Lucerne: unfinished business
Having soaked in an extended culture bath in Bern for most of the morning we finally set off just before lunchtime in bright sunshine.
The clouds have lifted and you can actually see the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau very clearly in the distance.
Our destination for today is Feldkirch, our first Austrian stopover, just on the other side of the border from Liechtenstein. It’s only 270km away but we want to stop in Lucerne, which Dr K says has “some good art collections”. Continue reading “Lucerne: unfinished business”
Bern: going green
Dr K can be utterly shameless. And Godfather P is no better. No sooner have I bought our tickets for the permanent collection at Bern’s national museum that they’re off. Off to the special exhibition, that is, which is not covered by said tickets and which requires a green badge rather than the blue badges we were given.
Continue reading “Bern: going green”
Fribourg: it’s oh so quiet, but quite charming
Nothing can be quieter than a Sunday in Lausanne, we thought. Except a Monday, which in most parts of Western Europe can be just as quiet. Office workers and local authority staff are back at their desks but most shops are shut. And so it was in Fribourg, where we made a brief pit-stop to look at a few “good buildings”, to use Dr K’s parlance and have a bit of lunch on our way to Bern.
Continue reading “Fribourg: it’s oh so quiet, but quite charming”
Lausanne: no cheese for dinner
We have just finished our main course at Lausanne’s railway station restaurant and are pondering whether to have cheese or go straight to pudding. These are important questions for carefree travellers. I ask our sprightly waitress if we can see the dessert menu, or perhaps have some cheese first. “We don’t have cheese at the end of a meal in Switzerland, but I can arrange for a selection of cheeses for you if you would like,” she replies. Behind her polite smile I reckon she secretly wants us to be sent straight to a Swiss rehab dairy and be reformed in the proper cheese ways. For a split second we feel culturally inadequate but we get over it soon enough thanks to a crème brûlée.
Ravens and diabolos in Annecy
With its lakeside location, picturesque old town and pretty canals, Annecy has undeniable charm, even on a muggy summer’s day – and that’s before we walk, by chance, into a delightful exhibition on ravens.
Cluny: conjuring up lost worlds
It once stood to rival Rome as the largest centre of Christian influence in western Europe and seemed a fitting start to our Vienna road trip.
Yet, imagining what Cluny must have been like in the 11th century is challenging. The huge monastery, whose church was larger than Notre Dame in Paris, fell victim to the 1789 revolutionary zeal and was systematically dismantled and quarried in the early years of the 19th century.
Today there is hardly anything left of it. Wandering around the pretty town you see enough remnants of the old religious complex to get a sense of its importance, including the rows of romanesque houses built by the stonemasons employed to work on the monastery. Continue reading “Cluny: conjuring up lost worlds”
La Tourette, silence and peace
“This is a place of silence and peace”, says the sign as you enter La Tourette convent, Le Corbusier’s last major work in France. Quite what the party of 40 architecture students from Darmstadt, who are boisterously pouring out of their tour bus, will make of that remains to be seen. Or how they will comply with the instructions pinned on the back of the bedroom doors not to congregate, eat or drink in the ‘cells’.
Early spring at Le Monal
In peak winter season Le Monal is a favourite destination for backcountry skiers in the Tarentaise area. Skinning up to the Unesco-listed hamlet you get breathtaking views over the glaciers on the Mont Pourri on the other side of the Isere valley. The site is also awash with walkers in the summer months thanks in part to the ease with which it can be accessed; a pleasant hike from the Echaillon parking area in Sainte Foy at 1500m, along a gently sloping path to reach the 1874m settlement. Even senior folk such as Godfather P can undertake it strain free. And the likes of Dr K can be lured aboard with promises of rural baroque chapels – even though most of them are shut or their pretty altars visible only from behind bars. Continue reading “Early spring at Le Monal”
Vallonnets, 4 May 2014
The last day of the ski season in Val d’Isere was a blissful, sun-kissed affair, with a couple of runs down the Vallonnets, a skim over the Combe du Signal, and an unmissable foray into Pays Desert once again. All under Chris’s masterful stewardship. Continue reading “Vallonnets, 4 May 2014”
Vallonnets, 1 May 2014
Fabulous morning’s skiing which started off in the Pays Desert before heading east to a remarkably little tracked Vallonnets area on the other side of the Signal. Continue reading “Vallonnets, 1 May 2014”
GILG GARDEN DESIGN 