LIFE IN OUR ALPINE CHALET

After making our way out of the valley we went through Martigny and took the next valley northeast to Sion where we will have our next home exchange. We found the house with little trouble, nestled into a mountainside, up a very steep road bordered by a 20 foot rock wall on one side and a 4 foot deep ditch on the other side. We drove up to the house above, turned around in their parking pad and slowly made our way back down the road and into the narrow parking space at the foot of the stairs.

Karen and Jean-Luis were at the house to meet us and we had a very nice visit while we had appetizers and drinks. Jean-Luis told us that he grew up in the house just next door, where his brother now lives. He loves this area and hikes and skis almost every week, except when they are traveling. They do a lot of home exchanges and have traveled to many exotic places. Soon they will go to Scotland and Karen is particularly excited to be able to attend the Scottish Tattoo, a marching and drum performance at Edinburough Castle.

We enjoyed a dinner of barbeque, potato salad, home-grown beans and green salad, with a delicious cake smothered in raspberries for dessert. Jean Luc has a nice garden here at the house, with potatoes, squash, lettuce, many fruit trees and raspberry bushes. We get to pick raspberries every morning for breakfast. The two huge cherry trees are laden with fruit, but it is too late to pick it. All along the road up the mountainside here are apricot trees, branches drooping on the ground, so loaded with gorgeous, orange apricots.

Our house, set into one mountainside, look s out across the valley, over Sion, to more snowy, jagged peaks. The view is awesome. The house has several floors, with the living area and kitchen on the ground floor, several bedrooms on the second floor, a tv room and the kids dorm on the top floor. Lots of steep spiral stairs to go up. Thank goodness there is a bathroom on the ground floor and the floor where we sleep.