The Ascension holiday

Spring seems to be the time for holidays in Europe.  It started with a 4 day weekend over Easter and continued with the long weekend for the Ascension holiday this past weekend and continues next weekend for Whit Monday.  Essentially all of the holidays are related to Easter in one way or another (check out the links above to get more information).  The holidays have been a nice way to do some semi-local traveling around Switzerland this month.  This past weekend, we spent our time in the canton of Valais (outlined below in purple), which is about 2 hours from Geneva and contains some of the largest mountains in the Alps.

We first went to a town called Leukerbad, the largest natural thermal spa area in the Alps. A plethora of thermal spas have crept up around town due to the natural springs in the area. The town is surrounded by some superb mountains and scenery as well.  It was pretty neat to be sitting in a thermal spa while watching the winter's snow melt into waterfalls and tumble into the valley, it felt very "alpine"!

On Thursday we checked out the 'Alpentherme' spa, which consisted of 2 large thermal pools, a sauna "village", and a Roman Irish bath experience.  This spa was very quiet and relaxing and is known for the different spa treatments you can get. The funny thing to us as Americans and likely you as the reader, was that the sauna village and Roman Irish baths do not allow clients to wear any bathing suits or clothing inside.  The answer to your obvious next question, is no, we only partook in the thermal pools in which bathing suits were required; but, we did find it amusing how open Europeans were with nudity at these spas and this is also a general theme that we have noticed throughout Europe -- just one of the many cultural differences!

On Friday, we checked out the other thermal spa in town, 'Burgerbad'.  Burgerbad had many more thermal pools (10+), but was filled with many noisy kids and locals playing around in the pools for the day as opposed to using it as a relaxing respite.  Essentially, this spa went for quantity over quality while Alpentherme went for quality over quantity.  We decided to get massages here since the massages at the Alpentherme were all booked.  The massages were... interesting. Ryan's masseuse was a nearly 7 foot tall guy that spent more time talking to him and telling him stories about Switzerland than actually giving him a massage. Both massages took place in the equivalent of a high school locker room with makeshift massage tables.  Of course, as is everything Swiss, everything was very clean and the people were nice, but overall... not quite worth the money we spent to splurge on massages.  Overall, our assessment was that the thermal spas closer to the Geneva/Lausanne area are nicer; but, it would be fun to come back to Leukerbad when the weather gets warmer and melts all of the snow so that we can go on hikes during the day and indulge in the thermal spas after.

One of the thermal pools at Burgerbad

Thermal, spring water flows from the town fountains

Water slides at Burgerbad 

Impressive surrounding mountains with snow that is still slowly melting down into the valley below

After Leukerbad, we went to stay with our friends in the town of Nendaz for 2 days.  Nendaz is one of 4 connecting ski resorts that make up the 4 Vallées ski area (one of which is Verbier, which we had been skiing at before).  They just bought an apartment in the town of Nendaz and graciously invited us to stay with them for a few days.  The view from their apartment is SPECTACULAR to say the least.  You can look across the entire valley to the surrounding mountains from their porch. It's fascinating to me to see the snow still covering the mountain tops while spring is in full bloom in the valley below, what a beautiful contrast. I don't think I will ever get tired of the views within this country!

Our friends' uper cute pups taking in the views from the porch

Sunset over the mountains

On Saturday, the town in the valley below, Sion, was having a wine festival where you could pay an entrance fee of 30 CHF to taste the wines of some of the local vineyards from the canton of Valais that were gathered at the festival. Since my knowledge of wine is very primitive (but growing at least), this is a snippet that describes the local Valais wine area:

With over 5,136 ha (13,000 acres), 20,000 winegrowers and 700 winemakers, the canton of Valais is not only Switzerland's biggest wine-producing region, but it also offers the greatest diversity of wines, both red and white.
Even though the Fendant and the Dôle are the most well-known terms of origin, the Valais' specialities are now winning more and more importance. These specialities are issued from indigenous grape varieties, which are vinified either separately or in blend.

The smart marketing ploy at this wine festival was that if you purchased 12 bottles of wine your entrance fee was refunded, so collectively, the four of us ended up bringing back 48 bottles of wine after all was said and done. A delicious (albeit expensive) end to a fun day!  

Enjoying wine at one of the tents

The pups are clearly pleased with our wine case purchases

On a side note, happy mother's day to all of the mothers out there! Lots of love especially to my spectacular mom! XO