Our decision to book a half-day wine tour in Chianti, Italy, was a very last-minute one: We originally signed up for a Sunday bike tour through Tuscany that included a visit to a castle and wine and olive oil tastings, but we cancelled once we found out it was going to be 99 degrees outside. Then Saturday, hanging out at a cafe in Pisa, my dad used the wifi to scout out other options and snagged us seats on a wine tour in — the top selling point — an air-conditioned van.
Last Tuesday was looking to be foggy and soggy, but my parents and I stuck with our plan to visit Montreux, Switzerland, to check out Château de Chillon and the city’s famous jazz festival. We took a late morning train around Lake Geneva and arrived in French-speaking Montreux an hour later, greeted by the patter of raindrops on the train windows.
Yes, yes, I’m still here — just extremely behind on logging my adventures after spending a wonderful two weeks with my family visiting from the states. FaceTime and Skype are great, but nothing beats actually having your favorite people right there in front of you, showing them around your new city, with a few fantastic trips thrown in for good measure. I’ll catch you guys up in reverse order since our most recent adventures are the freshest in my mind. First up: Burgundy!
Annecy is beautiful. I mean, everything we read said that it would be, but gosh, it’s a lovely town. Just an hour’s drive from Geneva, it was the perfect place to take my sister for a little taste of France during her visit from the states.
It seems as though summer has *finally* arrived in Switzerland, so Guillaume and I opted to stick close to home over the weekend and soak it in. We had a relaxing Saturday that started with homemade brunch (thanks Gui!) and then spent several hours checking out the “soldes” (sales) advertised in the windows of Geneva’s left bank shops. Turns out, those signs are no joke: The usual sky-high Swiss prices are delightfully low right now. Welcome, new 5-franc shirt from Zara!
With more sunshine predicted for Sunday, we decided to walk down to the train station the next morning and take the short journey around the top of Lake Geneva to Lausanne. Continue reading
Sunday was another early start because we wanted to arrive in Bonifacio with enough time for a boat tour of the chalky-white cliffs before the afternoon storms hit: We were up at 6am, in the car a little before 7am and pulling into Bonifacio just after 9am following another winding mountain drive. Gui had done some online research Saturday night and decided we should book a tour with SPMB, so we headed to the company’s kiosk to pick our route. After settling on option two, which included both the cliffs and the nearby Lavezzi Islands, we walked down to the docks to prepare (i.e. scarf down some croissants, buy bottles of water, use the restroom and stop at the pharmacy to get me sea sickness medicine). At 10:30am we were perched on the top deck of a boat headed out into the Mediterranean with a clear blue sky and sunshine overhead.
My husband the European history buff loves all things Napoleon, so when I spotted bargain plane tickets to Corsica on Thursday I took Easy Jet’s “only three seats left at this price” warning seriously: I confirmed the 24-hour free cancellation window in case Gui had a conflict, raced through the checkout process and had an email confirmation in my inbox a few minutes later. After work, Gui eagerly signed off on the flight times and early Saturday morning we were up and ready to go explore the French emperor’s birthplace. Just not early enough, it turned out…
Our first house guest arrived from London late Friday night with grand plans to spend the weekend hiking the nearby mountains and sailing Lake Geneva, but Saturday’s weather refused to cooperate (rain, rain and more rain). When we woke up Sunday to a forecast predicting a few dry hours, we shoved some breakfast down our throats, took a quick bus ride to the Swiss-French border and walked past the security hut into France. We arrived at the foot of Mont Salève a few minutes later, determined to get a hike in before the sky opened up again.
I have very vivid memories from the early 2000s of riding my silver compact scooter with lime green wheels around my grandparents’ palm tree-filled neighborhood in Florida. I had wanted a “Razor” – brands matter in your teens – but I still took enough pride in my off-brand scooter to bring it down to Florida to show off on our family vacation.
I’m a big planner, so my decision Friday afternoon to snatch up budget airline tickets to Barcelona for Saturday was about as spontaneous as I get. Guillaume and I had originally planned to spend the weekend in Marseilles but the French train strike quashed those dreams and we were looking at more rain after a very wet week if we stayed in Geneva. I started playing around with possible destinations on Kayak and eventually found tickets to Barcelona on Vueling for a pretty good price. “We may go to Barcelona,” I texted Gui around 2:30pm after he confirmed he was interested. “I will inform you after work.” By the time he got home, I had tickets and a hotel booked for our two-night stay, and had picked up a city map from the bookstore and withdrawn Euros for the trip. The next morning, we were off!
The Plaid Shirt Diaries 