Moving on

It has been a whirlwind few days! We are exhausted and excited at the same time! AND, we have our tickets home in a week! I’m hoping that knowing the end is near will actually help this last push. AND much to my surprise, we are in Switzerland!!! More about that soon. Getting here was a….thrill.

First we got from Millau to Orange, France, which as you can see from the top photo was unbelievable!! I mean, where am I and how did I get here and why haven’t I heard of this place, like the Grand Canyon of France!?

It took us hours and hours to drive through the winding mountains of these National Parks and UNESCO sites. We kept stopping and staring in awe. Like taking a picture of the actual Grand Canyon, you just can’t tell how far down the gorges go and how high up the cliffs are!

Entire villages and homes were tucked here and there along the way, some looking like little Hobbit homes. It was hard to imagine this level of isolation.

It was a long exhausting day. We booked an Ibis Budget hotel and it was ok but pretty low end. It was kinda the first time in France we found an unhelpful person. The clerk explained we had a reservation at the other Ibis just over there…..and she motioned repeatedly with her hand towards a 5 way intersection. Anyway we found it and it was like being in a tiny room with toy beds. But we booked that because it was $55 which offset our expensive room the next night but the train station.

We had time the next morning to see the sights and Mike was pretty excited about getting an Egg McMuffin, but……they didn’t open for breakfast, what the heck!? We really just couldn’t find food but had an enjoyable coffee and croissant with the locals.

Mike selected Orange because there is an amazing Roman theatre there, one of the best preserved in Europe. In fact it is one of the only ones with the stage wall still intact. It’s so well preserved they continue to have music shows here.

Tuesday it was time to face the music and get all the way out of France. Our friend from France gave us a link where at 5 p.m. Monday evening you could learn if your train was going or not…..so far, ours was still scheduled to go, but the one after it was canceled. We were feeling pretty anxious getting to the train station.

We got onto the most crowded crazy train yet. The windows were small and our little area was packed. Thankfully a worker helped us find our seats. There was 5 people with all their stuff everywhere. The worker encouraged them to move their stuff and we finally got into remaining seats, which were assigned. Thankfully a bunch of people got off soon and we could at least see the Alps off in the distance.

That train got us to Dijon, France……now to find the next one. We really wanted to stay in Dijjon, but it just felt too risky. Thankfully the next train was also listed and turned out to be a beautiful Swiss train. The lady next to me had a cat in a carrier and she was going to Berlin. During my shuffling about, my faux far jacket hood fell towards her and she jumped a mile thinking her cat was out lol! It was really funny and we had a good laugh! And kitty was fine 🙂

So then we were in Switzerland holy cow! I just didn’t see this being on our itinerary! So here we are a couple nights while Mike figures out our remaining time in Germany. It is like my energy is just zapped! We’ve already climbed dozens of flights of stairs in clean beautiful steep Zurich! Even the little I’ve seen of Switzerland (!!!) seems amazing and hopefully I’ll feel rejuvenated!