Complete sunshine to complete garbage

Today was what turned out to be a short day of travelling, but still seemed to have lots of stuff happen.

Just a few photos added to the driving Flickr set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

We set off reasonably early, and gave the keys back to the lady at the restaurant (she actually smiled this time!), before heading off down the hill in full sunshine. It was amazing how good stuff actually looked with the sun out:

The hills with the sun out

We flew down the motorway all the way to the Swiss-French border, which was basically the outskirts of Basel. I had a snooze - dad told me that there was a traffic jam while that happened. We had 12 Francs left over, so we decided to find a supermarket to spend them at. That turned out to be a challenge - the GPS failed us more than once trying to find one.

Eventually we found one and spent 11.95 of the 12 Francs, mostly on useful stuff, however there was a bottle of iced tea involved - we had to spend the 70 remaining cents on something! Onwards we went, stopping for fuel shortly after getting into France. Switzerland's taxes mean that fuel is as expensive there as it is in Italy, so we filled up in France before we got to Switzerland, and lasted the whole country on a single tank.

The first place we stopped at had a reasonable price, and through some minor hiccups we managed to get some petrol. While this was going on, we had to 'duck for low-flying objects' - the planes were flying by overhead within touching distance:

DUUUUUUUUCK!!!

Soon after we left the petrol station we got back on the motorway. This is one of the few motorways in France that is toll-free for a long period of time - over 100 kilometres! Unfortunately for the sake of taking photos, it started pouring with rain. And kept raining until we got to Strasbourg.

We had a couple of mishaps getting to the parking at the hotel, but we eventually made it! The 'free internet' that had been discussed via email turned out to be in the hotel lobby. There was limited seating space, and wired internet in the rooms was only 1 Euro per day. Sold!

Three full days here, hopefully we'll head to Colmar one of those days. Au revoir!

The Chalet

Well, as promised, here is a description of our chalet in the middle of the Swiss Alps. Here's a Google Maps location of where it is relative to everything:

http://tinyurl.com/l8xzcrk

It's surrounded by a few other chalets, but it's summer, so they were mostly unoccupied while we were there. On the inside, the chalet has a lot of small rooms in order to function properly.

The kitchen has a stove and oven, while the fridge is located in another room:

Kitchen

There are two toilets which are next to the bathroom, which just has one long sink:

Bathroom

The dining room consists of a few tables and wooden bar stools, as well as a cushioned seat running the length of the room, joined to the wall:

Dining room/living room

There's one small bedroom, which usually houses the chalet's manager during winter when it's busy:

The bedroom

Upstairs is where things get interesting. We calculated that there's room for up to 24 people, squeezed into small spaces (like each person has 75cm of width small) in terms of both width and height. I could barely stand upright in the tallest space, let alone while lying down:

The upstairs dormitory

Rushing water and mountain scenery

Today was our last of three full days in the Swiss Alps. Of our remaining travel plans, today was a visit to Grindelwald, one of the more touristy destinations in the Alps, mainly due to its location. I also wanted to visit Reichenbach Falls. For those that don't know what it represents in fiction, Reichenbach Falls is where Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty.

I've added some photos to the Swiss Alps set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/

As well as adding a new set for Grindelwald:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645543302097/

We'd started out a bit later than planned, meaning we got to Grindelwald at about 2 in the afternoon. We drove around for a while trying to find the best place for a panorama, before driving in to the centre of town:

Grindelwald town

After getting some smaller change, we wandered around for a while. It was very touristy, and prices were outrageous - around AUD$60 for a steak! But then everything in Switzerland is expensive.

The views though are amazing. It's basically surrounded on all four sides by the Alps, and the results are quite spectacular:

The mountains in Grindelwald

We got as far as the train stations, where trains leave to go to Jungfrau, one of the more famous mountains in Switzerland, behind Matterhorn. By then we'd mostly had enough, so we wandered back to the car and headed towards Reichenbach Falls.

It was fair way there, and by the time we'd got there, the cable car up to the falls wasn't running. So we instead made the half-hour hike up. Dad went on the roads instead, so it took a bit longer than planned, but the end result was absolutely spectacular. You can see the mist being pushed by the falls from the bottom of the hill, and the volume of water smashing into the rocks is something to behold:

Reichenbach Falls area

There was also some decent scenery on the way up, with a view of the towns in the valley below. It was getting quite late, so we hurried back down to the car and then back to the chalet. After a late dinner, we'll head off to Strasbourg tomorrow. See you there!

Down... and up... and down...

The weather today was actually surprisingly better than we thought it would be. We'd come up with two travel plans for the remaining two days we had here. Today we chose to go down the highway to see Chillon Castle, on the banks of Lake Geneva near Montreux, and to come back up the highway via Fribourg, which is another European city with a really lovely old town.

Check out the two Flickr sets I've got for today. First one is for the Swiss Alps, second one is for Fribourg only:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645535225457/

So after heading down the hill, once again in pretty treacherous, foggy conditions, we flew down the highway towards Lake Geneva. Seriously, that 40 Francs for the vignette was money really well spent. I took a couple of photos of the lake in Montreux, and ended up standing next to a family who were talking, in German, about their upcoming holiday to Australia. I joined the conversation and gave them a few pointers on what to expect.

We got to Chillon Castle to find out that you need a 'disc' for parking. Swiss roads/car parks are strange. We got one for free from the people at the castle, and put it on the dashboard. All it basically does it tells you what time you arrived, so there's a limit of 2 hours enforced properly.

I hadn't ever intended on going into the castle, and for good reason - there were plenty of people queueing to get in, and it's not exactly a big castle by European standards. We gave it a miss and instead wandered up and down the lake taking photos for a while:

Chillon Castle

About 90 minutes later we got back in the car and went back north towards Fribourg. This time we could only find paid parking, so we put an hour's worth of coins in and set off to explore. After dad and I went our separate ways, I went down this REALLY large (like 200-large) flight of stairs down to the bottom level. "Takes lots of photos".

After a while I stumbled upon free 'disc' parking, so I sent dad a text with the GPS coordinates asking if he could drive down here so we could do some more exploring. After 20 minutes and no response, panic mode set in and I sprinted back UP the staircase to the car park, to find no Renault Megane any more. Cue phone call: dad had gone down there without sending a message. So I had to go all the way back down the staircase AGAIN. My knees wanted to die after that.

Anyways, we did some more exploring and took some more photos:

Lower old town of Fribourg

After which we headed in a straight line back to the chalet, except going on toll-free roads instead of on the motorway. We came across a couple of nice looking wheat fields, and stopped a couple of times to take photos:

Wheat fields of Switzerland

Hopefully tomorrow we'll make it to Grindelwald, which is right in the middle of some of the biggest mountains in Switzerland. See everyone then!

Picturesque Thun

Today we weren't quite sure what to do. It was our first of three full days in the Swiss Alps, and we had sort of planned out some day trips, but nothing was set in concrete. It was all dependent on the weather.

The Swiss Alps gallery is small, but is still on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/

Also check out the more extensive Thun library:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645531251897/

We decided that we would definitely need some supplies to see us through until the end of the trip, so I googled some supermarkets. The nearest ones were all half an hour's drive away, one of which was in Thun. After getting the coordinates for it and plugging it into the GPS, we set off.

Of course one of the issues with only being in Switzerland for 4 days is that everything is in Francs. And although the supermarket we found (a Coop) allowed us to pay in Euros, albeit at a slightly poorer exchange rate than normal, the paid car park required Francs. So we had to get 20 Francs out, and get it changed into coins. Luckily the lady at the Coop counter was very helpful.

After doing some shopping, we headed to another car park, this time nearer to Thun's old town, and paid for a couple of hours. There are a few things to do, and we started ambling down the river. Immediately the nearby medieval bridge caught our eye. It's one of those old-style Swiss bridges designed to regulate the flow of water:

Medieval bridge in Thun

We realised we would run out of time about halfway between the bridge and Thun's old castle, so we rapidly made our way back to the car park. No little piece of paper under the windscreen wiper, yay! Our second stop was a panorama point, where there is supposedly a panorama made by a local artist ages ago. We never saw that, but there is a castle called Schadau, so we explored the gardens a while before heading back to the car, and back to the Alps:

Grounds of Schloss Schadau

Here's a couple of other standout photos from today:

Other good photos from today

The drive back up the hill in Diemtigen was hairy. Really hairy. The fog had really rolled in, and by the time we got all the way up the hillside you could barely see anything. I promise you that there was a chalet about 20 metres in front of me when I took this picture. No, really:

There's a chalet here, I promise

Tomorrow's plan is to go down south to the shores of Lake Geneva, and then visit a town on the way back. Until then!

Fog and misery in the Alps

Today we travelled from Grenoble to a ski chalet we had booked in the middle of nowhere in Switzerland. It was a fair day of driving, so we set off reasonably early.

I've added just a few photos to Flickr's driving set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

There was a planned stop at the Viaduc de Cize-Bolozon. I'd wanted to go here because it was less of a 'tourist attraction' than something like the Pont du Gard, and it looked quite spectacular. Unfortunately, it started raining and didn't really stop for the entire day of driving today. The viaduct was still quite photogenic though. It's a train-car bridge connecting two towns, that had major work done on it to make it the main train route from Paris to Geneva:

Viaduc de Cize-Bolozon

After that it was pretty much plain sailing until we got to the Swiss border. Here we had planned on buying a 'vignette'. They are 40 Swiss Francs each, and give you unlimited travel on all of Switzerland's motorways for a year. It's a much better system (I think) than just having toll roads everywhere.

Once we did that, we were really able to start motoring. Rather than covering 40 or 50 kilometres per hour, which we had become accustomed to, we started doing 90 to 100 on average.

The drive up to the chalet was much more hair-raising though. The last reasonable-sized town with a train station was about 25 minutes before we got to the chalet. From there it was mostly a single-lane road that had a few points where two cars could fit through. Surviving the drive up and back each day will be a challenge.

Once we reached the chalet, we realised that there were actually a few in the area - we had envisioned it as being one chalet with nothing else around it. Not to worry though, there was a restaurant there, where we picked up the keys from before heading up to the chalet. It was about a five-minute walk up a steep gravel hill to the chalet from the restaurant, where we had to park our car because the chalet had no dedicated parking. It was deserted there, but we weren't complaining.

We hit a little bit of a snafu with the internet there (yes there is high-speed internet in a chalet in the middle of nowhere), which resulted in us turning the main power switch off and on again. Even then, my laptop couldn't connect, so I had to tether my phone's WiFi connection to the laptop then extend the connection through another WiFi network... and so it goes. So that was painful, but at least every device is connected now.

The same can't be said for power - the plugs are like Italy, just a little smaller than the standard European slot. So whenever we want to charge something we head upstairs to one of the dormitory's power points. You'll see photos of inside the chalet when I publish my trip report leaving.

We've yet to decide on a plan yet for the Swiss Alps, it will all depend on what the weather's doing on any given day. It's very foggy almost all the time up here in the mountains though, so we will have to judge accordingly! Until tomorrow.

Inner-city walk

Thank goodness there wasn't as much elevation change today! We decided to do a smaller walk today, covering some of what we perceived to be Grenoble's better smaller attractions.

Day 2 of Grenoble is also up on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645873026376/

The day started with a walk through some of the markets. There was a big market just across from our apartment, on the other side of the park. In Grenoble they basically function as a supermarket - there are different stalls selling meat, fish, fruit and veg, and even pasta, wine, nuts and jams:

Markets of Grenoble

After browsing a couple, we walked to Parc Paul Mistral, which was supposed to be a nice-looking park. We were disappointed when we arrived - it was basically a place where the locals go. It was pretty dreary, and there were lots of kids' activities that were 'closed for meteorological reasons'. It was barely raining. There was a tall tower called the Perret, which has been closed for 40 years. It was also quite boring to look at. We did see a squirrel though, and so did this dog:

Dog chasing a squirrel

There were a couple of nice flowerbeds though, and some on the way to the next place, so it wasn't a total waste:

Parc Paul Mistral

We then went for a wander in the general direction of Jardin de Ville, which is a smaller garden almost on the river in old-town Grenoble, with more pretty flowers and less open space:

Jardin de Ville

Dad and I split up soon after, because I wanted to go back to the apartment rather than just wait around. Plus I knew there was a patch of heavy rain forecasted. Soon after I got back it started raining - dad showed up just a little bit soaking about an hour later.

That's the extent of what we did in Grenoble, tomorrow we will be off to the Swiss Alps. Until then!

Inner-city hike

Well, of sorts. One of the main reasons I wanted to go to Grenoble was to go up the Bastille - it's Grenoble's equivalent of Toulon, a hill that gives you really nice views of the city. At the top of Grenoble's edition, however, there's also a historical fort:

Check out Grenoble on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645873026376/

The Bastille and fort from below

After some catching up on our free internet connection at the apartment (free internet again - woohoo!), we headed out to the Bastille. There's a very picturesque-looking cable car that runs from the inner city to the fort at the top of the hill. We decided, however, to walk up instead of catching the cable car. There was a nice-looking garden and a couple of other routes up, so we could take a different route up and back.

We started walking through the garden, only to find out that we couldn't get access that way. We did, however, pass through some nice gardens on the way:

Gardens on the way up (or not)

We then tried the second of three possible routes, only to discover that it was actually an entry to the University of Grenoble, and blocked to public access. That left route number 3, which also went through the university. We decided to keep going, however, as it was the old, grungy part of the university with every window broken and graffiti everywhere. It looked like no-one had studied there for years.

After an hour or so of trekking we made it to the top of the hill. The views really were worth the trip alone, and I even managed to get a couple of typical Grenoble photos with the cable car as the foreground with the city and the mountains in the background:

The views from the Bastille

We were running a bit late, and we wanted to stop at a supermarket on the way back, so we headed back down the 'quick' way. Lots of stairs! We did to a quick detour via a cave system that has been on the top of the mountain since the year dot, but then it was basically a direct line straight down the mountain.

We ended up at the supermarket and got some supplies before heading back home. For those that are wondering where my food diary has gone, it seemed like it wasn't adding much to the blog, and we haven't really done a lot of eating out, so it's mostly boring cook-at-home food.

Tomorrow we might go for a little bit of a trip into the old part of Grenoble. Who knows? Until then.