How can you tell when you’ve been to a spectacular place? For me, a respectable hint is coming home with 300 photos after being away for barely a weekend! This happened to Patrick and I last weekend, after exploring the Valais region of Switzerland, which is a two and a half hour drive from where we live at the moment, Nyon. (Okay, so maybe one or both of us has a compulsive clicking habit... but still!)
On the Friday morning, I had to search long and hard -over 2 hours!- in order to find an affordable hotel with a vacancy for Saturday night. In Switzerland, most hostels and reasonably priced hotels are booked months in advance during the summer and winter months when families flock to the mountains for hiking and skiing. (We had waited until the very last minute to make weekend plans hoping that the unstable and rainy weather would change for the better, which it finally did.)
This last-minute quest led us to the minuscule village of Arolla at the end of a beautiful valley unbeknown to most, Val d’Hérens, just south of Sion. We had to negociate a series of narrow, winding roads and nerve-racking tunnels in a constant upwards direction before reaching the end of the road, literally. And there it stood before us, Grand Hôtel Kurhaus, at an altitude of 2110 metres surrounded by dramatic views all around.
The view from our hotel room. I do not know who was inspired to place a Swiss flag on top of the pine tree (!) but I can tell you that the mountain in the middle is Mont Collon. It is 3827 metres high and there were huge glaciers edging their way down both sides of it.
The ceiling in our tiny room was low, and the windows were small, but the view outside is real!
It turns out that the Grand Hôtel Kurhaus is a Swiss historic hotel which dates back to 1896. However, we were more impressed by the terrace outside than the huge old building itself. Upon our arrival, we promptly headed outside to snack on a « croûte au fromage » before heading out for our hike. (A « croûte au fromage » is the messy Swiss version of a French croque monsieur. Imagine a thick slice of toasted bread, with or without ham, covered in a heap of grilled, crusty cheese. Undisputedly a lactose intolerant’s worst nightmare, and yet another Swiss excuse to eat too much cheese, but delightful at the least!)
Grand Hôtel Kurhaus with its grassy, very green terrace.
Full of cheese and ready to hike!
Look... I am wearing camouflage to blend in with the moss on the rocks!
Lisa leads the way. This is my new favorite screensaver!
We hiked for most of the afternoon with incredible views all around us. Fortunately in some places, there were cables to help us along.
Along the way, many pretty butterflies and flowers typical to the alpine fauna delighted our senses.
Time for a break, surrounded by neat rock formations and Arolla pine trees which only grow at an altitude of 2000 metres or higher (hence the name of our destination village, Arolla).
Once the cheese calories were all burned up, it was time for a snack. We found a more than perfect spot by the {Lac Bleu} which is, indeed, limpid blue.
Sometimes there are no words to describe it… Switzerland looks and feels just like a fairytale!
Time to head back to the hotel.
But wait... there's more! On Sunday morning, on our way back down the valley, we drove by the Pyramides d’Euseigne, a strange geological formation of glacial moraine. (Moraine, I learned, is an accumulation of earth and stones deposited by a glacier.)
The boulders balanced on the needle tops of these stalagmites was an impressive sight of our wonderful weekend in the Valais.
Before going home, we headed to the neighboring valley to check out the Dixence dam, the second tallest and highest altitude dam in the world (the first one is somewhere in the former Soviet Union). I had never seen a dam before, and both of us gasped in disbelief when we caught our first glimpse. The immensity of the structure is startling and one cannot be prevented from thinking: what if the wall broke? Well, trust the Swiss to build a structure apparently so safe that it is strong enough to resist an earthquake of magnitude 9 on the Mercalli scale. It is also the second tallest man-made structure in Europe on which people can walk (the first one is in Moscow, Russia). All of this at an altitude of 2400 metres!
The Grande Dixence is indeed very grande. I would even call it the great wall of Switzerland!
The view from the top of the wall. Although hiking to the top of the dam was an option, we chose the telepherique instead for lack of time and in my case, sore muscles from the previous day's hike!
