Chamonix, Church, and Chocolate.

The next morning we dragged our bleary eyed and slightly dehydrated selves out of bed early enough to enjoy fresh croissants and coffee before climbing into Philippe's Renault Scenic (no key, it's a card and a pushbutton ignition. Very cool) and heading for church.

What sleepiness the coffee hadn't driven from me was soon banished by our trip up the north side of the valley to our chosen Easter Sunday church, the small church on Plateau d'Assy where Phillipe was married 31 years ago. Our host has lived in the mountains all his life, and drives a vehicle that hugs the road like an environmentalist wrapped around a redwood, so taking tiny, hairpin turns that left less than a meter between us and a joyful bounding tumble down the side of the mountain at 60 or more KPH was completely normal.

We were VERY aware when we arrived at church.

The church was quite pretty and featured artwork by several prominent French artists of the past century. And it was enjoyable just to be able to say we attended church on Easter Sunday.

But for the record, I was unaware that the French could sing this badly. The previous Friday we had attended a haunting service at Sacre Coeur where 2,000 people generated beautiful melodies led by a choir of nuns. Easter Sunday we experienced some of the most off-key singing I've experienced anywhere, and I've experienced some very, very atrocious singing. Those who were on-key were out of time, and those who were on time where out-of-key, created a disharmonic and disconcerting effect like 100 Samoans attempting to read and sing a language they'd never been exposed to before, across from 100 Americans attempting to also read and sing the same language at the same time.

Apparently we were not the only members of the congregation who had partaken of liquid delights the previous evening.

After the service we returned to the house and were met there by our hosts younger son and his Portuguese girlfriend, and had an absolutely outstanding meal. The first course was pickled asparagus with seasoned mayonnaise, then cold cut hams and bread, then we had a regional delicacy, Lamb in a honey sauce, then salad, then bread and cheese, then fruit, and then, since it was Easter Sunday, chocolate! They had a couple of large objects (An Egg made of a sort of almond brittle and a car sortof thing made of chocolate) that were filled with tiny sweets.

It was a fantastic lunch and we had a wonderful time.

We even managed to stay awake most of the time on the following car ride down into the heart of the valley, Chamonix. There we walked around the small town, which has a very nice feel considering its crammed with ski-shops and small cafes and viewed the beautiful mountains from other angles we'd not yet enjoyed. We also took a drive out towards the border of Switzerland and if I'd remembered my passport we would have probably traveled on to buy a little chocolate and check it off our list of places to visit.

In any case, after this we returned to the house and had another lovely dinner, this time thankfully just light leftovers from lunch, since if we'd had a new dinner to try it would probably have killed us both!

After dinner, we went to bed relatively early to make sure we were rested for the following day. When we were to attempt to ski in the French Alps!