Chasing Tulips Across the Netherlands
Despite my mixed feelings about the season of winter (as I’m sure you can understand, given my very sunny California upbringing), the one undeniable benefit of a wintery winter is the joy that comes with the arrival of spring. The effect the return of color to the world can have on a person after months of living in a world whose primary color palette is gray is quite remarkable. This year, we decided to go…
Setting Sail for France
With all of the frolicking we’ve done around Lake Geneva, we were shocked to realize that we hadn’t made use of its extensive network of boat routes to get around the region. And, given that a beautiful scenic cruise across the lake costs the price of public transportation, it’s the best ticket in town! We started our day with an early-morning wake-up call to hop over to Nyon, Geneva’s next-door neighbor and a beautiful historic…
From Bergen to Oslo on One of the World’s Most Beautiful Journeys
Back in one of our favorite countries, Norway, we used trains, buses, boats, and our feet to make our way from Bergen to Oslo on a route that is often listed as one of the most beautiful in the world. We laced up our boots, threw on our backpacks, and hit the road across southern Norway. We had a day to enjoy Bergen before embarking on our trip, and we loved every square inch of…
Chasing Alpine Views
The theme of our winter so far has been the pursuit of Alpine wonderfulness. And in the Alps, there is no shortage of wonderfulness to be found. In fact, we can sometimes be so spoiled for choice in Switzerland, with its 48 peaks over 4,000 meters and unlimited opportunities for outdoor fun, that deciding where to go and what to do can be overwhelming (not a bad problem to have, I can assure you!). Over…
Strolling the Canals of the Venice of the Alps
At only an hour away from Geneva, Annecy, France, has been somewhere we’ve been meaning to visit for a long time, and we finally made it to perhaps one of the prettiest towns ever recently. Often called the “Venice of the Alps” for the canals that run through town, Annecy sits on the edge of Lake Annecy, considered the cleanest lake in all of Europe. The pastel-hued medieval architecture, when combined with the clear turquoise…
Wintry Fun in Wales
With a sigh of relief from us, in December the accelerators at CERN finally took a break and Kurt ended his final shift after nine months of 24-hour shift schedules. So, with only three hours of sleep separating Kurt’s final data-taking and our flight taking off, we hopped across the English Channel for a few days of fun in Wales and England. The reason for our trip was a meeting that Kurt had at Swansea…
Arctic Bucket-Listing: Norway Part 2
The second leg of our trip to Norway took us further into the interior of northern Norway. We set our sights on Camp Tamok, a couple of hours inland from Tromso. Once again, the car ride out to Camp Tamok was a sightseeing trip in and of itself, full of fjord and mountain views—at least until the snow started. And never stopped. I will forever be impressed with our driver for navigating the rural roads…
Returning to my motherland: Norway Part 1
Of the amazing trips we have been lucky enough to take over the years, Norway in winter may tie for the top spot of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. This is evidenced by the 3,000 pictures I have spent the past few weeks parsing through. Not only is it a spectacular destination in its own right, but it also felt extra special to visit the country that I owe significant portions of my heritage to. Kurt even commented,…
Gruyères. The place, not the cheese. But also the cheese.
A few things come to mind when thinking about Switzerland. Snow-capped mountains. Beautiful towns. Cheese. Chocolate. Gorgeous countrysides. Medieval architecture. It’s pretty amazing, then, when one destination combines all of the above in one fabulous package. That is exactly what we were met with when we arrived in the town of Gruyères, a two-hour train ride from Geneva in the beautiful Swiss countryside. It is a quintessential castle town, with the 13th-century Château de Gruyères…
A Swiss Holiday
We just arrived back in Switzerland after a month of being back in the States to our apartment still decorated for Christmas, which had me reminiscing about our Swiss holiday fun. While some holiday festivities were still canceled this year (sadly, we still haven’t been able to experience the 1602 dress, parades, and cauldron-crushing of the L’Escalade festival), this year we were so excited to prance around some of Switzerland’s Christmas markets. I just love…
Venice Part 2: History and Heat
We had a historic theme for our third day in Venice. After more croissants and cappuccinos, we headed across our little bridge into Piazza San Marco and stopped by the Museo Correr for a little Venetian history. Lots of sculptures, paintings of naval battles, weapons, manuscripts, and decorative rooms ranging from the time of the Venetian Republic to the later Napoleonic and Hapsburg reins, we headed out for some fresh air and new scenery. We…
Falling in Love with Venice
It’s hard to know where to even start with Venice. The extra excitement of this being our first trip across borders as Europe relaxed some of its restrictions this summer notwithstanding, we had a magical time in Venice. I fell in love with this city, which is at once magnificent and crumbling, opulent and decaying. Nothing happens in a straight line in Venice—not the alleys, or the canals, or the bridges, or even the towers…
Traveling in Time in Fribourg
So far, we have experienced incredible architecture in Switzerland, mostly in the grandiose and ornate buildings of La Belle Époque or the picturesque rural homes of the Swiss chalet style, with small pockets of preserved medieval architecture in the vieilles villes, or old towns, of cities. It was an unexpected treat then to find the city of Fribourg and dive into a whole weekend of medieval fun! Located on the verdant Swiss Plateau along the…
A Year in the Life
It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since Kurt found out that he was chosen for a post-doc opportunity at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. I find myself reflecting on the past year and all that has happened and marveling at the number of life changes and challenges we have faced. After he was informed of the job opportunity, we had 48 hours to decide whether we were going to uproot every aspect…
In Pursuit of Flowers
A popular phrase here right now is La Neige de Mai, or the May Snow. Now this is a type of snow I can get behind, as it’s not frozen water that is currently blanketing the mountain meadows, but white narcisses, or daffodils. Such a sight was worth a muddy, rainy, and foggy trek into the Prealps above Montreux. We started in the mountain town of Les Avants and, just like every hike we do,…
Fun Times in France
In the midst of the whirlwind of moving, apartment searching, and the never-ending bureaucratic nightmare that is living as expats in Switzerland, we managed to make the most of our few weeks of living in France. Kurt gets all of the credit here; I think he got tired of looking at my frazzled face and ordered us to the mountains. Since our little French town of Prévessin-Moëns sits in the shadow of the Jura, exploring…
Bienvenue en France! Welcome to France!
Our latest Geneva adventure has been a two-month saga in apartment hunting, which we had no idea could possibly be so complicated! With our new apartment not ready for a few weeks (one of the important lessons of Geneva rental practices: there are only two days per month on which a lease can begin—the first and the fifteenth—which is not very helpful when your current lease ends on neither the first nor the fifteenth), we…
Signs of Spring in Montreux
With temperatures hanging out in the 50s and even—gasp!—approaching 60 °F for the first time in months, it felt like time for a celebration! That’s not to say that I dislike winter; I actually really do like winter. But there is something indescribable about that first consciousness of slightly longer days, air temperatures that lack a wintery edge, extra noise in the air as birds chirp all day long, and the barely perceptible drawing-out of…
Wintry Wanderwegs in Interlaken
I am currently obsessed with the word wanderweg, which is German for hiking trail. Wanderweg seems to capture the magic of hiking so much better than our very functional “hiking trail.” I just love the cognate wander, and wander was exactly what we did on our trip to Interlaken, in the Bernese Oberland. As one may infer from its name, Interlaken is a town situated between two lakes, Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, and surrounded…
Our First Nöel
Learning Swiss holiday traditions during our first Christmas in Geneva The entire holiday season is one of my favorite times of the year, and as Kurt (sometimes exasperatedly) will tell you, I am a sucker for all things seasonal. Our first Christmas in Switzerland was the perfect opportunity to be immersed in a new set of traditions and I have had so much fun researching, learning, and celebrating all things Swiss the last month. Of…
The Mountains Are Calling (Part 2)
I have to write a second post for our trip to Lauterbrunnen because there was just way too much packed into 48 hours for one post! Day 2 in Lauterbrunnen dawned cloudy and rainy, making us thank our lucky stars that we had our mountain fun yesterday when we had great views. Waterfalls hurtling over the edges of cliffs look just as impressive with tendrils of clouds creeping down the mountainsides, so we were perfectly…
The Mountains Are Calling (Part 1)
The only way to decide where to go first when you have an entire country to explore is to take your travel book, close your eyes, flip to a page, and go! In our case, our chosen first weekend adventure in our new country was Lauterbrunnen, located in the Bernese Oberland, nestled in a glacial valley surrounded by alpine peaks. Sounds great! Kurt has been working late and overnight shifts at work, so true to…
Freedom!
Being able to walk out my front door never felt so good. What a tease, to move to a fabulous new place just to have to stay inside for the first two weeks! The only thing that got us through was the incredible view of Mont Blanc and the French Alps out our windows. In fact, in our list of things we did each day, there are solid blocks of time devoted to “staring at…
And so the adventure begins!
And we are off! For the next couple of years, Kurt and I get to live the expat life in Geneva, Switzerland while Kurt works on his post-doc at CERN, an international laboratory in Geneva. Most of the subject matter of his work goes way over my head, but when he uses terms like “antimatter” and “lasers,” it sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. What is so exciting is the opportunity to run around…
On A Grand Tour 