More Visitors

My dear friend, Anne, and her sister, Molly, were our next visitors. They started their trip with a long weekend in Germany for a family wedding. They had some crazy stories (and video) from that experience, most times involving beer. Then they took a train to see us in Switzerland. We had a great week with lots of sightseeing. We squeezed in a girls’ overnight to Aosta, Italy, too. I drove to Italy, which was a little scary because of the windy roads and border patrols, but it went okay with the exception of one screw up at the France border (I panicked and drove down a one way going the wrong direction – oops). It was a 2 ½ hour drive with beautiful views of the Alps. This was a good thing as the girls were unable to see the mountains from Morges because of a haze that hung over the lake all week. Mont Blanc provided a stunning background. Then I drove us through the Mont Blanc tunnel. Thirty-three Franc and 15 minutes later, we were in Italy!

We’d heard mixed things about Aosta as one of my guidebooks said that it was very touristy; however, some of our neighbors had been there and really enjoyed their stay. We decided to give it a try ourselves and we were not disappointed. Aosta is a beautiful, sleepy, little town with amazing Roman ruins dating back to the Middle Ages. The shopping was great. Cheap, too, but everything seems inexpensive after living in Switzerland. That can be a dangerous thing.

The highlight of Aosta was the food. We ate our way through town with stops for gelato and pizza. Then we ate a late dinner (we didn’t get back to the hotel until midnight from dinner). The food and wine lived up to our expectations of what Italian food would be. We found the following phrase in our guidebook to describe our meal: “It was so good I licked my mustache.” That had us laughing pretty hard – I think the bottle of wine and shot of limoncello may have made that more entertaining at the time.