Philip and I arrived home in Perth on Saturday afternoon, and I had grand visions of doing one final blog holiday post. But the best laid plans … ! We both picked up a “holiday cold/flu” bug at the very end, Philip one day ahead of me. So that’s why this is written long after the last one.

On our last Swiss day last Wednesday , everyone got up a bit earlier and after a quick breakfast, we all helped in cleaning and tidying the chalet. With everyone helping it was soon finished. Then off our Oak Hall coach, driving down the mountain for the last time. But instead of sunshine and blue skies, it was thick cloud, mist and drizzly rain blotting out anything more than a few metres in front of the bus. The fog, cloud and wispy mist swirled all around us.

Back along the roads on the valley floor, we could again see for miles around us. But the clouds hung low and covered the mountain tops above. Now the clouds were above us, not around and below us. We drove three hours to Basle on the north-western borders of Switzerland where we had a couple of hours to wait for our flight to London.

For some reason, in Switzerland our internet access only worked inside the chalet when we logged in. Everywhere else was blocked. It was back to using old-fashioned paper maps as we decided what looked interesting and easy to do in Basel. Preferably with green spaces. It was good for our brain! We navigated and walked to where the fast-flowing River Rhine flows through Basel and nearby was the huge old Basel Munster – like a Cathedral.

We ate our packed picnic lunches in the grounds of the Munster, looking down and over the Rhine.

We wandered through the Munster a beautiful, old, red sandstone building.

We descended to the Munster’s crypt.

Looking through some windows down at the Rhine River

When they did some renovations (I can’t remember when) they found building foundations of the Church and burial remains going back to the early 800s of Christian leaders and bishops in the church. It was too dark to get decent photos of this space.

A fascinating place to wander round and decipher what was there, but we only had time to see a little bit of what’s on offer, as it was time to get a tram and a bus to Basel airport. And then the one-hour … one hour … flight to Heathrow London! I still have to get my head around how small the European space is.

A quick flight to Heathrow, a train ride, a bus ride then a walk to our hotel in Pimlico (a London suburb). So glad we are able to travel lightly. Although I must admit that by now we still had enough clean clothes to change our underwear, but not our outer clothes. They’d seen a few days’ wear. But we didn’t smell and they didn’t look dirty, and if we don’t care, who else needs to? It made life easier for us, not trying to get our limited wardrobe laundry dry in time.

Pimlico has street after street full of grand-looking Georgian terraces. Our hotel room – which was on the cheap side – was on the third floor of a very grand Georgian building. Unless you looked closely and could see it needed a fresh coat of paint.

No lift inside – just 65 steps up and down to our room! Philip counted them. Another very good reason to be glad we can travel lightly. We didn’t need to drag lots of luggage up and down the narrow, steep steps. But once upon a time – back in the “olden days”, the staff for these grand homes would have been up and down them multiple times a day. An adequate, small room for our needs. It had a working shower and toilet and the bed was comfortable. But a glass wardrobe had been smashed and duct-taped together and not all the lights worked. Fortunately they did come and remove the broken glass wardrobe door. It wasn’t replaced, but at least it was removed. They didn’t seem interested in replacing broken or missing light bulbs! We were very glad we could open the window as the room was small and stuffy. The TV didn’t work, so Philip couldn’t start watching any Olympics.

We thought maybe we’d do a quick hop-on-hop-off bus tour of the centre of London.But for some reason, it wasn’t running that day. We didn’t really mind as we were very tired. So we just walked around local streets for a bit, found a cafe to eat at, looked at the nearby Thames brown water river.

I remember in the movie “Notting Hill”, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant climbed a wall to get into a private London garden. There were a few of these gardens near where we stayed. Lovely, smallish, square spaces full of greenery, shrubs, trees and flowers. But I hadn’t realised that sometimes it’s a “private” garden square and the gates are locked all the time and you only go in, if you have the “key” to it. Not every square garden was private, and we discovered a public one to go into, sit for a while and enjoy the green space.

I took this photo on the bus on the way to Heathrow – it reminded me of Thomas the Tank Engine’s yards!

We were very glad we were able to travel back to Perth on the direct plane flight – Heathrow to Perth. Seventeen hours as opposed to about 30 hours. By this time, both of us were not feeling the best, so the quickest way home was the best way home!

Where Rosie met us in sunshine! Perth is also having lots of welcome rain showers between the sunshine. While we were away, she had had a wonderful holiday in the south island of New Zealand and has been back at work for a while. Lisa with Mikan and Cody had a fabulous time in California and Oregon for a family reunion. Alan came back from productive work trips to Kuala Lumpur and Vietnam. James stayed home and beavered away at his job, and if he got lonely he had Mikan and Cody’s guinea pigs for company! He said they weren’t good conversationalists!

Here’s a last holiday photo. It’s from Basel. Maybe if you can kiss the frog, you get the castle with a prince or princess inside. We couldn’t test it out – the frog wasn’t close enough to reach through the gate!

It was a wonderful holiday, chock-a-block full of beautiful, different (to us), amazing, eye-popping places with warm, kind and helpful people to create a rich tapestry of heart-warming memories. What a wonderful experience and blessing.