This is what we woke up to on our first morning in La Chevrerie.

We arrived after dark and were lucky that Mike, from the neighborhood, was on our train. He knew we were arriving and led us to Jesus and Polina’s chalet. So happy he was there and had a flashlight as it was pitch black outside and we would have had a difficult time finding the path to the house. We muddled through slushy snow and ice, dragging our luggage behind us, finally reaching #20 La Chevrerie.

A neighbor turned on the heat before we arrived but the house had not warmed up yet so we were shivering as we unpacked and found our way around the house. It’s quite rustic and this morning, looking out the window at a heavy snowfall, it’s everything we imagined Switzerland to be, in the middle of winter.

The train shows up hourly just below the chalet and we caught it this morning into St. Cergue where we enjoyed coffee, quiche and danish at a small boulangerie, a short distance from the train station.

We feel we are in another world, having left the Florida humidity for a snowy mountain retreat, where French is the spoken language. However, we did run into an English-speaking Irish woman at the train station in St. Cergue, who was on her way to Milan for an opera tonight. More later, as we heard there is an open house in the neighborhood to which we are invited. Au revoir!