Living in Southern Spain would mean a 65° Fahrenheit Christmas. That didn’t seem right to us, so we opted to hop on one of the crazily inexpensive flights you can get to travel within European countries and spend a few days in Zermatt, Switzerland.
To get to carless Zermatt, you must arrive by train.
At the Visc station 
The train ride was super easy, comfortable, punctual and filled with amazing scenery. Unforunately, it was hard to get good pictures through the windows because of reflection, but here are a few.
St. Nikolaus 
Lac Leman 
Zermatt is a beautiful Christmas postcard; covered in snow and twinkly lights.
Our main objective was to ski. The Zermatt ski resort is huge. In three days of skiing, we got no where near to skiing all of the 360 kms of runs.
One of the really special things were all of the ways you get to the different slopes. Of course there are the typical chair ski lifts like we have at home, but we also used cable cars (big and small), a funicular and even a train! Because of this, the runs can be really long. The day we took the train to the top of Gornergrat, we spent the rest of the day getting to the bottom.
Small cable car 
LONG tunnel to funicular 
warm inside cable car 
Some great views on the ride
At the top of the train there is a panoramIc viewpoint that you can hike up to and get rewarded with some amazing views.
Our first two days of skiing were challenging because it snowed the entire time and the visibility was extremely limited. But the third day, oh my, what an amazingly beautiful place to be.
Another really special thing about skiing around Zermatt are all of the little restaurants you find along the runs.
Lunch on the patio
Also along the slopes was an igloo village; a bar, restaurant and hotel up high on the mountain which made a perfect place to stop for a hot chocolate. If we ever have a next time, we want to spend the night in one of these.
And then there was the food! We had a lot of ooey, gooey, cheesy fondue. The boys also enjoyed Fondue Chinoise, which translates as Chinese fondue, but actually means meat fondue, which includes a variety of raw meats that you dip in a boiling broth, not cheese, to cook to your liking. Oliver was in heaven; yummy food you can play with and cook yourself! And Leo, the only family member who is not a fan of cheese, really enjoyed the cheese fondue.
We also had some other Swiss dishes like Kåse Kuchen (cheese quiche), rösti (hash browns), and stood in line in the snow for crêpes made with Raclette cheese and Lindt chocolate.
Raclette 
Lindt chocolate
And of course we had to get some Swiss chocolate.
It was really surprising how expensive all of the food was, especially compared to Spain. This trip was Todd and my Christmas, birthday and Valentine’s Day presents to each other (and then some).
Zermatt is part of German speaking Switzerland. Luckily Todd knows a little German, and we all took turns trying a few words, guten tag (good day), danke (thank you), bitte (please), and the boys had fun finding a lot of similarities to English. For the most part, however, people were multilingual (French, English, Italian) and we had no trouble communicating.
Oliver said that he could live here and wondered where the school was. When we asked him why he wanted to live here he said because of the clean air and the super yummy water (we’ve been missing Portland water) and he wouldn’t mind eating fondue every day.
And having to travel light (those cheap airfares don’t allow a lot of luggage) and spending Christmas morning in a hotel, meant some creative Christmas stockings: boots!
Adrift in Andalucía 