Marathon!

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Hi Everyone.

Anne and I have been mostly working on the house, with a few jaunts around Bulgaria as breaks (Borovetz, Sozopol - The Black Sea Coast, Sofia), but recently I have been training for the Paris Marathon, and when the time came to compete, we decided to take a few weeks out to travel to a couple of our favorite places, as well as a few new ones.

The Marathon was great, but there were so many people competing, it felt like there was a Mall of people around me the whole time. I just missed out on my target (3:20) with 3 hours 22 minutes, I was still happy to beat my personal best by 15 minutes. If I can shave 15 minutes off every 6 months, this means I will be beating the Kenyans in 2012, and be the first man to get a sub 2:00. :-)

We spent about 4 days in Paris, enjoying some of the foods we missed out on (mostly Asian). Who goes to France to eat Asian? Those people who can't get it in their own country! When not eating or running, we spent the time doing the general touristy stuff - Louvre, Eiffel, etc...

We picked up rental and made our way to Interlaken, Switzerland. This place is squeezed tightly in the Alps, with formidable mountains on every side. The weather was great, and we enjoyed every minute. With Switzerland not part of the Euro, we found it to be vastly cheaper than France. Who'd have thunk it? Not only that, but the Swiss are so hospitable.

The mountains seemed far steeper than those of Fernie. Ascending these things would be a far more technical challenge than just hiking. I guess Clint Eastwood made that point when he did 'The Eiger Sanction'. In every direction are lifts to take you to the many plateau's above, and whenever you looked up, you always could see a few paragliders descending.

From here we meandered our way to Italy and the Famous Lake Como. It was busy as hell, but beautiful also. We travelled a bit further up the lake to enjoy Bellagio, which is a must-see if anyone is in the area. Italy is kinda backwards in terms of technology (at least from an internet perspective), and we were without it for a week. What a blessing. It's nice to be without it sometimes. From here we needed to go back to france and return the car, so we picked our favorite destination, Annecy. This place is just so gorgeous. I'd love to spend a year or so here. Mountains, Lakes, designated running/cycling tracks. Great food. It has it all!

After a few days, we caught the train to Milan, and commuted our way back to Bulgaria.

Since it's so much easier to deposit photos in Picasa, I have provided the links to the photos below:

Paris and Switzerland

Grindewald, Switzerland

Lake Como and Bellagio

Annecy

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