Author Archives: The Swiss Cats

We’re back !

The school year ended well, and the children are finally on holidays since Friday noon. As dean, Claire still has some work at the management office, but the working rhythm is much less stressful than during June.

At the moment, we’re camping at home : the renovation work of the kitchen has started, as well as the pose of stone floor in the laundry.

Here is the state of our kitchen at present :


And here is our temporary lounge – dining room :

And our temporary kitchen (in other words : the garage) :

The rest of the house looks like this :

We can tell you that we’re living in the garden !

At the end of May, we won a giveaway at our friends of Katzenworld thanks to their partner 4cats. The package arrived in the middle of June, but we warned Marc-André that Claire’s thumbs were unavailable until July.

We had thus finally the permission to open the package, but we have to wait to unpack the toys because the house is full of dust everywhere.

We look forward to playing with all these catnip or valerian toys ! Thanks to all our friends of Katzenworld, we’ll send you photos, promise !

Trip in Switzerland : the Emosson dam

On Monday, Claire went on school trip to the Emosson dam, in the Trient valley, in front of the magnificent Mont Blanc panorama. The Emosson dam was built between 1969 and 1975, and it’s the Swiss’s second largest dam (capacity 227 millions m3).

She did the route by car from the school up to Châtelard (1125 m – 3690 ft); the car was well filled, because Claire and her colleague left with another class and its teacher.
Then, from Châtelard, she took the steepest two carriages funicular in the world ! This funicular has a maximal slope of 87% ! In 10 minutes, Claire had arrived at Montuires station (1825 m – 5987 ft).
funiculaire Emosson

From there, the little panoramic train led her during 10 minutes on the mountain side up to the foot of the Emosson dam. The landscape was simply amazing.



Finally, Claire arrived within 5 minutes at the Lake Emosson (1965 m – 6446 ft) by means of Minifunic, which slope reaches 73% all the same !

From there, she had an nice walk on the dam and on the lakesides with her pupils. On the way back, she showed them the charming chapel of Gueulaz, dedicated to Notre-Dame-Des-Neiges.


The day took place smoothly, and everybody was delighted. The trip back was made by the same way.


Upon her arrival at the house, Claire dreamed only about one thing : take a shower ! Thus I had to verify myself that she had emptied her bag well before tidying it up until the next excursion.