Showing posts with label switzerland. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 September 2016
Geneva - Switzerland
The political capital of Switzerland, like what Canberra is to Australia. We've been aware of Geneva throughout our travels as people we come across have flown into there, or had a connecting flight there etc. The city itself consists of about 200,000 persons and is where a lot of UN, world political events happen... They speak French and dress real flash with boat shoes, shirts and moleskins.
Our stay here was just a vessel to wait for our cheap flights to Split.
We stayed at an AirBnB for two nights next to the train station in Down Town Geneva, lets just say it was an eye opener... Bloody easy to get to from public transport! Our first impressions of the Swiss is they have money and arrogance.. Down Town Geneva had a hooker or two working most of the corners. Went to the laundromat and that was certainly an experience.. no one at the laundromat spoke English but they demanded your help, not sure what they even wanted..
We were still on a bit of a downer after all our stuff got stolen when the van was broken into..
We've really relied on our laptop to plan, book things and blog so we decided we would dip into the savings and buy a new laptop. Knowing we are headed for Croatia, and then the Bulkans for the next couple of months, this was our only opportunity in a 'more western' place to sort our shit out. So, off to the Apple store - thankfully the service was incredible. The service bloke gave us some discount on our purchases and also some free beats headphones. We needed a new camera charger, the bloke in a camera got one out of a new camera box for us, slowly our faith in the Swiss was semi restored..
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| Not sure what this was...but you could see it from everywhere.. so many asians standing underneath it getting wet, trying to take photos! |
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| Old town Geneva.. |
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| Brendan strutting his stuff with his new backpack down the Old Town.. |
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| New backpack day |
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| Very French feel... just with more glam. Walking through the streets you get a feel there is quite a bit of money around. The whole town seemed a lot quieter then some of the previous places we'd visited recently. |
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| Lake Geneva.. |
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| Cheeky cuppa at our Airbnb |
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| The view from our accommodation window, it was hot and loud. Hot, as in 30 degrees plus..inside..no fan or air conditioning.. |
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| Time to hit the road, Croatia awaits.. we got to the train station at 1am. flight was at 6am, but the train at 5am would have been pushing it.. got locked on a train that wasn't meant for us, lucky someone saw us or we would have been spending the night in a depot somewhere.... interesting times.. looking forward to the next adventure, time to slow down and relax for a couple of weeks on a beach before we kick it into gear again. |
Thursday, 8 September 2016
Adventures from the Chalet - Switzerland
12th to the 18th of August
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| What dreams are made of! - photo cred Trelawny |
So, the back end of our road trip in the camper finds us here, a few km above Martigny around 1200m above sea level. Clean air, off the grid, just taking it all in with some of our best mates. We spent 7 nights ripping it up, hiking up glaciers, chopping wood, eating chocolate and cheese, drinking frothies, cooking on a campfire and exploring the area...
Chronologically ordered, the below photos represent our little adventure here.
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| Jake dropping those raclette bombs - first night at the chalet we were treated to some swiss cheese on spuds with a side of pickle. A perfect start to a ripper few days in the swiss alps. |
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| nom nom nom nom - we had multiple servings of this, it was amazing! |
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| happy days!!!! a random chalet on an ascent to one of the peaks behind the chalet. |
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| them views |
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| The reason we're here, Frank - Trelawny's father, and a bloke I've done some racing with back in Stawell. Happy 60th Frank for November! |
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| pre-rissoles |
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| During rissoles - hot work |
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| The chalet, off gird and humble but a mass of charm. |
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| Post-rissoles |
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| The girls built a staircase one arvo while we chopped wood. To walk down to the chalet from the road where we'd park you'd be faced with 20-30% gradients. |
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| Them views - photo cred. Trelawny |
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| A few hundred meters up the road there was a 'look out' over Martigny |
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| Also featuring in this years TdF, La Forclaz pass was a stones throw from the chalet and we managed to spend a couple of days hiking from this point. |
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| A couple of days in we were joined by Brett (a school mate of Jakes) and his partner Brooke....legends! |
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| not a bad place for a chop off |
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| One arvo lunch was cheese fondue - bloody amazing and one of my favourite meals of our trip to date! Jake and Ame did the cooking and they nailed it! |
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| Brett and Brooke during a morning berry picking |
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| Wild blue berries were abundant, we also snagged some wild strawberries and raspberries. |
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| the road up to the chalet over looking grape vine and the city of Martigny |
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| Gruyère - an old village on top of a hill. World renown for its cheese!!! We paid about 20euro each for a toasted cheese sandwich and it was hell worth it!! best. cheese. ever. |
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| The crew - another addition to the squad, Mr. Will Paddock. A workaway mate of Jake and Tarn's flew over from the UK to catch up. |
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| An arvo swimming at Lake Geneva on the way back from Gruyère - the place our camper was broken into.... |
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| pickle club - camp out at the 'look out' this night was a beauty!! |
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| in-joke peanut m&m's were consumed consistently while Brett was with us. The M&Ms got us through the bad times and the good!.. |
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| A morning spent in Martigny and a cooked lunch including 2 min noodles and left overs for the squad. Perks of driving everywhere in a campervan. |
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| Hiking The Mysterious Gorge just past the pass of La Forclaz |
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| 2nd row: Will Paddock, Brendan Hinchliffe, Brett Hargraves. 1st row: Jake Miocic, Trelawny Kean, Amy Cooper, Brooke Palfreyman |
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Trient Glacier enroute |
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Trient Glacier |
We are so grateful to Jake and Trelawny and their family that we were given the opportunity to spend a ripper week at their chalet. We will defiantly take away some amazing memories, laughs and experiences from our time there. Hopefully another time in the future we get an opportunity to get back to this part of the world.
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