LT 27 June 8.30pm
After another delicious “French” breakfast from the bakery, we headed for Chalon-sur-Saone, which is a reasonably large town about 30km away, in the hopes of sorting out our internet. After much effort, much French conversation and several return visits to the agent stores, we finally came away with a connection… of sorts. It is very limited, but at least allows us access to emails etc.
Driving around and parking in Chalon was a bit of an effort for poor Peter – when we finally parked he slapped the steering wheel and announced he was done for the day. There were lots of one way streets, numerous intersections where it was unclear who had priority, pedestrian crossings (some you had to stop for, some apparently you didn’t), and a GPS advisor who wasn’t aware of quite a few of the one way streets. The area we ended up in looked quite flash, with pedestrian malls, and fancy clothes stores everywhere. We thought to ourselves “This place will never close for 2 hours at lunch”. But we were proved wrong when at about 5 to 12 the first shops started pulling down their blinds and shutters. All that was left open after 12 was food shops/cafes/bars, one supermarket and of course McDonalds. Even the public parking is free from 12-2!! It’s just such a different culture, one that emphasises family time and free time and food, rather than minimising them the way our culture does (perhaps not food). The downside for the workers I guess is that the shops then stay open until 6 or 7 at night.
Five years of French study at high school finally paid off as we were trying to sort out the phone/internet issue. I had expected that most people would speak English to some degree, but actually pretty much no-one does. But it has been a very cool experience for me (25 years after I first started learning French!) to actually be in France talking to French people.
The weather has got very hot again so we have found out about a river nearby that might be suitable for swimming. There are also numerous small chateaux and historic buildings in the region, and we also have a map for a walking tour of St-Gengoux, pointing out the history of the old village. St-Gengoux is also on the ‘voie verte’ which is basically a rail trail running through Burgundy, and our accommodation has 5 bikes in various sizes tucked away in the garage, so we may venture out on 2 wheels in the coming days as well.
The pace of our adventure has certainly slowed in the last few days – by necessity though I think. It is nice to have the time and space to relax for a couple of days without needing to pack in as much tourist activity as we can into every moment.
29 June 12pm
Our time in France so far has felt more like a ‘holiday’ than any other part of our trip – we have not done any ‘sight-seeing’ specifically , just relaxed and watched a few videos, gone on walks, the kids have become very creative with paper and games, and eaten lots of croissants. Caelan has managed to buy croissants at the bakery on his own and the girls are getting quite practised at saying “merci” or “au revoir” at the appropriate moments. Peter was chuffed to buy petrol the other day and conduct the whole (not particularly conversational) operation without the attendant knowing he didn’t speak French.
Yesterday we dusted off the bikes with great anticipation and walked them carefully down the steep hill outside our house, then the kids tore off around the corner. Unfortunately due to some technical issues (involving the braking capacity of Katriel’s bike and a stationary object) we decided to can the biking and we pushed the bikes back up the hill and into the garage.
Feeling a bit deflated we decided to take on the walking tour of St-Gengoux. The village is quite picturesque, old stone buildings, cobbled streets, and there is a reasonable amount of history. With our earthquake-opened eyes we thought that a Canterbury EQC inspector would probably have the whole village (and most villages nearby) entirely demolished by lunchtime – the stone walls are so old that the mortar in the bottom foot or so or every building has deteriorated so much it is basically non-existent. On top of that the walls rise up on some not-entirely-vertical angles, and some of the rooflines have great big sags. As with Turkey, Italy and the temple area of Cambodia, this is not an area I’d like to be around in an earthquake.
The walking tour was quite interesting but the weather here has got very hot again, mid to high 30s, so after the first half of the tour we canned that also and crawled back up the hill to our house, this time appreciating the cool cave-like atmosphere.
Feeling hot and bothered we got togs on and went in search of a good swimming area. We had some information that suggested a beach area at a nearby river, and other information about pools in nearby towns. We set the GPS to the river first, and then followed the subsequent directions down narrow lanes and then narrow unsealed lanes through the French countryside. It is actually very very pretty – green, crops and vineyards in every direction as far as the eye can see. Every few km you drive through a small village, with cute little stone buildings and invariably a village church. But these particular roads were really rather narrow, and meeting cars coming the other way was a little stressful. Unfortunately the river, duly found, had a sign saying that swimming was forbidden. We then decided to go to the pool in a small town about half an hour away. Arriving there and piling out of the car with towels etc we discovered that the pool was closed except for school use until 4.30 (still an hour away). So we made the decision to head to another town, slightly larger, about half an hour away again. More villages, lanes, churches and a couple of beautiful chateaux later, we arrived at the next pool, which unfortunately was only available for school use up until the school holidays (2 weeks away). Super. So we bought icecreams and headed home in the air-conditioned car to watch Ice Age on video.
Caelan is very keen to watch a French movie while we are here, and we have seen ads for “L’Age de Glace 4” (Ice Age 4) etc, but we have pointed out that it won’t be that interesting for the 3/5 of our party that don’t speak French at all, and probably not even that comprehensible for the rest. Nice concept maybe but probably one we won’t follow up (sorry Caelan!)
Dinner was at the local pizzeria, a short walk from home. The young owner of the business (only 21 years old) was quite friendly and chatty, and the pizzas were delicious.
Friday, 29 June 2012
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
On the road again
LT
26 June, 9.30pm (7.30am Mum’s birthday)
Happy birthday Mum! We are currently internet-less (2 whole days!) so having to resort to old-fashioned texting to communicate. I’ll try to call her when I find out where she is.
Monday was a travel day – somewhere near 500km from our apartment in Nesslau Switzerland to the medieval village of St-Gengoux-le-National in Burgundy, France. We had to dismantle the bungy jumping apparatus we’d set up for Katriel’s soft toys off our 3rd floor balcony, plus switch off the dubbed German TV and endless coverage of the Euro2012 football.
We were organised reasonably early and efficiently and with a quick adieu to the neighbours we were off – on a mission to find somewhere for Caelan to buy a Swiss Army knife in Switzerland. We’d looked up a few addresses on the internet that looked sort of en route, so we programmed them into the GPS and headed off. Unfortunately the first address turned out to be a private right-of-way down a very residential street (no knife shop in sight) and the local hardware shop didn’t sell them either, so we decided to stop in at Zurich. Zurich could possibly be the most expensive place to do any sort of shopping, particularly of the lunch variety. But Caelan did manage to find a knife, and by about 1.30pm we were off – and still with about 400km to go. However the miles get chewed up pretty quickly on the motorways, no stops or traffic lights, and travelling at 130km/hr. We made a short stop at one of the many rest/shopping areas at the side of the motorway for some terrible coffee and our first attempt at speaking French, then finally arrived in our village around 7pm.
St-Gengoux is a tiny village (about 1000 inhabitants) in Burgundy, feels like the middle of nowhere but only really 20 minutes from the nearest motorway, and there are other villages dotted all around. It dates back to medieval times, and part of the town actually used to be a fortified village. Most of the wall is gone now, apart from a few towers, but a few key buildings, eg church, entrance tower and town hall, still exist, and the housing and little cobbled streets etc are still in place, fixed up to varying degrees. Heading to our accommodation first, our GPS advisor took us a very roundabout way through the old village, driving down some streets that maybe weren’t exactly meant to be streets for cars, and we found our ‘home’ for the next 6 days. Just on the edge of the old village, it’s a three-bedroom cottage, nicely fitted out and plenty of space for us, but on entry it had a very dank musty cave-like atmosphere and smell. Promising ourselves we’d light the fire and air it out properly in the morning, we decided to go and find some dinner, and hopefully a bottle of milk for a cup of tea. Unfortunately the supermarket we had passed on our way in closed at 7pm so we were too late for that. Unfortunately also, pretty much all the shops and cafes and restaurants in St-Gengoux (and everywhere else in rural France) are closed on Monday…. Pizza shop down the road, check; restaurant on the main street, check… Mentally making a list of what we had in the car (couple of bars of chocolate, half a packet of biscuits, dry cereal) we were beginning to wonder how this was all going to work out. We finally found someone on the main street (who didn’t speak English – no-one really does here) who told us that a village nearby had an open restaurant, and he proceeded to give me directions, in French. Luckily they were not that difficult, and I was able to guide a dubious Peter and increasingly hungry and tired children to an open restaurant. It was a little flasher than we had hoped, and we weren’t exactly dressed for it, but they were offering dinner. We ended up having a very lovely dinner –girls had “noo-getts” (chicken nuggets), brave Caelan tried rabbit (the texture of steak but the flavour of chicken), and my non-startling French managed to order us dinner, drinks and dessert, plus a bottle of water later on. It was really really nice in the end, and infinitely better than chocolate and biscuits!
After a big sleep-in this morning, we walked down to the ‘boulangerie’ to buy croissants and other yummy things for breakfast. Very French, we told ourselves, just very decadent actually! We had a quick look in the tourist office and came away with lots of brochures and ideas then headed home for lunch (via the bakery again, for baguettes this time). The shops and businesses here close at lunchtime, from about 12 until 2.30pm – so they can all go and have an enormous lunch. Apparently you can get a three course lunch plus coffee and wine at the café in town… how could you go back to work after that??
The afternoon was very restful and quiet apart from a quick trip to the supermarket for supplies. We tried to organise ourselves a sim card and internet access but with no success. Quite frustrating, and although there is a service number you can ring, you can’t get through to a person without going through the menu of options, which are, of course, all in French (and my French is too limited to navigate it successfully). So our plan for tomorrow is to go to a bigger town nearby and get it sorted out.
(Wed 27th update: Internet and even phone reception is a little complicated and unreliable here... so will update and add pics whenever we can)
Happy birthday Mum! We are currently internet-less (2 whole days!) so having to resort to old-fashioned texting to communicate. I’ll try to call her when I find out where she is.
Monday was a travel day – somewhere near 500km from our apartment in Nesslau Switzerland to the medieval village of St-Gengoux-le-National in Burgundy, France. We had to dismantle the bungy jumping apparatus we’d set up for Katriel’s soft toys off our 3rd floor balcony, plus switch off the dubbed German TV and endless coverage of the Euro2012 football.
We were organised reasonably early and efficiently and with a quick adieu to the neighbours we were off – on a mission to find somewhere for Caelan to buy a Swiss Army knife in Switzerland. We’d looked up a few addresses on the internet that looked sort of en route, so we programmed them into the GPS and headed off. Unfortunately the first address turned out to be a private right-of-way down a very residential street (no knife shop in sight) and the local hardware shop didn’t sell them either, so we decided to stop in at Zurich. Zurich could possibly be the most expensive place to do any sort of shopping, particularly of the lunch variety. But Caelan did manage to find a knife, and by about 1.30pm we were off – and still with about 400km to go. However the miles get chewed up pretty quickly on the motorways, no stops or traffic lights, and travelling at 130km/hr. We made a short stop at one of the many rest/shopping areas at the side of the motorway for some terrible coffee and our first attempt at speaking French, then finally arrived in our village around 7pm.
St-Gengoux is a tiny village (about 1000 inhabitants) in Burgundy, feels like the middle of nowhere but only really 20 minutes from the nearest motorway, and there are other villages dotted all around. It dates back to medieval times, and part of the town actually used to be a fortified village. Most of the wall is gone now, apart from a few towers, but a few key buildings, eg church, entrance tower and town hall, still exist, and the housing and little cobbled streets etc are still in place, fixed up to varying degrees. Heading to our accommodation first, our GPS advisor took us a very roundabout way through the old village, driving down some streets that maybe weren’t exactly meant to be streets for cars, and we found our ‘home’ for the next 6 days. Just on the edge of the old village, it’s a three-bedroom cottage, nicely fitted out and plenty of space for us, but on entry it had a very dank musty cave-like atmosphere and smell. Promising ourselves we’d light the fire and air it out properly in the morning, we decided to go and find some dinner, and hopefully a bottle of milk for a cup of tea. Unfortunately the supermarket we had passed on our way in closed at 7pm so we were too late for that. Unfortunately also, pretty much all the shops and cafes and restaurants in St-Gengoux (and everywhere else in rural France) are closed on Monday…. Pizza shop down the road, check; restaurant on the main street, check… Mentally making a list of what we had in the car (couple of bars of chocolate, half a packet of biscuits, dry cereal) we were beginning to wonder how this was all going to work out. We finally found someone on the main street (who didn’t speak English – no-one really does here) who told us that a village nearby had an open restaurant, and he proceeded to give me directions, in French. Luckily they were not that difficult, and I was able to guide a dubious Peter and increasingly hungry and tired children to an open restaurant. It was a little flasher than we had hoped, and we weren’t exactly dressed for it, but they were offering dinner. We ended up having a very lovely dinner –girls had “noo-getts” (chicken nuggets), brave Caelan tried rabbit (the texture of steak but the flavour of chicken), and my non-startling French managed to order us dinner, drinks and dessert, plus a bottle of water later on. It was really really nice in the end, and infinitely better than chocolate and biscuits!
After a big sleep-in this morning, we walked down to the ‘boulangerie’ to buy croissants and other yummy things for breakfast. Very French, we told ourselves, just very decadent actually! We had a quick look in the tourist office and came away with lots of brochures and ideas then headed home for lunch (via the bakery again, for baguettes this time). The shops and businesses here close at lunchtime, from about 12 until 2.30pm – so they can all go and have an enormous lunch. Apparently you can get a three course lunch plus coffee and wine at the café in town… how could you go back to work after that??
The afternoon was very restful and quiet apart from a quick trip to the supermarket for supplies. We tried to organise ourselves a sim card and internet access but with no success. Quite frustrating, and although there is a service number you can ring, you can’t get through to a person without going through the menu of options, which are, of course, all in French (and my French is too limited to navigate it successfully). So our plan for tomorrow is to go to a bigger town nearby and get it sorted out.
(Wed 27th update: Internet and even phone reception is a little complicated and unreliable here... so will update and add pics whenever we can)
Sunday, 24 June 2012
You can ring my bell
P.T.
24 June 9pm
Exhausted. We're all about ready for bed after a long but very enjoyable day. Our 2-day pass on the ski lifts gave us lots of options to get up the mountains, as well as the buses between. We started at a small town (they're all small around here) called Alt St Johann and headed up an open chair lift - rather unnerving if you're not accustomed to heights. And we're not. When you get over the unreasonable fears, it's really quite fun. The scenery is gasp-worthy at every turn. The mountains tower above with incredibly steep faces and ragged ridges. Some of the ski lifts go right up to these heart-stopping peaks. There are only a few lifts running this time of year, however we saw dozens of them heading up the mountains and rolling hills at their base. This place must really go off in winter. I'm putting that on my to-do list. Skiing here would be amazing, there are no defined ski-runs - just lifts heading up in all directions from and through the villages. Skiing down, you would slalom through forests, around barns and past people's houses. Nothing at all like skiing in NZ.
After our first ride up to about 1300m, we walked across to other lifts that headed further up the mountain. About a half-hour walk. On the way, there were the most bizarre musical instruments dotted along the side of the walking track. This was obviously a community project that brought together musical and engineering talents to create the most weird and wonderful musical creations. Ranging from a see saw / xylophone to a bicycle that caused a harmonically-tuned tube to spin generating different notes for different speeds. We also saw huge variations on the violin, a giant-sized swing that works as a wind chime and an enormous flute. There were also a couple of pin-ball machines with cow bells inside. About 25 in all and every one completely unique and a permanent fixture, mostly made from steel. And all designed to be played with, by young and old.
The walk was mostly through forest and farm land. The farms are not fenced, so the cattle run free range. Almost all of the cows wear bells - all different sizes and tones. Some of the bells are huge, nearly as large as the cows head. I thought the cow bell thing was just a stereotype, but nope, they all use them around here. The sound is comical, especially when the whole heard are on the move. Must drive them nuts.
After the walk, we headed up the "scary" lift up to the highest peak in the range - about 2,300m. The lift was a big gondola that holds about 30 people and gets pulled up between pylons, quite far apart and very high, up a very steep face to the top. Sounds very safe, and probably is, but left us all with sweaty palms. The air was noticeably thinner and a bit cool, but the views were nothing short of breathtaking. I annoyed the family by setting up a tripod and trying to get some family photos against the picturesque backdrop. The result might have been a group of impatient faces.
After heading back down, and drying our palms, we walked about an hour and a half to the next set of lifts. After playing with more instruments, and then having to run at the end, we made one of the last lifts of the day. If we had been too late, it was going to be a long walk down... No such fate, so we got down on another open-air gondola and then bused back to our apartment. Going to be sorry to leave Switzerland tomorrow. Hope France can live up to this.
24 June 9pm
Exhausted. We're all about ready for bed after a long but very enjoyable day. Our 2-day pass on the ski lifts gave us lots of options to get up the mountains, as well as the buses between. We started at a small town (they're all small around here) called Alt St Johann and headed up an open chair lift - rather unnerving if you're not accustomed to heights. And we're not. When you get over the unreasonable fears, it's really quite fun. The scenery is gasp-worthy at every turn. The mountains tower above with incredibly steep faces and ragged ridges. Some of the ski lifts go right up to these heart-stopping peaks. There are only a few lifts running this time of year, however we saw dozens of them heading up the mountains and rolling hills at their base. This place must really go off in winter. I'm putting that on my to-do list. Skiing here would be amazing, there are no defined ski-runs - just lifts heading up in all directions from and through the villages. Skiing down, you would slalom through forests, around barns and past people's houses. Nothing at all like skiing in NZ.
After our first ride up to about 1300m, we walked across to other lifts that headed further up the mountain. About a half-hour walk. On the way, there were the most bizarre musical instruments dotted along the side of the walking track. This was obviously a community project that brought together musical and engineering talents to create the most weird and wonderful musical creations. Ranging from a see saw / xylophone to a bicycle that caused a harmonically-tuned tube to spin generating different notes for different speeds. We also saw huge variations on the violin, a giant-sized swing that works as a wind chime and an enormous flute. There were also a couple of pin-ball machines with cow bells inside. About 25 in all and every one completely unique and a permanent fixture, mostly made from steel. And all designed to be played with, by young and old.
The walk was mostly through forest and farm land. The farms are not fenced, so the cattle run free range. Almost all of the cows wear bells - all different sizes and tones. Some of the bells are huge, nearly as large as the cows head. I thought the cow bell thing was just a stereotype, but nope, they all use them around here. The sound is comical, especially when the whole heard are on the move. Must drive them nuts.
After the walk, we headed up the "scary" lift up to the highest peak in the range - about 2,300m. The lift was a big gondola that holds about 30 people and gets pulled up between pylons, quite far apart and very high, up a very steep face to the top. Sounds very safe, and probably is, but left us all with sweaty palms. The air was noticeably thinner and a bit cool, but the views were nothing short of breathtaking. I annoyed the family by setting up a tripod and trying to get some family photos against the picturesque backdrop. The result might have been a group of impatient faces.
After heading back down, and drying our palms, we walked about an hour and a half to the next set of lifts. After playing with more instruments, and then having to run at the end, we made one of the last lifts of the day. If we had been too late, it was going to be a long walk down... No such fate, so we got down on another open-air gondola and then bused back to our apartment. Going to be sorry to leave Switzerland tomorrow. Hope France can live up to this.
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| The von Trapp family walking to Switzerland |
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| One of the instruments on our walkway |
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| Panic-inducing view from the big gondola |
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| Another entrant in the most scenically located playground competition |
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| A flash place to have lunch - top of Chaserugg |
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| A lighter moment in the portrait session |
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| Yes I think so |
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| Hello new friend |
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| Check out the size of that bell! |
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| The layers in the rock indicate some amazing forces at work once upon a time |
Saturday, 23 June 2012
The hills are alive with the sound of music.... (ok not Austria I know)
LT
23 June, 8.30pm, Switzerland
The remainder of Katriel’s birthday was spent at the pool,
until we were hungry enough for dinner. We had crusty bread, soft cheese and salami,
along with some leftover pasta – it was nice to have something decent after ice
cream for breakfast and cake for lunch!
Katriel really enjoyed her birthday and having a relaxing day at the pool
was good for all of us.
Friday saw us on the move again. As soon as we’d had
breakfast, we packed our cases then sent the children to the pool for one last
swim while the adults cleaned the unit from top to bottom, in the hope of
avoiding the 40 euro cleaning fee. We
had leftover cake and watermelon for morning tea before packing everyone into
the car and heading back towards Milan on the way to Switzerland. Unfortunately only about 20 minutes into the
trip we were brought to a standstill on the motorway by an accident that had
happened only a few minutes earlier. It took
about an hour to get moving again so our hopes of getting through a good chunk
of the journey before lunch were a little dented. That was the second time we had been held up
by an accident on the motorway (the first time on our way over from Milan the
first day). Although the roads are very
good quality, and wide, the speed of the traffic means that when there is an
accident, it’s quite serious.
Following the main motorways we headed up from Milan into
Switzerland. All of a sudden at the Swiss border, the landscape changes, from
flat fields to steep mountains.
Switzerland is just so scenic, everywhere we looked were postcard-worthy
views. We then headed northeast, almost
towards Zurich, then east again almost to the border of Liechtenstein. By this stage we were all a bit over the
travelling, so we weren’t in the mood for popping over the border to claim one
more country. The road we took was
really good – including lots of tunnels (one of them about 6km long!) to iron
out the worst parts. In fact the old road, which we could see zig-zagging
wildly on the GPS, has been entirely replaced by the new road – the old one
still exists, but none of it has been reused.
I guess it was efficient to build it that way without having to work around
traffic etc, but seems a strange approach.
Our accommodation in Switzerland is an apartment in Nesslau,
booked again through airbnb. The owner
is often away on business and lets out his home while he is out of the country.
It is a beautiful apartment, very very nicely fitted out (we don’t want to
touch anything in case we break it), and is in a lovely little Swiss village up
in the Alps with mountains all around. The
Swiss people obviously don’t believe in using up too much space, everywhere we
look there is so much land and space, yet people build multi-storey homes and
high-density housing like apartments. So the views are really different from
New Zealand. In winter this whole village
is covered in snow. Many of the houses and village church are traditional
designs, with the pointy shape, window boxes with flowers, and the church bell
seems to ring for about 10 minutes every hour.
We’ve even seen cows wearing cow bells – how much more Swiss can you
get!
Not many people here speak English. Our host’s neighbour,
who let us in and showed us around, barely speaks any, and most of the staff in
other places we’ve seen don’t either.
The language here is a Swiss variation on German, and all the signs and
TV etc are in German. Just before bed
they were playing The Matrix on TV. Not only have they dubbed all the voices
(what the heck happened to Morpheus’s booming voice!), they have added a new
soundtrack, with 70s style clanging (and distracting) music in the tense
bits. Very very odd. Quite a lot of the TV here is English or American
shows dubbed over with German – I wonder if it gets frustrating watching TV
where the lips don’t move at the right time, all the time.
Today was Saturday. Heading out after a good night’s rest
and a quiet morning trying to watch kids TV in German, we wandered down to the
supermarket to see what we could see.
Lots of food, quite a few recognisable brands, and some very
unrecognisable items. Switzerland in
general is very expensive, and a small town foodmarket probably even more so.
Meat is entirely out of reach cost-wise, but a budget brand of pizza and pasta
gave us some options. Chocolate in
Switzerland is very big, and there are lots of cheese options as well. One of the things that is massive here, and
Italy as well, is Nutella! Big jars,
little jars, individual serves, white and dark nutella, nutella crepes, nutella
filled croissants, nutella snacks, nutella chocolate bars …. Feel like Bubba
off Forrest Gump with the shrimp thing!
We are up in an area called Toggenburg, which simply must be
the inspiration for Toblerone chocolate (which is of course Swiss). The mountains
are these massive, rocky, pointy peaks, all in a row with a gap in between each
one. The area is very popular for skiing
in winter and hiking in summer. The ski-lifts operate in summer as well to take
hikers up into the mountains, and there are walking and mountainbiking tracks
all over the hills. Today we bought a
2-day pass for the various lifts and trails in the area, and took a chair-lift
ride part way up one of the mountains.
It is quite different being in a chairlift rather than a gondola ‘capsule’
so there were some nervous moments for some of us, especially since Peter
spends the whole trip talking about how the system works and where the weak
points are, and wow look how tall and close these trees are, if one of them
fell over it would take out the cable etc etc.
The kind of information you want to hear once you’ve arrived safely and
your feet are on solid ground. In any case, we did arrive safely (both ways)
and were treated to some amazing views across the valley. There was a really neat see-saw at the top
which had xylophone-like bars in between the two seats, and a ball that bounced
gently along each way making bell sounds as the see-saw went up and down. Added to the cows and their cow bells in the
nearby field, it was quite musical. Though I imagine if you had spent whatever
enormous sum of money it would cost to stay in the very fancy guest-house up
there, you might begin to find it a little tiresome after a while.
Tomorrow we are going to do some gondola and chair-lift
rides, and hike a bit from one to the other in between. The ticket we have includes the bus which
connects them all at the bottom, so it won’t matter if we come out at a different
village than where we went in. There
seem to be walking and biking trails all around these parts, even some people
doing the pole-walking thing as well.
Although it has been neat to see some famous cities and
landmarks, it is quite refreshing to be completely out of tourist-ville, and
just seeing a small village with real people – and unbelievable scenery. We have definitely taken more generic scenery
shots here than anywhere.
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| Welcome to Switzerland |
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| Mountains to the left of me, mountains to the right |
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| Up and up |
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| Mountains so steep the trees grow straight up the side |
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| Home for next few days |
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| Cute Swiss house |
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| Generic scenery shot - one of many |
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| Wee bit of work involved in building this place |
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| Tall houses dotted randomly on the landscape |
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| OK everyone let's talk about what would happen if a tree fell over right now |
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| Looking back down the valley from the top |
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| Possibly the most scenically positioned playground in the whole world |
Thursday, 21 June 2012
That's amore - Italy pics
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| Our wheels for the next month, nice red plates to identify us as tourists |
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| Cruising down the wrong side of the road |
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| Our first dinner in Italy - pizza of course, with our new friend |
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| Home sweet home.... |
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| ...sweet home sweet home sweet home sweet......Stepford |
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| The pools at the camp are pretty cool |
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| Lots of places to lie in the sun |
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| Hydroslide racing |
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| A game the whole family can play |
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| Venice |
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| A maze of narrow alleyways |
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| And narrow canals. No 'land' in sight |
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| An enormous slice of Venetian pizza for lunch |
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| St Mark's Basilica - impressive |
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| Impressive from a distance as well |
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| More flash buildings in St Mark's square |
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| The Basilica from the side |
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| This little bird was thirsty |
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| and didn't want to share |
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| Posing in front of more flash buildings |
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| The gondola ride was the highlight for everyone |
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| A different view of Venice |
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| Notice the asymetrical shape of the gondola, designed to compensate for the gondolier on one side |
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| Katriel's birthday in Italy! |
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| Water fight on the way to breakfast |
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| Ice cream and sprite for breakfast????? |
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| Cake as well! |
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| Party time |
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