Le Chable to Les Hauderes (Tuesday, August 27th)

We knew when we planned this trip that we would take public transportation today, as we had no interest in staying at a lot of Cabanes (think hostels), although we did decide to stay at one (what we heard was the best one) later in the trip, so that we could have the Swiss Cabane experience. So today was a day that we had free (so we could skip two consecutive cabanes) and that we had some ideas of what to do (go to Sion, the capital of the canton of Valais), but after chatting with the very friendly receptionist from Hotel A Larze, we had other ideas. 

But first - breakfast! This was probably the best breakfast of the trip - they had a kitchen and were willing to make eggs to order - their jams were homemade, they had homemade yogurt, awesome breads, and the typical cheeses, meats, fruit, etc...

Just like the hotel in Chamonix giving us free bus passes, the hotels in Le Chable give away free gondola/cable car passes  - cool! - so we took the gondola past Verbier (a popular ski resort area) and to Les Ruinettes. (If we had continued hiking, we could have done the same and hiked to the cabane from Les Ruinettes or hiked the entire way.) 

Here we are!

More of those yellow signs telling people which paths are which hikes.........

We wandered around the Les Ruinetttes area - it was actuality quite busy with lots of construction (there were roads up to this area), para-gliders, hikers - yet the views were still pretty amazing......

So these were the signs to the bathrooms ~ pretty funny!

Oh, and in Switzerland and France (and perhaps other places) , the first floor is zero, so elevators looked like this.

We then took the cable car to Verbier and looked around for a place to have lunch......and we found the perfect place with simple sandwiches on awesome baguettes. We intended to meander Verbier some more, but it was just basically restaurants and stores, and plus, we wanted to catch an early afternoon bus/train combination.

So back down to Le Chable we went..........

And took some pictures through the cable car windows..........

Notice the corner of the roof - the cable car comes so close to this house that they had to cut-out a notch for it to go by.............

We used the SBB app (the Switzerland public transportation system) to get our tickets to Les Hauderes, and although it took a bit of time, we eventually figured out the platforms, transfers, all that stuff. We took two trains.........

And one bus..........

And still had some amazing views.........

And a super windy road.........

Often we noticed these little hamlets on the side of a mountain......

Always a cool house along the way..........

And more views..........

Lucky for us, when we requested the wrong stop in Les Hauderes, the people on the bus were very nice and the driver just laughed. We eventually (with some help from friendly folks across the aisle) got off at the right place in Les Hauderes......

And found out hotel: Hotel Dents de Veisivi

 It was another small room, but nice.....
 

We walked around town and purchased provisions for the next day (we were out of bread and chocolate).

Notice the stone roofs.........

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant - Brad had pork and Suzanne had wanted to try the Swiss dish of Rosti - potatoes and cheese - it was actually quite boring - sort of like mac and cheese here - the first couple of bites are great, then it's all just the same thing...........

Oh, and like we said, the room was small - okay, fine. And lots of the bathrooms on our trip were small as well, but this was the smallest bathroom ever - these are Brad's knees as he sat on the toilet - worse than an airplane bathroom!

Just a cool picture of Les Hauderes......

Today's Word: Transportation.

(Four gondolas, two trains, one bus)