Travel Blog...

In case you hadn’t guessed we’re now in Switzerland! There are many (72!) water falls in this valley and the snow covered mountains are beautiful. Skiing in the Swiss Alps would be great! This is our favourite place so far.

Our first day in the alps was clear and sunny so we took a train to the Jungfraujoch the highest train station in Europe, 3 571m (11,782 ft) above sea level. It seemed very quite around where we were staying as it is their off season but all the tourists as well as locals came out today to see the magnificent mountains.

At the Jungfraujoch we went on a 1.5 hour return walk in the snow up to another building. We felt the effects of less oxygen at a high altitude when walking up inclines. When we got to our destination we could see even more mountains with no clouds blocking our view. On the way back everyone in the carriage was “high as a kite” and we met a little dog called Samba who did the same hike as us - she had her own bag to jump in if she got tired. This is the most relaxed I have seen other tourists/people (friendly, helpful and no pushing).

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After two nights in Lauterbrunnen we headed further up the mountain to Gimmelwald for two nights. The view was unbelievable, we need a panorama to show the entire view!

More of Switzerland to follow..

Our stay was reduced to two nights in the south of France due to France’s train strike. According to the lady who runs the hotel we stayed at there are often strikes around school holidays and other holiday periods; how convenient! We had to wait until 5pm the evening before leaving Arles for Switzerland to find out if our trains were included in the strike (5 trains and 1 bus – lovely and scenic).

There are very nice smooth fast trains called TGV in France (when they’re running). Double level, quiet, comfy seats and a power point (which is handy for writing this blog). Better than Eurostar!

We are grateful that our holiday has been only minimally disrupted by the strike and volcano and that we do not have any plane flights until May. Fingers crossed it doesn’t erupt again.

Arles is a small, old town that has a lot of character. We enjoyed walking through the streets looking at the buildings, eating French food and visiting the Roman ruins from 90AD. There were no crowds here like in Paris and London, nice and quiet. It was a quick but delightful visit.

We were in Paris for seven days; we had to stay an extra day as there was a five day train strike (it actually seems to be a continuous strike with select trains running when they feel like it). Luckily we booked our train ticket to the south of France a few days before the Iceland volcano eruption as train tickets became highly sought after when the European air space was closed. It was amazing we got on the train to Arles considering the chaos at the train station caused by both the train strike and volcanos.

Some observations on Paris:

• You can take your dog almost anywhere; on a train in first class for example
• The funniest thing we saw was lining up for the Eifel tower. All around the Eifel tower are illegal salesmen selling Eifel tower key rings or souvenir Eifel towers laid out on the ground on a cloth. They were harassing passers by as usual when all of a sudden there was a yell and all of (about 15 of them) them all at once – in what looked like a very practiced move – picked up their cloth by some strings without losing any of the things on it so that it became a sack then started sprinting across the square towards the river. About 20 seconds later two policemen on bicycles came slowly riding across the square.
• Almost every bicycle in Paris (except the ones you hire) looks like it’s from the 1970’s.
• Chairs in cafe’s face the street and not the people you are with.
• You can’t walk 200m in some places without passing a pharmacy – they are everywhere.

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The palace and gardens were created in the 1600-1700’s by French kings. The Palace gardens were amazing, we could have spent another day here as the gardens take up 800 hectares. There’s an interactive map here.

Everything was perfectly manicured (and usually arranged symmetrically) from the lawns, hedges, parterres of flowers, lakes and sculptured fountains. The main lake is called the Grand Canal and is 1670m long and 63m wide. It looks like a rowing course and had some some big fish in it. Louis XIV had scale models of ships built and conducted mini war games on it.

We found one fountain that was on (apparently they’re usually only on weekends) that did not repeat its sequence for 10 minutes - amazing considering it’s age. We also looked inside the palace which was over done in every room for example one large corridor had a mirrored hallway 50m long with 10 large chandeliers with painted ceilings and walls covered in intricate decoration.

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Down the back of the gardens, about 3km from the palace, is Marie-Antoinette’s Estate which she ordered built in 1783 as a place to escape from the main Palace. Each house had its own little vegetable garden and together with a farm and orchard supplied the palace with food. Versailles was a highlight in Paris.