Paris July 20-22
We started by flying to Paris.
Starting in Paris made sense. Our son had been studying French over the summer, and we were looking forward to spending a weekend getting over our jet lag by eating at our favorite restaurants and wandering around our favorite city. Paris makes a good gateway city for hikes. (Don’t even get me started on Geneva’s airport….) The plan was to arrive on a Friday and spend the weekend doing tourism with the boy and helping him move out of his dorm. Monday, he would fly home. Chris and I would TGV to Switzerland and start walking.
What happened instead: The Friday we landed, Chris came down with a high, high fever.
The pharmacist took one look, exclaimed “C’est une infection!!!!”, and ran to the phone to call the ambulatory urgent care service. (Listening to this phone call, I remarked to the guys that I must have misunderstood because I thought the pharmacist had said the doctor would come to the hotel. That was, in fact, what she said. As an American, that was hard to believe.)
Within the hour, a doctor had arrived at our hotel room, diagnosed cellulitis, and prescribed oral amoxicillin. Shortly thereafter, a phlebotomist arrived to draw blood. Except for the walk across the street to the pharmacy, Chris never had to leave the room.
By Sunday, Chris felt so much better that I went to the Gare de Lyon and bought TGV tickets to Martigny for the next morning. (From a kiosk!) We were set to start the Haute Route.
Before we left, I emailed Alpine Exploratory to ask them to cancel our two upcoming nights of mountain huts (Stages 2 and 3, since we were starting our trek in Champex – the nights in Cabane du Mont Fort and Cabane de Prafleuri) and replace them with extra nights in Le Châble and Arolla. Spending three days in the high mountains didn’t seem smart, and I thought Chris would be more comfortable in a bed than a dorm.