hiking in the alps

so last weekend, we went on our last excursion with madame letzter. it was an overnight trip in the French alps close to Italy. we met by le Meridien bright and early on saturday morning and took a bus to the mountain. we then met our guides for the weekend, 2 french nature enthusiasts who could probably climb everest. they led our hike/forded rivers/trudged up the snow and ice (im not even kidding)...up the mountain (with all of our belongings on our backs) to our cabins. they were more like dorms and were really clean. we even had our own bathroom! the staff made us chocolat chaud and gave us kir (!). its a melange of white wine and kir liquor and tastes amazing. then we watched a documentary of Mercantour National Park, but i dont remember it cuz i fell asleep. then we had a really yummy french dinner with the usual soup and salad, and pototoes and rabbit, topped off with strawberry shortcake to celebrate the end of the semester. only the adults got wine, but hey im not complaining. then we had a group meeting and letzter made us perform un petit sketch, or skits, and also made us talk about our experiences here. it was a very interesting night. then, we headed back to our dorm in the dark, where we had some good girltalk and eventually fell asleep. the next morning, we started the day hiking up for like an hour, which was grueling, then hiked down for the rest of the day. at one point, i was like, umm..letzter? are we going to see any toilettes anytime soon? and she was like of course! just go here [in the woods]. so yeaa we didnt see any the entire day until the we reached a museum in Tende, a village close to italy. we took the train back to nice in the evening and i was sore for like the next week.