CHEESE AND CHOCOLATE LAND

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SO much to update and struggling with a keyboard where all the letters are in the wrong place!!!!

On Thursday last week? I bid a fond farewell to my lifestyle of sun and drinks in malaysia to make the long slog to Europe. 3 planes and 15 hours later I landed in Basel, Switerland. After a short bus ride into the city? I was gleefully met by my friend Rosie atthe train station ( I stayed with her and her brother in england last year in Bournemouth)? so almost a year to the date I was on her doorstep again with a smile. Lord only knows how I made it through the day, zith time changes, I had effectively been awake since 3am. Rosie went back to work, and I set about checking out Bsel, which is located on the rhine river, and borders Gerany and France. Beautiful weather and wearing long pants bought out a nasty case of prickly heat - not the start I was looking for!! Thqt night several of Rosie's friends came around for a bbq - many drinks of champagne and beer (and awake for 24hours) later, it was decided that we would hit the red bar in town........

hmmmmmm now on the door they told us it was a special event night, heading in eagerly thinking nothing buta hot european dj or something - we discovered it was effectively a porno night!!!!! And not your funny stuff, but full on graphic - Rosie and I struggled with the memories for days!!!!

With a lazy Saturday around Basel (with hangovers and jet lag), we woke bright eyed and bushy tailed - jumped on a train at 8am with the intention of Interlaken in the swiss alps. once there we headed off for the Lauterbrunnen valley. To say that this area of the world is nothing short of spectacular, is probably to underrate it's natural beauty. Ready for so,e walking, we thought we were very smart aiming to walk from Lauterbrunnen to a town called Wegen. Bright, very bright - in a walk that is supposed to only take 1.5 hours, we took just over 2 - but the thing was, it was relentlessly up on an acute angle the whole way. And no I'm not just whinging at some hard effort, we are talking we rose over 2,000 ft on our climb!!!!!!! But a, ever so pleased to say that we discovered the ,ost

beautiful swiss alpine town at the top - Wengen, which offers the most spectacular views of the alps when theclouds clear. Hard work done, and lunch devoured, we then preceeded to head to the pub for a couple of hours ;) Several hours later, we thought it may be safer for us to catch the train down the mountain - for altitude reasons hehehehehe :)

Monday and Rosie was back at work, I finally caught up on some sleep, then headed into Basel to check out the Tutankahmen exhibit, this is only the 3rd ti,e ever in history that the exhibit has left Egypt. Truely fascinating, abliet way too many people and school children. That night headed back, and Rosie and I went around to her friend Emma's to watch England defeat Croatia in the Euro 2004 game - think I could get used to liking football! Tuesday was another busy day, rose to jump on a train to visit Solothurn, a small town approx 1hr from basel. It had the most gorgeous old town, with so,ething like 11 brighlty coloured fountains withini the small city walls. Weather not being on my side I headed back to Basel to check out one of the multiude of amazing musuems - and in all seriousness the best one in town is called the Kunstmusuem - you can only amagine ,y childish delight at that!!!!! Simply amazing though - filled with beautiful paintings from van gough, renior, matisse, picasso, monet, pollock, warhol, cezanne - oh the list just goes on.....

So where do I find myself today? Well bonjour mon amies -  I am in France, in a town called Strasbourg in the Alsace region. Ahhhh there is not enough words to wax lyrical on how lovely it is here. Beautiful, French, trés old with lovely half timbered buildings. Have spent my day walking around, viewing the spectacular cathederal, eating in the town square and visiting an area called petite france - where the quaintness, and richness of bequty and age on seem amplified!

Tommorrow I am off to Vienna, where hopefully e-mail access is a little more prevalent and I can reply to you all individually ;)

Au revoir mon petite belles! 

 

 

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