Day 33: Die Zugspitze

It was absolutely the best weather today, so today would be superb for Zugspitzing.
So we were up nice and early to get the 8:30 train, but still we just missed it.  Probably didn’t help going to the wrong station, but hey.  We grabbed a coffee and caught the next train up through the beautiful scenery of green grass fields, villages of painted houses and kids riding their bikes to school through the town streets and bike paths all framed with a beautiful snow covered mountain backdrop.

Everybody wants a photo of the blue train

Day 29: Leave the car behind when travelling to Italy.

Breakfast at the hotel again.  Same fare as yesterday.  They should alternate days or something.  Anyway, again not that hungry, so why am I even talking about it?
Grindelwald put on is best weather for our departure.  The skies were so blue and the air so crisp; I could see every little detail up on the mountains and the glacier.

Day 28: Gorgeous Grindelwald

Breakfast was included in our hotel price, so we felt obliged to partake.  Breakfast fare was OK, a large assortment, but since I have been eating so much for lunch and dinner I had generally been skipping breakfast,.  In fact there is a packet of muesli I bought in Uzès I’ve been carrying around with me still unopened.  But that's enough boring breakfast talk....

What every good hotel buffet should include

Day 27: Nudist colonies, pedibuses and erotimechanica. This is Switzerland.

Sorry about the News of the World style headline, I'm trying to attract a larger readership ;-)
Today I got up nice and early to help walk Marianna to school; she's such a cutie.  She talked and talked and talked the whole way there, and she made sure her bat was kept nice and warm tucked away in her top. Pedibus?  yeah I had no idea until Henric explained it.  One volunteer parent is the head of the bus, one volunteer parent is the tail of the bus, and they are both holding a rope which all the kids on the bus have to hold onto.  The bus then makes it rounds, stopping at the pedibus stops to take on new passengers, and bring them all safely to school. Very cool for the first year kiddies.  Very uncool for the 2nd year and older kiddies. We walked back via the lake shore which was lined with a multitude of market gardens.

Day 26: Beautiful Annecy, terrifying Gorges, friends in Lausanne

Yay, a lazy day today before leaving Annecy, boo and driving to catch up with Henric and Cory, yay!
We had arranged with Pascal to checkout at midday, so after sleeping in we walked around town one last time to soak up the last of the beauty that is Annecy.

Day 24: Uzes to Annecy

Today I awoke with a bit of a sore eye, so I jumped onto Google translate and looked up the French for sore eye and headed off to the pharmacy. Sure enough the girl there spoke no English, but when I pointed to my eye and said le conjonctivite maybe, she knew what I needed and handed over a bottle of antibacterial eye drops; the passing on of instructions for application was a little more difficult, but we managed.
Michelle and I finished off our ham and most of the roast chicken and were on the road by 10:30; there were a  few hours of driving ahead of us today.

Day 21: Around Uzes. Brantes and Vaison la Romaine.

Today we drove through many more of those beautiful clichéd Southern France narrow winding country lanes; small villages of stone and fields of vines and olives, interspersed with sprays of blood red poppies.
The countryside  became more mountainous as we continued.  We stopped in Bognals at a Courrefour, and stocked up on some supplies for lunch and the rest of our Uzès stay.  The supermarket was amazing with so much fresh food: a fromagerie in store, piles of fresh fish on ice in the aisles, bread of all imaginable shapes and types.  Puts Woollies and Coles truly to shame.

Day 16: Pintxos! Xurros! Votives and more Barcelona!!

It was a bit cooler this morning.  Looking out the window across our terrace and seeing a sky full of chattering swallows and the sound of church bells ringing across the city was just beautiful. Today's plan was bus turistic again, this time the blue route.  For the first stop, we hopped off at Gaudi’s Homage to God,  La Sagrada Familia.  An amazing homage, spectacular and grandiose in vision and size, a work in progress since 1882, and not likely to be completed for another decade or so.  God mustn’t have thought too much of it though, because Gaudi ended up getting hit by a tram and dying a few days later, mistaken for a vagabond.  :-(