Visitors

Something we always look forward to when living abroad is visitors. Even though we enjoy trying to integrate into places we live by making friends with Roy's work friends and such, it's still exciting to have visitors from Australia (even though they didn't come straight from Australia). The past two weeks Roy and I have being playing host to friends from Australia. Our first visitor was Ben who is Roy's old uni and poker buddy who has been travelling around the world for the last 8 or so months. He's been to too many countries for me to name so check out his great blog to read about his exciting adventures.

Ben arrived rather late on a Saturday night (late because of very annoying train strikes in France) but it timed well with us since we were having dinner in Sion with other friends (we had our first try of Swiss fondue - YUM) so our train got us back to Saint-Maurice just before Ben was due to arrive. He hopped off the train with his backpacks, looking rather tired so we walked back to our place where he quickly settled in and told us about some of his great adventures. Ben's visit was timed well because there was a Catholic holiday in Switzerland so Roy had the Monday off work. Since our neighbouring canton of Vaud isn't Catholic, there was no holiday there so the shops weren't shut so we decided to go to Lausanne for the day.

After my friends showed me the greatness of Artisanal beer in Sion (Les Divins Brasseurs), I was really keen to hunt for more pubs that brewed their own beer. I did a quick search on the internet before we left to go to Lausanne and discovered that there was indeed an artisanal beer pub in Lausanne so that was one of the main points of interest for our day. We toured our way around the city until we came to the pub which we promptly parked our butts on a stool and ordered a tasty brew. I had tried a Belgian Framboise (raspberry) beer when I was in Holland so I was very keen to try the Kriek (cherry flavoured) beer that this place had to offer. It was very sweet! Nice too, but I think I prefer the Framboise since it didn't have that sickly, sweet flavour to it.

The sun was near setting time so we caught the metro down to Ouchy to admire the sunset over Lake Geneva. A sunset over that lake is always so beautiful!

Roy enjoying some Marzipan carrots and Ben enjoying the sunset.

Ben left on Tuesday to go to France to continue his journey west. A few days later our second set of visitors arrived. This time it was Mitch and Lu who live in Holland. Mitch organised a "work trip" to Switzerland but to Lu and I, it was a housewife conference. They arrived on Saturday night which happened to coincide with a Guggenmusik festival which roared it's way through our little town of Saint-Maurice.

Mitch and Lu have a car which came in handy for a bit of exploring on Sunday. Even though the trains are great here, it's always fun to go for an adventure where the trains can't take us. We went up the mountains near Martigny to a place called Champex where we donned our hiking boots and hiked up a small mountain to Le Belvedere. Check out Lu's blog for the story about our snow storm adventure. These fantastic photos were taken by our trusty photographer Mitch!

The rest of the week (while the guys were at work) Lu and I did our usual housewifey thing... eating, cooking, giggling and lots of watching of L.A. Ink (which we got rather addicted to). Most nights the guys came home to a hot meal on the table and we ended most nights with either Raving Rabbid competitions between the guys or watching a movie.

Saturday morning came and we were all itching to hunt for some more snow so we jumped in the car and headed up to Gstaad and to the bottom of the chairlift to Glacier 3000. We were tempted to go up the chairlift except it was 77 Francs each for Mitch and Lu (Roy and I have a 1/2 fare card) and they weren't expecting to see snow on their trip so they didn't bring their snow jackets. So instead we decided to play in the snow-covered paddock that we passed on our way to the chairlift. Since we all still get really excited when we see snow, the paddock was adequate for our adventures. Who needs snow fields, alpine coasters and husky sledding anyway?

Since the only snow I had seen in my entire 25 years of my life was the tiny bit of snow which turned to brown muck in Beijing, I was SUPER keen to make a snowman. Lu and I quickly got to work to make the foundations for an epic snowman. We soon realised that it's hard work to make a snowman when you don't have adequate snow gear on so we settled on a rather small snow lady as our hands turned to icicles. We managed to pull the guys away from their snowball fight to help us gather snow for our lady and before too long, she was done. A marvelous, voluptuous snow lady stood before us in all her glory. Lu topped her off with a hat, sunglasses and even some shiny, pink lipgloss. 

 

Some more snowball fights, attempted snow angels by Lu (resulting in wet jeans), and enjoying the destruction of our snow lady (throwing snowballs at her head) we walked back to the car so we could continue on our road adventure. But only after a pose in the bathtub in our snow paddock.

I absolutely love playing in snow but ask me in a few months after we've lived through our first snowy winter, I might have a different opinion...