From our itinerary: A well-earned rest day. There are many options to fill your day including taking the cog railway to Le Nid d’aigle – the Eagles Nest - a popular start point to climb Mont Blanc, or browsing around the local market of Les Contamines. There are plenty of optional walks in the area or one can simply relax around the pleasant town of St Gervais or even treat yourself to a rejuvenating spa. Jo, Kerrie, Vena and I voted for the rejuvenating spa, little did we know....
Yesterday was full of fun and misinformation, among which was that Shaun didn't know dinner was included today. Breakfast included some very nice croissants and I could have eaten all of them.
Several in the group took the cog railway and saw where we are going tomorrow. Since things are planned to get more difficult after today, Jo was able to get information about the local spa Les Thermes de Saint-Gervais. Looking at directions, it was about a 30 minute walk vs a bus ride of twice that time. Lisa left us in the downtown area to have a relaxing wander.
Following the directions, we ended up going down a steep hill which we shouldn't have. Immediately I felt guilty because I was leading the group and Jo and Kerrie were wearing only flipflops. We trudged up the hill and then decided to follow the main road to the bridge, meanwhile, I'm looking for a bus or a taxi which weren't to be found. On the other side of the bridge we found the path again and started down. This path turned out to be unpaved, rocky, and quite steep. After several wrong turns we found our way to the spa and it took us about an hour - bus would have been a much better option and we decide to take a taxi back.
The spa was nice, but not as nice as in Courmeyeur. The lunch was breadsticks, tea/coffee, and cherry tomatoes. They did have a salt room, a forest room, fragrant steam rooms, and a really nice outdoor complex. The outdoor pool was set up in a spiral with hydromassage bubbles in each station which targeted different parts of the body. At the very center was a station similar to a champagne bath - tiny bubbles came up from the bottom of the poole. Further on were other outdoor pools which got hotter and were the hottest in the complex.
My favorite may have been the initial "0 gravity" pool which had some very gentle underwater motion - very relaxing - but it was the coolest pool in the complex.
The bad news of the day was that we couldn't get a taxi or a bus to take us back and had to walk uphill all the way to the hotel. Poor Jo and Kerrie in their flipflops. Not a relaxing day. At least the weather was nice.
Jo and Kerrie had an evening dinner together which might have been preferable to the Diot and Crozet we had for dinner. The vegetable soup was so good I forgot to take a picture until it was gone. A local beer to drink. For dessert we had a chocolate eclair with chocolate filling
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