our meal we discussed the week's adventures and Mase awarded Sam with the best stack, Jo for most improved at traversing, Matt for his speed demon approach, me for facing and conquering my fears and we decided he was best all round skier in the family. The kids said they wanted to ski again and Mase jokingly said 'maybe in 10 years time'....Matt didn't forget this because at breakfast on Saturday Mase asked if they wanted to go and play in the snow for the last time before we left and Matt said he didn't want to. Mase suggested he may not see snow again and Matt quickly replied 'yes, we will - in 10 years time'....apparently they're not going to let that line pass! Anyway, we had an interesting Swiss experience - rosti is definitely something we'd try again. We've also enjoyed some other Swiss foods - melt in your mouth Swiss chocolates, some lemon shortbread cookies, bircher muesli, plum kucehn (similar to a light custard tart with plum) and appfelstrudle (spelling?)...
Now it's Saturday and we need to pack up and train back to Geneva, where we stay one night and then catch a plane to Amsterdam early Sunday morning.