Sunday, July 15, 2012

Rest Day in Puy Saint Vincent

First, the Hotel Aiglière is a nice hotel... and excellent value for money. They offered a superb buffet of appetizers (all you can eat) plus main course (garni) with cheese or dessert for 18 Euros. And the rooms, at 35 Euros per person, although not large, were perfectly acceptable and had balconies. Nice common areas, including a man cave with leather sofas and a wide screen TV, and a sauna/hottub. A good place for a rest day.

Second, the night we arrived the village was kind enough to put on quite a nice little fireworks display at 10PM, which we watched from our balconies. There was another display in Vallouise (down in the valley) the following night, but we forgot about the time and would have had to have walked at least 200m to see it... which, as I'm sure you'll all understand, was out of the question.

Out of the question for some of us... but not perhaps for Thomas, who went on a medium hike during the rest day (???), and certainly not for Erik, who arrived while we were having dinner the first night and who was too full of energy to sit around with the rest of us the following day and instead went out on a six (6!) hour walk by himself. He may be our Thomas Bily replacement!

Let's see, what else happened? Well, I took a nap, washed some clothes, played some Carcassonne. Others did similar things. We had a large lunch (and as a result later had little appetite at dinner... it's surprising how little you need to eat when you don't hike ;-). We watched the end of a stage of the Tour de France in the man cave. Oh, and we took a sauna... during which I managed to badly mangle a toe (blood all over the place). Hope it isn't broken. That might put a little crimp in my hiking pleasure....

And in the evening Jorge and Ioana arrived and joined us for dinner. All was set for the next stage of the H3H.... Except for that pesky toe.


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