Nice, France

Ahh, the French Riviera…sun-drenched coastline, easy breezes, middle-aged men in speedo’s…does it get any better than this?

At first impression, yes, it could get better. Being stuck in traffic on the road from GVA to Nice brought out the latent road-rage that had been festering in Sophia for the past year, and reminded us that our tram passes are about to expire and we really need to go renew those! However, once we got to Nice, I got to take my turn, as I circled the streets for about 45 minutes searching for parking. Not a good way to start the weekend…

However, as frustrating as that can be, Nice’s charms quickly caught us. The promenade along the Mediterranean is just about perfect, while the narrow alleys of the old town keep the walks interesting. It’s really a beautiful place, and while I was unimpressed at first, it only got nicer and nicer as the weekend went on. Or dare I say "Nice-er and Nice-er"? Ok, sorry, I’ll stop…

The first night we met up with Heather and Karen, fresh off their whirlwind trip of Europe. I always find it funny how girls will get invited to way more "local" parties when traveling, than couples do…go figure. So we went out to dinner, walked around, and did most of our exploring of the city. We knew we had to keep it simple, because we had a busy day of sitting at the beach ahead of us!

The next day we got up early, hit a bakery (French bakeries rule), walked through what Soph has claimed to be the best market in the developed world, and hit the beach. We actually reserved chairs, which was a great idea, as the Nice beaches are basically just large rocks, and as such are not very comfortable to sit on. However, they’re fun to look at, and you don’t get any sand on you, which is pretty cool. So we sat there all day – literally, for over eight hours – and then went back to get a bottle of wine, and bring it back to the beach to hang out some more! Hey – it was vacation, and it was a cool beach! I can’t think of too many reasons not to spend an entire day on the beach if the opportunity presents itself…so it was a good day.

Sunday, while we were sad to leave Nice, we decided to stop at Monaco, to A) add it to the list of countries we’d set foot in B) see the ridiculous amount of wealth there C) try to find the Prince so that we could pawn off one of the girls on him and then have a standing invite on his yacht. That last piece wasn’t my idea, but I was more than willing to go along with it, especially after seeing the yachts – they were absurd! Anyway, Monaco is a cool place – I believe it has the highest Ferrari-to-human ratio of anywhere on the planet. You could tell that this was real wealth – not this multi-millionaire stuff we normally see, or even star-athlete wealth. I’m talking real, serious, filthy, my ancestors-screwed-over-your-ancestors wealth. Therefore we decided that, for lack of meeting the Prince, any one of these guys would do as far as pawning one of the girls off. Hey – pimpin’ ain’t easy!

So that was Nice, and Monaco; well worth a weekend trip, and I’m kind of surprised we hadn’t done it before now. After that, we headed back on the road to Geneva, and then the next day we sadly had to say goodbye to our visitors. In the attached picture you can see just how sad Soph and I were to see them go…

Next week: Chamonix!

Heather & Karen's visit!

First off, we would like to extend a welcome and thank-you to Heather and Karen for coming out to Europe and paying us a visit. Smartly, they realized that an entire two weeks with us would probably be a bit too much, so they used Geneva as a launching point for what might be the greatest European vacation ever (they hit Gimmewald and Cinque Terre, two of the best places this continent has to offer). However, as that is their story, I’ll let them tell it in their own words. However, the part where they were in Geneva, is also my story – so I’m going to tell that before they blab it to everyone!

Geneva is a very unique place in some ways; it’s not a place I would ever tell someone to go visit for it’s own sake, yet it’s still a decent-sized city with a handful of things to see and do. It also has a great expat community, which makes it easy to meet tons of interesting people. That said, I thought it would be a great idea to take our visitors out for a quiet night on the lake at one of the many wine bars dotting the water’s edges. It just so happened that some of our friends were also there, so what was planned as a relaxing couple glasses of wine on a Tuesday night, quickly turned into a massive bar crawl that lasted well past 2 am! Along the way, Heather learned how to impersonate a leopard; Karen desecrated a lion statue; and I taught them the joys of Geneva’s $20 drink menus. Good times, good times…

But it isn’t all fun and games, for there was work to be done. As many of you know, Sophia doesn’t like chocolate, which means I don’t get to eat nearly as much of it as I would like. But, since Heather and Karen do like chocolate, I was able to convince them to go on a "chocolate crawl" with me. Now, it sounded like a great idea – and in truth, it was a great idea – but we quickly learned that you can’t just keep on eating chocolate. After a handful of pieces, it starts to taste…sickening. Which is too bad, because I wanted to eat it for like three hours straight. Maybe I just need to train for it.

Next weekend: Nice!

EuroCup 2008

I’m going to throw this out there: I don’t like soccer. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the fact its non-American name desecrates the title of our greatest sport, but in the end it’s just not something that appeals to me. I sort of view soccer the same way most girls view any sport – that is, it’s just a silly thing that guys get worked up about for no real reason.

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention to European sports (and if it wasn’t continuously bombarded into my face, I would be in your ranks), the EuroCup 2008 is a giant soccer tournament held between all the European nations. Well, the European nations that qualify for it – England didn’t make it this time around, so pretty much every other country here is laughing at them. I think it’s played every four years, partly to offset the fact the World Cup is played every four years and there’s a lot of time in between wherein nothing really happens. Why am I telling you this, you ask? Well, this time around, Switzerland is the host country; more specifically, the park half a block from our apartment is the site of one of the "fan zones", meaning we get all sorts of hooligans roaming our streets.

But, it could be worse. Depending on how you feel about hooliganism, you might say Geneva dodged a bullet; the teams playing in this fair city are teams that nobody bothers traveling to watch. We have Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, and I think Czech Republic, whereas other Swiss cities have teams such as Greece or Holland playing.

Again, why am I telling you this? Well, one of our friends had the bright idea to go to Bern this past Friday night, to go see the France / Holland game. Not actually go into the stadium, but just to the "fan zone" there, to "soak in the atmosphere".

Well, let me just tell you – I have never been to a sporting event more insane than this. Holland ended up winning, which was great considering we were surrounded by about 50,000 screaming Dutch fans. As Bern isn’t exactly a teeming metropolis, it got crowded very quickly. I would use words like "chaos" or "pandemonium", but I think they’re overused, and what was going on in Bern was well out of the ordinary. There were people climbing parking signs, gutters, port-a-potties; we ran across two impromptu brass marching bands, one of which we followed for a couple blocks because, well, it’s a lot of fun following a marching band. I have to say it was really cool after having lived in Switzerland for almost a year now, to see the complete craziness that Bern became on this one night. The party was still going strong a couple hours after the match, although we had to catch the midnight train back to Geneva.

So, my advice to anyone who actually does like soccer is, follow the Dutch fans. Obviously the English are also crazy like this, as are apparently the Scandinavian countries (that is, thousands upon thousands of them travel to watch their sports teams in international events). Considering Bern is much closer to France than Holland, it was interesting that there were easily 50 Dutch to every Frenchie (or clogs vs. frogs, if you want to use the local slang). No exaggeration – it was almost all Dutch.

The Dutch rule.

The only unfortunate thing is that I didn’t get to see much of Bern. They apparently have a bear-pit (with live bears), so I’ll have to go back another time. Looks like a fun place though.

Next week: Soph’s back!

Cave ouverte!

Ahh, a weekend to relax in Geneva…but who can relax when it’s the only day of the year that all the vineyards are open to visitors? Not us – so we donned our wine-drinking caps and headed out to the countryside for one of the few days you’ll ever get something for free in Switzerland!

Now, a word about Swiss wines; I’ve had a couple since I’ve been here, and I’ve spoken to quite a few people about them as well. The Swiss don’t export much wine, and they claim it’s because the wine is so good that they drink it all themselves. Well, I’m here to tell you, that’s a load of nonsense – Swiss wines are simply bad. Really bad. In the winter, they warm it and put sugar and spices in it, and it’s still bad. It’s just not something that the Swiss are particularly gifted at, much like electronics or getting along with other cultures. Hey – don’t be offended, Switzerland – your chocolate and cheeses are world-renowned, and more than make up for your shortcomings. That being said, I do exaggerate slightly, as their white wines are actually ok, and go well with fondues. The reds are atrocious though.

Back to the story – so one day each year, the canton of Geneva opens up its wineries to the public, and everyone walks around tasting wines at the various caves. It’s kind of neat that they do this, although in theory, California’s wineries do this every single day of the year, so I guess that kind of puts it into perspective. Anyway, we took this opportunity to meet up with some friends and head out to the various wineries, hitting the sub-appellation of Dardegny (we ended up here more because we just wanted to get off the crowded shuttle, rather than actually seeking this place out). Dardegny is basically a street with a couple of wine producers located on it, and a bunch of vineyards stretching in every direction. All the other sub-appellations are essentially the same thing, which is probably why it’s impossible to find any useful information about any of these places online. The fun thing about this area is that it’s very rural, and while you’re only a ten minute train ride from the center of Geneva, you’re still in the middle of pure countryside. This tends to happen a lot in Switzerland, which is one of its strong points.

We of course took the early train out there (because we’re hard-core), and started our rounds of speaking to the producers in broken French. Wendy, our soon-to-be-leaving roommate, has reached the point in her Genevoise stage where she doesn’t even bother with the broken French, which is very admirable. It’s good to have a girl around who will do this, because the locals like to practice their English with a girl, whereas if I start with English, it would result in not getting any wine. So we talked with a few people, drank some wine, and moved further and further into the heart of the city.

Like I mentioned, the heart of the city is just the one street, so it didn’t take long. However – the day turned out to be really beautiful, and with tents and benches set up, it was nice to just sit and relax in the sun for a few hours. As an added bonus, I did learn quite a bit about the local wines, and even found some that were pretty decent. I might also go so far as to say that Geneva makes very good dessert wines, but I haven’t had many of those so it’s hard to say.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful, with the exception of almost blowing our deck up. We had bought a cheap barbecue grill awhile back, and were setting it up, when the gas tank caught fire. Thanks to some quick thinking by Soph, and some risking of life and limb by me, we were able to get it out – but we are now sadly retiring from our grilling days in Geneva, before ever getting started. This is probably for the best, although now we have to figure out how to get rid of that piece of junk grill we have…

Next week: Nothing!

Ireland

First off, let me extend a special thank-you to our friends Lauren and Jon, who joined us for our trip through Ireland. As always, it’s great to see friends from the US and travel with them through Europe. We had actually traveled to Mexico with them a few years back, so we were looking forward to another trip with them!

Ireland…I’ve always heard great things about it, but never really knew what was there. I have to say, I didn’t expect it to have such great scenery. Mountains, seaside cliffs, beaches, grasslands, unusual rock formations…quite a bit to see. We spent a week and drove across the country, spending most of our time on the west and southern coasts, hitting the towns of Galway, Dingle, Kinsale, and finally Dublin. Rather than describing all of this in detail, though, this time I’m going to go through a couple of stories and try to explain what I call "the Irish experience".

Driving on the Left
Not sure why, but I was kind of excited to drive on the left side of the road. I looked at it as a challenge that shouldn’t be too hard to overcome, but that I could still feel good about (unless I got into a wreck, of course). That being said, the first three minutes were not fun at all; cars were coming from all sorts of odd directions, stoplights weren’t in the right places, the blinkers activated the windshield wipers…it was a lot to keep track of. Of course, it settled down pretty quickly, and pretty soon I was driving as out of control as any other Irish driver. I will say that the hardest part was understanding where the left side of the car was in relation to the road, but after awhile I got the hang of it. It was kind of fun in the end, although the last leg ultimately ended up in bumper-to-bumper traffic, so I can go back to remembering why I’m glad I rarely have to drive anymore.

The feeding of the lamb
Ireland has lots of sheep. When I say "lots", what I really mean is "an insanely ridiculous amount". There was apparently a contest in Dublin to see if anyone could drive across the city without passing a pub; I would propose it’s even harder to drive across the countryside without passing a sheep (and yes, "sheep" is both the singular and plural form of the animal in question). However, we noticed that when we would actually approach a sheep on foot, they would run away in terror, much like I react when a European asks me about the US democratic nomination race. So it was to our surprise when we arrived at our B&B in Dingle, that one of the all-time cutest lambs was sitting there wagging his tail at us, bleeting for us to come play with him. Soph, of course, immediately fell in love with him, and was able to convince the innkeeper to let us feed it the next morning. That little lamb was crazy! It went nuts trying to get to the bottle of milk Soph had! See the video to the side…anyway, it was a pretty cool lamb, and was surprisingly soft (although I guess wool is soft, so not sure why I would expect otherwise).

Why biking sucks
Fact: Soph and I do not exercise. Fact: Soph and I are not good at riding bikes. Fact: We should have realized that a 30 mile bike ride on hilly terrain was not something we should have attempted.

The problem is, the bike rental place (which also functioned as a tool shop and a bar – all in the same room) said it could be easily done in three hours, with stops. Also, that a family with some children had rented bikes earlier that morning to do the same trail. Yeah – six hours later, Soph and I come huffing and puffing back to the shop, her leg all cramped, my hand covered in grease from when the bike chain fell off…it’s time we accept, and act upon, the fact that we should never again in our lives get on a bike. Never. That being said, it was a great bike ride, with magnificent views, treacherous turns, and you really couldn’t ask for a better day or place to do it.

Guinness drinking and Hurling
Everyone I’ve ever talked to about Ireland has said "you have to drink Guinness there – it’s so much better!!" Well, I’m here to tell you, it is – sort of. Depends what you like, really; I haven’t had it in the US in a long time, and therefore my comparison might be slightly off, but it seems in Ireland they serve it significantly colder, and it tastes (and goes down) almost like water. It seems to be missing that coffee-ish taste I remember it having. Personally, I was a fan, although it doesn’t light a candle to the Belgian or German beers I’ve had over here. Still – I wouldn’t oppose wearing a t-shirt with the Guinness label on it, which means something I guess.

As far as hurling goes, I’m not referring to what might also be known as "spewing chunks", although the Dublin bar scene was rather crazy. Rather, I’m talking about what might be the single greatest sport on the face of the earth. Yes American Football – you have some serious competition here! Hurling is what you get when you combine equal parts men’s field hockey, Aussie rules football, and beating people senseless with pieces of wood. They should probably call this sport "pure awesomeness", because that’s essentially what it is. Basically you have to hit, kick, throw, or even headbutt the ball into the opponents goal, or alternatively (and more easily) put it through the uprights for a less valuable point (similar to the concept of a field goal vs. a touchdown). The field is roughly the same size as a football field, maybe longer – who cares – and you can only run with the ball for about 3 steps before you have to either balance it on your stick or hit it / pass it / do something with it. Generally when passing, you swing full force; note that someone is usually within 2 feet of you as this happens. Anyway – it boggles my mind that people don’t routinely die from this sport, because they're swinging these wooden sticks inches from other people’s heads. One day this will spread past the shores of Ireland, and the world will be a better place.

The reason I bring this up is, on our final day, Soph needed a little nap, so I decided to start watching tv. I might have mentioned it on an earlier blog, but we don’t really have tv here, so whenever we travel, we inevitably turn on the hotel television (even though I have a strict "no tv while traveling" policy), and end up staring at it in awe for a few hours. As I was flipping through the stations, I found a hurling match in progress. Now, I first saw hurling about ten years ago probably, and have been trying in vain ever since to see it again, due to it’s aforementioned complete unadulturated sweetness. So you can imagine how excited I was to get the chance to see a game. It was the Ireland semi-finals, with Cinderella-story Clare county up against the experienced Galway. Surprisingly, Clare handily beat them, although it got pretty close in the second half for awhile. Great sport!

Blood sausage
One of the great things about traveling through Ireland is that you don’t have major hotel chains in all the cities. Instead, you have family-operated bed and breakfasts all over the place, which provide a personal and hospitable touch to your trip. The majority of them serve you just about anything you want for breakfast, and of course we would usually order the "Full Irish Breakfast". The FIB (as I like to call it) includes 2 eggs, 2 bacon, 2 sausage, a white sausage, and a blood sausage (and also all the toast, coffee, etc. you can eat). If you’ve never had blood sausage, you should try it – it’s literally made using blood, which gives it an odd consistency. I did not like it much at all, although Soph, who counts moldy fermented spiced cabbage as her favorite dish, was somewhat of a fan. I was more a fan of the butter – Irish butter is unbelievable. It’s hard to describe why it’s so much better, but let’s just say that we were rating the butter from one restaurant / B&B to the next. Yum!

Overall, the food in Ireland was spectacular. Granted, we were in the areas where seafood is a staple, and we went to quite a few seafood restaurants – but it was pretty ridiculous how good it was. I’ve found that seafood can be hit or miss a lot of the time, but literally every dish we had was top-notch.

Castles and forts
Ireland has a lot of castles. Soph likes castles. Therefore, we stopped at a lot of castles. I’m kind of tired of castles. Soph is not. Therefore, we will probably continue seeing castles for the foreseeable future.

Pubs and music
I’m not gonna lie to you…we went to a lot of pubs on this trip. Some were good, some were bad (actually all of them were good), and some of them were the types of places you could easily sit for days at a time. Unfortunately, outside of Ireland, it’s hard to find a good pub; sure, you can find good bars, but pubs are something that the Irish, and British I guess, just do better. Now, that’s not to say they don’t make mistakes. For instance, in Dublin it’s hard not to feel it was simply Irish bars modeled on what people think Irish bars look like. However, as you got farther into the countryside, you noticed differences. First of all, some of them are old – really old, in fact, and without the architectural nuances common to places that have been renovated in the past ten years (such as high ceilings). Secondly, they often had couches and partitions. I’m a big fan of having a cubbyhole or somewhere you can sit and kind of get away from the rest of the bar if necessary. Third, and most important, the true Irish pub just has a "homey" feeling to it, like you’re visiting somebody’s living room that they put a lot of work into. To this point, they tend not to be as crowded, and it’s common to have conversations with the bartenders and patrons, which we were able to do on a couple of occasions (Lauren even got invited to a local’s farm, but that’s another story).

Irish music is a similar story; I found it interesting that in many of the pubs, people were all turned towards the musicians and actually listening to the music; as such, Irish music tends not to function as background noise, but rather as the center of the bar. One pub we walked into was dead quiet with the exception of the musician, and of course everyone looked at us as we walked through the door (always fun). You’ll also see people just walk up and join the band for a song or two, although you then run the risk of having that one idiot who only plays the tambourine showing up and trying to join in…

All in all, this was another great trip. I can't do justice to how great the scenery is in Ireland, and how varied the landscapes are. My favorite part was probably the Burren, just because it’s so weird, although it’s hard to beat the mountains and beaches around Dingle (just don't eat their berries!)

Pictures Link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/swissmrsandmr/sets/72157605255993660/

Next weekend: Caves ouverte!

Amsterdam!

The idea of Amsterdam conjures up significantly different images depending on who you’re speaking to. On the one hand, it’s known as a liberal, anything-goes party city where college kids flock for a couple days of debauchery. To others, it’s the tulip capital of the world, and its bike-friendly layout is an ideal place to relax. Even more, it’s known as an arts and cultural center, influencing many of the masters such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh. If you ask a Dutch person, you would probably get an answer along the lines of it being a cosmopolitan city built upon canals and offering a selection of just about anything you could ask for, or kind of a cross between Paris and Venice.

In truth, Amsterdam is one of the oldest major cities in Europe (depending on how you define "major", but just go with me here…) It’s a center of banking, consulting, engineering, and of course, cannabis-growing. As mentioned, the city is built upon canals, and it has an extremely good restaurant scene and night-life (by "extremely good", I mean "you can get a meal for under $20 and it doesn’t taste like it’s been microwaved"). As you can imagine, the city attracts both a creative and a naturalist crowd, which translates into a very cool vibe.

Our first day there, we decided we’d start with the tulip-thing, so we ventured outside the city to see the fields upon fields of, well, tulips. Which reminds me – what’s better than roses on your piano? Oh wait – my parents might be reading this…anyway - we went to the Keukenhoff Gardens, which is the single largest bulb-garden in the world. This place, if you have any interest whatsoever in flowers, is awesome. Millions upon millions of brightly-colored flora, most of which I don’t know enough about to name. We spent a few hours here, and it could have been more – but we had some serious walking left to do.

So, back in Amsterdam, we started looking for places to shop. When I say "we", I mean "Sophia and Wendy", because they’re girls, and shopping in foreign cities is one of those things girls apparently like to do. Yeah – Wendy decided to travel with us, and if living with a married couple didn’t scare her away from couple-hood, then traveling with us surely did! Anyway, Soph’s ankle wasn’t having anything to do with this shopping thing, so it proceeded to twist itself for no apparent reason. The bad part about this was that it was a pretty bad sprain (in Soph’s defense, she gutted out the next two days like a champ). The good news was that it got us out of shopping, and gave us an excuse to find a Belgian beer bar and get some drinks! Belgian beer rules, and there’s lots of it in Amsterdam – almost as much as there is in Belgium. So that was pretty much Friday, as the combination of getting up at pre-8:00 am and a foot injury allowed for us to not feel guilty for going home and to bed before midnight (although the excuse of "being in our thirties" should probably suffice).

Saturday we went to the Van Gogh museum, which still gets high marks on my "things that make a museum great" list. A handful of great paintings, it’s not too overwhelming, and you don’t have to waste your entire day there. I think we were done in about two hours, and I totally felt like I got to look at every painting rather than just rushing through. After that we took a walking tour of the old city, which was pretty sweet, as Amsterdam has a very underrated history. I personally feel you could write a great thesis on why capitalism is good or bad, based solely on the history of Amsterdam, but I’m not sure why you would want to do that. Anyway – Saturday night we stayed out a little later, but we still need to step our game up if we’re to continue pretending we can hang with the under-thirty crowd.

Sunday, we were sad we had to leave – at least Soph was, because there were cheap Chinese take-out places all over the city, and she can’t get that anywhere in Geneva! I think she had Chinese more times in the three days we were there, then she’s had in the nine months we’ve lived in Geneva combined. Chinese food aside, we were all surprised at how big Amsterdam is. The city is massive! You could walk for hours and hours and still not get to the other side. So we walked a bit more, went to the flower market, bought some tulips, then went shopping. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get out of that.

The thing with Amsterdam is that there’s simply so much to do there; you can take trains outside the city, visit windmills, go on bike tours, or, as we did, just walk around. For hours. So we might have to go back again. Maybe when the tulips start blooming next spring…

Next weekend: Grocery shopping in France!

Stuttgart, Germany

Ok, so we had some friends going to a German beer festival, and while we don’t want all our travels to revolve around beer festivals or wine tastings, it’s hard not to go to these things when the opportunity presents itself. That being said, we donned our half-fare cards, and took the Swiss rail system north into Stuttgart, Germany.

The thing about Germany is, it keeps surprising me; I’ve had this conversation with a couple of people, and we all agree that, while it doesn’t get the tourist destination-buzz of other European countries like France or Italy, Germany is a really cool place. The towns are über-cute, people tend to be friendly, it’s extremely clean, and great for walking around. There aren’t a ton of "you-have-to-see-this" sorts of places, but it’s just…nice. Anyway, that sums up Stuttgart. There isn’t a hugely compelling reason to visit it, but it’s a nice city. I believe it’s known as the greenest city in Europe, evident in the fact that seemingly every block has a park, and the town is divided in a couple places by a forest (seriously, there are thousands of trees just growing randomly in large swathes of land throughout the city.) That’s pretty cool.

As this was only a weekend trip, we didn’t get to do the usual amount of sightseeing, and also it was more of a trip to hang out with friends and enjoy a giant festival. The Spring Festival, as it is known, draws a lot of people, and it’s kind of similar to Oktoberfest, the main difference being that Oktoberfest is bigger and is probably more family-oriented (I know that sounds weird, but it’s true). This was more of a carnival atmosphere, with lots of rides and food stands, and was basically a giant unpretentious party. That being said, we did go up in one of those gigantic towers where you can look across the rest of the city, and also walked around quite a bit.

Anyway, it was another good weekend, and it ends what might become our most intense period of weekend traveling in Europe. Almost looking forward to spending next weekend lounging around in Geneva…almost.

Next weekend: Partytime in Geneva!

Lake Como

Mark and Colleen were able to join us for a second weekend, this time exploring the beautiful and storied Italian Lakes region. The Italian Lakes are in northern Italy, near the foot of the alps, but well above the Mediterranean. It used to be considered one of the places everyone needed to go at some point in their life (although I think that’s stretching it a little). Regardless, it’s a pretty cool area, as you have large lakes that run up to the foot of the mountains, snow-tipped peaks in the background, cliffs, and some of the most stunning villas you’ll find anywhere in the world. In fact, I think this area invented the concept of the villa, and if they didn’t, they should have.

I was a little concerned going into this trip, as the weather is right at that point where it could either be nice or absolutely terrible. Luckily, it was about as perfect as you could have asked for, and coupled with the fact that it’s pre-tourist season, the conditions couldn’t have been better.

Outside of the lake and mountain views, the villas are the main attractions in Como. Located on mountain sides, sporting well-manicured gardens, the villas were spectacular, to say the least. One of the villas has been used as a movie set on a handful of films, most recently in the latest James Bond movie (it was also used as the backdrop to a terrible love scene in Star Wars - Attack of the Clones, but I think the James Bond thing makes up for it.) Not that we’re into going to places where movies were filmed or anything…although I guess this is the second time we’ve been somewhere from a James Bond movie in the past year. Doh.

We stayed at Bellagio, which was a good central location from where we could explore the other cities. None of the towns here are particularly large, but they all have winding streets, narrow alleys, great sea views, and multiple gelato shops. Bellagio was probably the best of them, and when you add in the fact that our hotel had a ridiculously great roofdeck, and nobody else really went up on it, then you have a recipe for awesomeness. Yes, that is a word – I believe it’s derived from a Latin word meaning "total sweetness". Anyway - we spent pretty much every day walking around doing stuff, coming back and resting, having some Prosecco on the roofdeck, going out to dinner, then coming back and having more Prosecco on the roofdeck. Not sure there’s a better way to spend a day, really.

Once again, we want to thank Colleen and Mark for visiting; we really had a lot of fun traveling with them, and it’s great to see familiar faces in an environment so far removed from where you’re used to seeing them. The only downside was that Colleen couldn’t back up her gelato trash-talking. She was all like "I can eat gelato 4 times a day", but in reality, it was only 3 times a day. Weak!

Next weekend: Stuttgart, Germany!

Burgundy Deux

First off, we want to say thank you to Mark and Colleen for taking their hard-earned vacation to come and visit! As Mark stated, he did this solely "to make the blog", and as such I will give him the honor of being mentioned. "Mark Nester". There you go, Mark – you can now rest as a happy man!

All joking aside, it’s great to have friends along in your travels, as it makes the experiences that much better. This weekend, we went to Burgundy, France, for another shot at tasting some of the greatest wines the world has to offer. We started Friday with the whites of Chassagne-Montrachet and moved north through Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault. In Burgundy, the wine tastings are hit or miss – it’s not like California where you have a big tasting room, tons of people crowded in, etc. Burgundy is still a land of farmers, and regarding the wines, they have no problems whatsoever selling everything they produce. As such, the consumer is not particularly needed, which as a consumer can be annoying, but when you break it down into simple economics, you can’t worry too much about it.

Anyway, so our first tasting was pretty good, and we bought a couple bottles. The next tasting was disastrous, as the lady basically wanted us to just leave, which we quickly did. The final tasting, after enjoying one of the best lunches I’ve ever had, was conducted entirely in French (which I understood about three-quarters of) with one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. We bought a bunch of bottles there, which just goes to show you the importance of a good salesperson. Her name was Chantel, and she has now made the blog also. On another note, we ran into Chantel the next day in the market, and she came up and said hi to us and talked for a minute or two (in French). Kind of funny, and it’s one of those little, nice experiences that makes traveling fun.

That night, we stayed in Beaune, a walled medieval city that is fun to walk around, although I wouldn’t recommend driving 3+ hours just to see it. It’s pretty cool though. Anyway – we hit a wine tasting there before dinner that boasted 15 Burgundian wines, which after a day of constant tasting, turned out to be quite a bit; in all, we tasted 32 wines that day, which will probably go down as my all-time record. Also of note is that fact that every single one of the 32 would be a $20+ bottle in the states (and some of them would push triple digits), so if that isn’t a crash-course in fine wine knowledge, then nothing is.

The next day, we hit red Burgundy country. We drove through a couple of the villages, stopped on the hillside holding some of the most expensive vineyards in the world (the grand crus of Corton), and ended the afternoon at one of the more authentic caves we could have imagined. Due to insider knowledge that Colleen was able to procure, we were welcomed into the "caveau" of one of Vosne-Romanee’s producers, where we tasted a handful of their best wines. Of course, we bought even more wine from here, which at this point was just getting silly.

After that, we dropped Colleen and Mark off at the train station in Dijon. No, we didn’t tour a mustard factory, although that would have been a great idea. While they headed to Paris for the rest of the weekend, Soph and I decided to explore the Burgundian countryside. And can I just say, as far as countrysides go, there can’t be many that are more beautiful than Burgundy? Rolling hills, green fields, medieval towns…really cool stuff. We hit a couple of old towns that were literally in the middle of nowhere, completely forgotten by time and off the beaten track. It boggles the mind that some of these places exist, and that hardly anybody goes to see them. Sure, they don’t have stores or tourist shops or the cutesy things that draw people in – rather, they are desolate, untouched, sometimes downtrodden, but completely authentic. The one town had a number of buildings you could tell had no inhabitants, but the stone houses and streets held up well, still in the same state they were hundreds of years ago. The only downside to these towns is that they are clearly inhabited by zombies. In one situation, I tried to make Soph crawl down a zombie hole so I could get a picture, but she smartly declined. Regardless, the towns did have an eerie-ness you could feel on the wind, which I thought was cool, but Soph thought was, well, eerie.

So we drove all over the place, finally staying outside a town called Avallon, at an old Mill on a creek. I’ve decided I really like creeks; this one, in particular, was one of the best I’ve ever seen. The hotel was pretty sweet, once we navigated our way to it – don’t get me started on French country roads, or the one-lane stone-lined 50 mph streets that qualify for roads there. Anyway, we had a great dinner, even considering they served some milk-like substance as an aperitif that neither Soph nor myself had any idea what we were supposed to do with (of course we ate it, but it was probably a sauce meant to go with the bread or something). In their defense, the escargot was amazing, so they can get away with serving all the random stuff they want outside of that.

Lastly, I think I’ve found my calling in life. No, I’m not going to be a circus clown – although their work/life balance is arguably better than mine. Rather, I’ve started my life of crime, specifically – smuggling! Yes, due to the fact that Mark and Colleen left their wine with us, and we also had quite a bit of wine ourselves, we were well over the limit of bottles of wine we were allowed to bring back into Switzerland. So, as we drove through the border, Soph put on her sunglasses and I put on my eyeglasses, as that was about the extent of a disguise we could come up with. And you know what? The border guards fell for it! So we got through without having to pay a huge fine, and now I’m thinking of making a career of this; armed with my glasses, I can’t be stopped! (I’m totally getting stopped next time for saying this, by the way…)

Here is the link to all the pictures: http://www.flickr.com/gp/14460611@N03/1S9PP4

Next weekend: Lake Como!

Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre…if you’re into beautiful natural scenery, the sea, mountains, great food, hiking, cute towns, and basically just enjoying life, then it doesn’t get much better than this. Cinque Terre is a series of five cliffside villages in Italy – and when I say "cliffside", I mean "hanging on the edge of a cliff". Each village is essentially built into the side of a mountain, dangling precariously over the Mediterranean, making them almost inaccessible by land, and almost as hard to get to by water. Between the separate villages runs a series of hiking trails that have the sea on one side, and steep hillside vineyards on the other, making for amazing views the entire way. However, Cinque Terre has so much more…

"When life gives you a lemon grove, make limoncello." Can I just say how utterly amazing the lemons were? Easily, the best lemons ever. And I don’t just throw around the "best lemons ever" title. In the same vein, all the food was amazing. First, you’re in Italy, so the pasta is, by default, really good. Then, you’ve got the pesto, which Liguria is world-renowned for. (Note: due to the famous-ness of Ligurian pesto, I risked life and limb to eat it, as one of the key ingredients are pine nuts. After some scientifically-monitored taste-tests prior to the trip, I determined I am not, in fact, allergic to pine nuts, and can eat pesto without abandon...which I did…but that’s another story.) Lastly, the seafood is all freshly caught, a fact Sophia used as a reason to order it for every dish. The verdict? Unbelievable food, for 4 days.

How do you get to Cinque Terre? For us, we took the train. Yes, it was a 9+ hour trip, but we left at like six-something in the morning, so the first few hours don’t really count. Besides, train rides really aren’t that bad. Training through Switzerland is almost a vacation in and of itself, as you pass through great mountain views and some cute little podunk Swiss villages, not to mention the Italian part of the trip, which is basically a trip through beautiful lakes and insanely green fields. For some reason, the greens in Italy are simply more green than they are anywhere else – not sure how else to explain it. Anyway, we took some cheese, a bottle of wine, some dried meats and fresh bread, and not only had a pretty easy train ride, but an enjoyable lunch as well. You just can’t do that on an airplane…

As this was our first trip to Italy, we had to brush up on some Italian before arriving. Once again, I lament the fact we’re learning French, rather than a cool language like Italian or Spanish or even Slovenian. I think after spending four days in Italy, my Italian is already better than my French, of which I’ve been attempting for eight months now. Seriously – it’s so much easier! Anyway, it was actually fun butchering Italian, and I think we did okay with it.

If there is any downside to Cinque Terre, it’s the sickening amount of tourists that go there. Yes, we’re tourists, I get the point, but there’s a difference. When it’s us, it’s cool. When it’s other people, it sucks. I know it’s a double standard, and I fully embrace the fact that I am flaunting it so openly. However, the fact is, there are a lot of tourists that hit up the towns here, and they all suck. Except for us. That being said, the reason this is a problem is because the towns are insanely small to begin with. We’re talking one main street that goes for maybe two, three blocks, and that’s it. That’s part of the appeal – that you have this really small town, in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, when it’s crowded with hundreds of people, it loses that small town appeal. The bright side? Most tourists don’t come out in the mornings or at night, so if you’re up early, you see the locals, and if you’re up later, you see nobody.

Lastly, there’s the hiking. Hiking here is, simply, extraordinary. Of the four paths, two are extremely easy and very beautiful, and give everyone the chance to see some amazing sea views and vistas of the towns in the distance. The other two are winding and challenging, allowing you not only the amazing sea views and towns, but hills and valleys, creeks, old forgotten walled gardens, olive groves, hillside vineyards, a huge amount of varied vegetation, odd rock formations, and all sorts of cool stuff. The other great thing about the hikes is that you get to explore the towns in between, meaning you can rest and, in our case, get a gelato and / or lunch, before moving on to the next hike.

Which town was our favorite? Hard to say. We stayed in Vernazza, and therefore got to explore it the most, so in the end we probably liked it best. It was just the right size, meaning it had two gelato places, four or so restaurants, a plethora of winding alleyways, and you could explore it multiple times without getting bored. We also liked Corniglia, although its appeal is due to the fact that hardly anybody goes there (tourists shy away because of a 300+ step climb from the train station, and the only other way to reach it is by hike). Corniglia has that quiet air about it that makes you really feel like you’ve gotten away, which is nice. Monterosa is the main town, and while it has the best shops, it’s completely overrun by tourists at any time of day, which makes it feel like more of a spectacle than a vacation. Lastly, Riomaggiore and Mannarola are both small little towns that probably have a little too much tourism, and not quite enough room. However, they both have spectacular views, and once you get into the hills behind the town, there is good casual walking to be done, and some of the best gardens and terraces you’ll find anywhere.

One last thing about Cinque Terre; parsley grows wild here. That is, you know how if you look at the cracks in cement, or stairs, and sometimes there will be a weed growing out of it? Yeah, in Cinque Terre, that weed is parsley. No joke – it’s definitely parsley. How ridiculously awesome is life when, if you want to add a little flavoring to your latest meal, you just go out and pick the weeds, and put them on your food? It doesn’t get much better than that…

Link to pics: http://www.flickr.com/gp/14460611@N03/4DP99W

Next weekend: Burgundy + Visitors Deux