Sierre to Paris

We packed and cleaned up as much as we could at Serafino before heading down to the cure for a farewell breakfast of croissants and coffee with Marie-Francoise, Roland, and Michel. They were, as always, extraordinarily generous hosts and it was sad to say goodbye to such dear friends. Marie-Francoise surprised and overwhelmed me with a gift of one of her own rings. She also had a bottle of cider for Peter and a carrier with 4 bottles of schnapps in various flavours. The carrier was made by Franz and will make a fine addition to the many wonderful pieces of his work that I already have.

We were on the road about 9.30am and headed one more time down the road through Sion and on to Lausanne. We stopped for souvenirs at the relais of the Grand St Bernard, and also took the opportunity to fill up on some fuel. We had a call from Hannah while we were there. Murray had been concerned about our cyber silence, and had contacted Hannah to see if she had heard from us. We had been out of internet contact for some days.

We were soon back on the road for our long day of driving to Paris. Sam was a bit off colour and slept for some of the way. The trip through the French countryside was delightful and the few small towns that we did go through were absolutely charming with their old houses, churches and castles. As we got closer to Paris we went through some quite heavy rain and the traffic got consistently more congested. It took us about an hour to travel the final 15 kms and we were very relieved when Ken finally announced that we had reached our destination. We checked in to our hotel but Peter was unable to get internet access and Sam was still feeling somewhat unwell. I was not in happy company.

After wandering the streets for a while we found no suitable eating places but did get some rolls and meat to have for dinner and returned home where Sam went to bed, Peter continued to attempt to make contact with the rest of the world and I wrote this blog post. I was pleased to finally get to sleep.