You guessed it...

...more rain.

I'd post some pictures, but they'd mostly be of the insides of clouds up here in the mountains or of rain down in the valley.

We took Nicole to the hospital in Monthey (pronounced mon-TAY) last night - she'd been complaining of right side pain for a couple days and she wanted to get it checked out. She was admitted and put on IV antibiotics after a thorough check - the main culprit probably is some intestinal bug she picked up on one of her multiple world travels as part of her job. She's doing better today. She'll be spending at least one more night in the hospital.

The hospital here is different from the hospital I work at in Seattle. The building is older and is up on a hill with a commanding view of the valley (the white building in this photo). Visiting hours are from 1pm to 8pm - no visitors at other times! The cafeteria closes from 12:30 to 1:15 in the afternoon (odd timing). The IVs are from bottles instead of bags. The emergency waiting room wasn't too busy (a black eye and a cut on the forehead to a couple guys - probably not afflicted by each to the other). It's pretty casual - we asked how Nicole was doing after about 90 minutes of waiting and the nurse said we could just go back and see and pointed in the general direction of the emergency area. The ER isn't at street level and is just a big open area of the hospital with curtains between patients. We wandered around and eventually found Nicole.

Nicole has a room with two beds - but she's the only one in the room (so far). There's a spectacular view of the valley and mountains (if the clouds weren't there...).

We visited a couple nearby towns between visits to Nicole - Monthey and Aigle (pronounced eggluh). Had pizza in Monthey that was pretty good (though not as good as my homemade pizza according to Paula). Both were typical Swiss towns - clean, nice walking streets, and interesting alpine architecture.

And then drove back up the twisty mountain roads with the lights on in the fog to Gryon. Met several cars at scary narrow places, but survived the return journey.