Breakfasts, massages and reinvigorating Swiss thermal waters

Last January, one of the first things my son-in-law wanted to know was if I’d found a “boy toy” after spending a week at Lavey-les-Bains, following our Christmas holiday in Burgundy, where half of us now live. The other half lives in Australia. The renowned Swiss thermal waters lie under the Dents du Midi that rise above Lac Léman in the Swiss canton of Valais like four, glistening white, enamel incisors. Applicants for Swiss nationality must name Les Dents if applying for a Swiss passport in le Valais or le Vaud where we lived for sixteen years, from 1968 to l984.

My answer was “no.” I hadn’t even given a recent widow’s thought to finding a new mate while I indulged myself in spa life — mornings filled with what my father called a “real breakfast”: Swiss-churned butter, puffy croissants, confitures faîtes maison, creamy, scrambled eggs, bangers and bacon, fresh fruit and freshly brewed coffee and tea.

All that before a four-kilometer walk along the rushing Rhône, followed by an hour’s divine massage (I had seven, all different); an hour in the warmest thermal waters in Switzerland (91-96°F depending on which bath); following twenty minutes in a sauna and a freezing cold shower (I know the routine as I’m half-Swedish); topped by a bain-side bar lunch with other sybarites of salad and smoothie, still in my thick, white terry robe.

Afternoons: rest with a book in my comfortable, if not luxurious, room, overlooking an attractive sculpture garden, or a short excursion. One afternoon I ventured twenty minutes to Martigny to spend several hours at La Fondation Pierre Gianadda visiting the superb exhibition “Les Années Fauves” and the permanent exhibitions of French photographer Félix Nadar’s portraits of la vie Parisienne’s nineteenth centuries’ stars and celebrities and the outstanding, eye-popping collection of dozens of beautifully restored old cars from a Swiss 1908 Martini to a 1930 Bugatti.

Another afternoon I zipped down to Le Musée Suisse du Jeu, just outside Vevey in a medieval château. I was curious to see if the card game, “Goulash,” (where you match food pairs, and was sold at Harrods’s food department and other food emporia and toy departments worldwide) I’d donated to the museum in 1985, was on display. It wasn’t. I was assured it was in storage. I was happy to discover that all the usual games one has played for 5,000 years were on display. But astounded and disappointed to be the only one visiting those rooms. Families were stuffed into three rooms dedicated to video games! Apparently, the museum directors believe these are here to stay and that it’s not a bad thing.

As a family, I’m happy to tell you we still play “Goulash” and that I am developing games that match wine and cheese, now that I live in France. In the warm months there are umpteen Alpine hikes or beaches for the afternoons. A séance of sauna followed by thermal waters is still wonderful, though outside the temperatures might be estival.

I haven’t skied for more than two decades, since a snowboarding teenager hit me full force as he soared over a mogul in Verbier, sending me flying toward a concussion. I vowed then and there that I never would ski downhill again. Now I have five snowboarding grandchildren, two snowboarding daughters and two snowboarding sons-in-law — one of whom wants me to find a lover with homemaking skills, who will tackle my never-ending “honey do” list that comes with buying a 300-year-old house in France — who were skiing in the Swiss and Italian alps.

My parents “discovered” Lavey-les-Bains on one of their three-month annual winter trips from windy Cape Cod to us in the snowy vineyards above Lutry, forty minutes from Les Bains. Were they escaping babysitting or just in search of the perfect spa for my mother’s arthritis? Or were these weekends part of their incessant curiosity about spa life? One year they ventured south to Abano, Italy for the morning mud baths and afternoons in Venice.

After my father died and we moved to Brussels, my mother continued trips to Lavey-les-Bains (instead of Spa in Belgium, where for many fashionable Europeans in the mid-nineteenth century, spa life was de rigueur, replete with jewels, parasols and boy toys casing sumptuous Belle Époque cafés for wealthy widows). My indefatigable mother (who passed away two weeks short of 100) swore it was the thermal waters at Lavey-les-Bains that were responsible for her long, active life and corralled widowed friends for a week’s stay at the baths. She needed company during her spa life, especially for dinner. I now understand.

When my parents stayed at Les Bains, all the meals were served in the gracious Belle Époque dining room. They dressed in their finest. They regaled us with the different lunch and dinner menus. Now, meals are served in a modern extension and jeans and sneakers are accepted. My daughter suggested I bring a book for company. Instead, at my table for one, I occupied myself by constantly going to the lavish buffet and chatting up the charming chef who suggested one evening grilled kangaroo (it’s low in cholesterol). My father would have loved this new spa life. I’m not sure about my mother. But I did.