Mom's arrival!

Mom arrived today, and we first went to my apartment to unload her stuff. She brought a huge hard-cased suitcase just for things that I requested: snowshoes and poles, crochet hooks and yarn, etc. I was hoping that a lot of the things she brought would be useful for time-occupiers during my three week vacation. We then bought train tickets to Vevey to see Ada. We had lunch with her – salmon and spinach pastry with hollandaise sauce and a salad with winter greens. It was absolutely delicious. Unfortunately, she fractured her leg the week before, so she couldn’t accompany us to the thermal baths in Lavey.

After our lunch, we bid our farewell and took the train to St. Maurice, where we walked for about a half an hour in the snowfall to the baths. When we reached Lavey, we saw the steam rising from the pools and started to get excited about three hours of relaxation in the pools and the saunas. We even discovered something new from my first visit. In the indoor pool, there is underwater music every hour for 15 minutes, and the idea is to relax your body with sound waves. You lie on these flotation pads (or on your back), and you stick your ears underwater to hear dolphin calls or classical music, and it is supposed to have a relaxing effect for body and mind. After our three hours of rejuvenation, we walked back to the train station in the freshly fallen snow. While we were on the trail, two unleashed dogs approached us and started barking manically and mom was worried that they would bite, as she had previously bad experiences. In the end, though, the owners were rather friendly and asked us if we were okay or if the dogs frightened us. Fortunately, we received no dog bites that evening. The rest of the walk was tranquil and refreshing – a nice transition from hot water to cold, fresh air in the snow.

We arrived in Lausanne rather late – about 9pm – and ate a quick dinner of peanut vegetable soup and polenta with marinara sauce that I had made earlier in the week.