Simplon | FranceSays

Eins, deux, tre…

Posted on October 3, 2021 by MELewis

Our recent holiday was a Swiss three-in-one special. We started out in our German-speaking Central Switzerland, moved on to French-speaking Vaud, then to the Canton of Valais where a mix of both French and German is spoken. Finally, we spent a few days in the Italian Canton of Ticino, wrapping up what felt like a whirlwind tour of Europe without crossing any borders.

I was hesitant when planning the trip. Our week in northern Germany earlier in the summer had reminded me how many things can go wrong when you travel. With our daughter’s trip from the UK having been cancelled twice already due to Covid, and our first time together in over a year, we didn’t want to take any chances. Thankfully, Switzerland offers a lot of different experiences in one tiny country.

Okay, they’re not THAT different. Lakes and mountains are usually involved. But within that mix, which I happen to love, there’s quite a lot of diversity.

Leukerbad Therme (Loèche-les-bains in French) is a mountain resort high in the Valais famous for the thermal baths. It offers some pretty spectacular scenery with a wall of cliffs surrounding the town. It also has some rather unusual history with the springs dating from Roman times and, more recently, a rather checkered past: in 1998, it became the first Swiss town to go bankrupt! (In a country not exactly known for fiscal mismanagement, somehow the president of the commune got sent to prison).

None of this had any impact on our holiday, although I must say that like many thermal towns, there is a confusing array of public and privately run establishments, with various hotels attached. The main one, Leukerbad Therme, is public and you can go and use the baths for a fee regardless of where you’re staying. It was a huge, maze-like place, with many different pools and areas and little indication in any language of how to access them. We still had a lot of fun exploring though. Everyone but me enjoyed the crazy water slides (I backed out when I found out they were closed tubes where you were in the dark). Madeline, our daughter, had a minor mishap inside one of the tunnels when she bumped her head and got a rather massive egg on her forehead.

It’s the only egg she’d have anything to do with being vegan. This made booking hotels and restaurant a little challenging, as the cuisine in the mountains is notoriously cheese-and-meat heavy. Thankfully I found a place that offered ‘vegan options’. It was a smaller hotel with a good kitchen and service with a personal touch. They laid on quite a good breakfast spread for her and had a few different non-animal choices each night at dinner too. Despite some confusion at check-in over their Covid status (she and her boyfriend were vaxxed in the UK and had not yet acquired the correct documents for Switzerland; a new law having just come into effect in the days before), we were given a warm welcome. The restaurant was rather good too, with an extensive wine list. No affiliate links on this blog but I can heartily recommend the Hotel Waldhaus.

Our next stop was Locarno, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino (Teissin in French). It is on beautiful Lake Major, half of which is in Italy. We rented a place just outside the city, in Ronco Sopra Ascona, with fabulous views overlooking the lake. I had not been to Locarno before; it is less of a city than Lugano, with more of low-key vibe. Just across from our beautiful rental were a couple of tiny islands, one of which houses Ticino’s botanical gardens, called Isole di Brissago. We took the ferry across one day and spent a wonderful few hours wandering around the lush greenery, capping it off with lunch.

There is something sort of laid back and old-fashioned that I love about the Italian cantons in Switzerland. I guess the vibe is similar to northern Italy, which I also love. Our rental was in a residential area perched high up for the views. All of the houses here have names. There is statuary on the roofs.

The weather was only middling during our time there but our last day was magic. It was nice to end our vacation on a high note with a swim at the Lido. We kissed our daughter and her boyfriend goodbye the next morning and put them on the train back to Geneva.

Our last leg was the Simplon mountain pass. It seems I’d worried about the drive over the mountains somewhat needlessly. Unlike the train, it was relaxing and scenic. It seems that the hairpin curves and twistier roads are actually lower on the mountain. Once you get to the top the views are rather open. We enjoyed a quick stop to admire the views before heading down the other side.

We returned to Aigle (Vaud) to celebrate our son’s birthday before heading home the next day.

By the time we got back home to our corner of Lake Lucerne, it felt like we’d been away for a very long time. Which is everything you want in a holiday, n’est-ce pas? Non è vero? Ist es nicht?

Gute fahrt!

Posted on September 24, 2021 by MELewis

It was a very good trip.

Our daughter’s long-awaited visit from the UK finally happened in early September. We spent two weeks together and it felt like the first true vacation since the pandemic began. It was also our first family holiday in Switzerland since moving here last year, which gave me plenty of material to observe from a new perspective.

During that time, we went from our German-speaking side of the country back to the French before moving on to the Italian part. Just as this old girl was getting her brain retrained NOT to speak French in every public situation, we were navigating between all three languages plus English for the British boyfriend. But that was only one of the (admittedly enjoyable) challenges.

The Simplon car shuttle was my first experience of travelling by car on a train. A bit scary for a claustrophobic who doesn’t trust technology but a good way to cut short the long, twisty drive from French-speaking Valais to Italian-speaking Ticino.

There are two ways to do it: either you drive over the high-mountain pass or you put your car on the train and cut through. After much discussion (read: lively debate, ahem, I mean argument; that’s how we do things in this family), we decided to take the train on the way there and drive on the way back. Husband, the designated driver, will always prefer a mountain-top view. Nervous Nelly here is afraid heights and gets car sick from too many turns. So why do you live in a mountainous country, you ask? Go figure.

On a side note, the experience reminded me of a story I used to read to my daughter when she was little: We’re going on a bear hunt. It’s a wonderful tale about a family that goes through a bunch of stuff on an imaginary bear hunt. Every time the family runs into an obstacle, there’s a recurring theme: We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. Oh, no, we’ve got to go through it!

It is a perfect metaphor for so much of life, even the good bits.

So, we managed to agree and drive ourselves to the place where you load your car onto the train in Brig. We had calculated the timing fairly well so were first in line and able to grab a coffee and do a WC run while waiting for the train. Generally they leave every hour or two in the busy periods. When the whistle blew we followed the line of cars onto the train, positioned it just behind the car in front and cut the engine. Then the fun began.

I had somehow not realized we would be in the dark during the journey. Also, I read all the emergency instructions in the brochure and tried not to think of what would happen if we got stuck. And there was a fire. Or an earthquake. Truly, having an imagination is a curse.

To nobody’s surprise but my own, twenty minutes later we emerged safely on the other side of the mountain. Then began an hour-and-a-half drive down far more narrow and twisty roads from the Domodossola, in Italy, that would take us to our holiday rental in Locarno.

When I saw the receipt from the car shuttle train I smiled. I’ve posted before about the use of funny words in French.