Switzerland

At the end of May, Fiona and I spent 5 fantastic days in Switzerland (Suisse), staying with two friends of ours - Ali and Sophie.



On Thursday we flew to Geneva from London. We've been to Geneva before (our very first trip to Europe when we first arrived), so we caught a train straight away to the small town of Chermignon where my friend Sophie lives.



Sophie, Ali and I were all exchange students in Canada back in 1995/96. I hadn't seen Sophie since 1996, over 12 years ago, and I had only seen Ali once (very briefly for a coffee, in Wellington) when her and her boyfriend were passing through.



Chermignon is in the Sierre region, in the canton of Valais in Suisse. It is a very beautiful place, up in the mountains, looking out onto a spectacular view of the Suisse Alps. We spent two fantastic days with Sophie and her boyfriend, seeing other towns near by like Sierre and had a really nice lake-side bbq. It's hard to describe how fantastic it there: up in the mountains, fantastic weather, clean, fresh air...we slept to well it, it was great.



We then caught a train through the mountains, past towns like Inter-Larken, to Luzern, where we met up with Ali. Luzern is a lovely lake-side town. After lunch, we wandered the streets through the old town. A lot of the buildings in the older part of the town were painted with pictures, such as the last supper, knights, famous people etc. The colours and the quality were fantastic and quite unique. We also walked over the Kappellbrucke wooden bridge and wandered around the lake-side.



After saying good-bye to Sophie, Fiona and I went with Ali onto Zurich, where we stayed for two more days. On the Sunday, Ali and her boyfriend gave us a guided tour around Zurich - which is a very nice city - clean, attractive and welcoming. As well as looking all around the town, we took a train and then walked up the mountain and got a fantastic view over Zurich, which was a great place for some photos, and enabled me to use my limited German to order lunch - a simple Bratwurst and fries was pretty much all I could manage. Monday, before we headed back to London, we spent the morning shopping before meeting Ali for lunch and a good-bye.



Both Fiona and I had a fantastic 5 days in Suisse and we can't thank Ali and Sophie enough for having us stay with them. They live in a really beautiful country - not only clean, beautiful and very efficient (as everyone knows) but friendly, engaging, small everything you could possibly want and more. It was so nice to see two friends after so many years, and have such a nice time together. Suisse really is a fantastic place, but it was so much more for us because of our friends, who showed us the real life, rather than just the tourist places most get to see.



That's about it for a while. Fiona and I are having a couple of quiet weeks now before a busy July. I am doing a central London 10km run, which snakes its way through Piccadilly, the Mall, Westminster, Trafalgar Square etc. We're then hoping to visit my uncle and his family again for a weekend, for heading off for our big trip for the summer (and my dream trip for the year) to Tallinn, Helsinki and Russia - for 11 days!

Belgium & Lords

Hi everyone.

It's been quite a while since my last post, so here is the first of two new posts to keep you up to date from the past few months.

At the beginning of May Fi and I headed for a long weekend in Brussels and Bruges in Belgium. We took our favourite transport (the Eurostar) on Friday afternoon and arrived in Brussels in late afternoon. It was a fantastic, sunny day (as it was for the whole weekend) so we stayed out well into the evening wandering around the central square. For dinner we went to an out of the way old Belgian restaurant, which was brilliant. I had a superb steak and Fiona had guinea-foul with a raspberry-beer sauce -both of which were fantastic. Saturday (again in the hot sun) we spent the day wandering the sights of Brussels; starting with a local market, the Courts of Justice, the central square, Cathedral etc. We tasted some fantastic local cuisine, including beers, waffles, chocolates (a lot!) and mussels.

On Sunday we caught a train to the lovely town of Bruges. Bruges is a very old, quite touristy town with canals running all the way through it. We started the day with a canal tour, which went all around the town. It was another hot, humid day and Bruges was packed with tourists. But we had a very enjoyable day just wandering around, lounging by the river, and had a 3 course lunch. There aren't that many "big" sights to see in Bruges or Brussels, indeed probably the most important sight in Brussels is the statue of the little boy pee-ing! But we had a really nice, relaxing weekend in the sun and enjoyed Belgium for all it was worth.

A week or two later I got the chance to watch NZ play England at the famous Lords cricket ground - which all in all was a big disappointment all-round. My uncle Mark and I went on the Friday and saw about half a days play. the players were off and on the field all day because of bad light - which was just stupid, as it barely changed at all, all day. But it was nice to spend a day with Mark and see Lords. The Saturday was worse. It was freezing, we only saw about 20 minutes of cricket, and spent the whole day watching the rain off and on. So it was pretty disappointing - but we do get a refund for the Saturday.

Weather and play aside, really was not impressed by Lords at all. I never seen so many ties and blazers at a cricket game ever! and the whole place (acknowledging the tradition) was just very stuffy and "toff" (as they say in the UK). All-in-all it just wasn't any where near as impressive as I had heard and hoped it would be. Unlike Wembley, which is a truly fantastic stadium - one of if not the best in the world - something quite special. Anyway, on to Suisse...