After Lausanne in Part 1, we arrived in Sion late in the afternoon of Thursday − late enough that we only had time to unwind a bit before we went for dinner. We decided to go for crêpes, as the offer in Zürich ist sub-par, especially when it comes to galettes, and we ended in Régal’ette in the city center, which was a very good crêperie − we got what we were hoping for (and they also have an excellent cider.)

After dinner, since we had apparently not walked uphill enough in Lausanne, we strolled to the heights of the city. The sun had just set and the light was very nice. The highlight of the evening, though, was to see a fox, which was definitely not afraid of humans − I don’t think I ever saw a fox from closer! I consequently have a bunch of blurry fox pictures.

After this we went back to the hotel to sleep – tomorrow, we visit the Grande Dixence dam!

My hope was to be able to avoid cars altogether during this trip, but convenience won when it came to reaching the Grande Dixence dam. Yes, there are four buses in each direction during the day, but the hours don’t align very well with the visits, and we also valued a bit of freedom to explore a bit around without risking missing the last bus down. So we rented a carsharing Mobility car (conveniently in the parking of the hotel, but we only realized that when we came back) and drove to the dam for the 11:30 visit.

The weather was, euphemistically, not optimal. We were in the clouds for most of our visit, and it rained for a non-trivial part of it too. Still: the visit was very cool; we got to walk inside the numerous galleries of the dam, and while it wasn’t visually super impressive, the experience was well worth it. From the outside, the dam is gigantic; the lake above is probably a very nice place to hike around when there’s any visibility, but as it was, we walked on the dam top and that was pretty much it. Pierre still ran from the top of the dam back to the parking lot − since I’m far more reasonable, I took the cable car back 😛

On the way down, we made a stop at the Pyramides d’Euseigne, a super weird rock structure that I still can’t wrap my head around. And that is on the Grand Tour, so here, I have a new picture for my collection (it’s a very smol collection so far.)

Finally, before we went back to the hotel, we made a final stop at the Mont d’Orge lac, where we had a ~1km stroll around the lake and saw a bunch of water lilies.

For dinner, we went to Pinte Contheysanne, a Swiss restaurant where we had great dried meat and awesome cheese croûtes. After that meal we needed a bit of a walk, though, so we made a detour to see the Rhône river, which had a nice pedestrian bridge and a cool view over the castle and basilica at the top of the city.

Overall, I liked Sion very much; the city center is car-free and lively-in-a-good-way, and while it’s also not quite flat, it’s definitely more me-compatible than Lausanne 😉

The next morning, Pierre went for a run around the top of the city, and we took the train to our next destination, Zermatt.