Day 584 Zermatt to Germany
Making Our Way to Baden-Baden
The next morning we said good by to Zermatt and the Matterhorn's snaggled tooth. It wasn't easy. I could've stayed there for days, absorbing the majesty of the place, it's steep, sloping, utterly green meadows topped by tree filled mountains that ran to rock and then snow, and then the saw-toothed massifs so high above.
We reversed our way down the Alps, leaving Kalpetran, Saint Niklaus and Visp behind. Down we went through mountains that long ago were smashed cruelly from ancient seabeds and shoved high to become the cracked ridges upon which skiers, hikers, and other humans had stood in awe, or died trying.
The weather grew warmer, and we passed the great blue sky high above. Soon we were on the high-speed train to Baden-Baden, where I was told, my great-grandfather had grown up.
We were there by late afternoon - Cloudy 66º. Uber took us from the train through serpentine roads to the Hotel Quellenhof.
Settled in we strolled beneath umbrellas of Chestnut trees and around the corner through a series of ancient and charming pedestrian pathways skirted with restaurants and retail shops.
The nearby Loewenbraeu Keller (Lion's Brew Cellar) we stumbled across seemed to be the perfect place for a hardy dinner of bregenwurst, wiener schnitzel, the ever present helpings of potatoes (mashed and roasted in our case) and a good local beer. After all, we WERE in Germany.
