Rotstockhütte Best Walk Ever!

We did a fantastic ridge walk called Rotstockhütte with views of Eiger and Jungfrau. This is best walk I have ever done and views are probably the best I have seen in the world. 

Piz Gloria (on top of Schilthorn left)

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Eiger, Monk and Jungfrau.

On top of the ridge wow. 

Running around Europe

I've been really enjoying my runs whilst we've been away, it's a great way of seeing places and you definitely get a different perspective on foot. It keeps me fit and gets some oxygen to the brain.

At the beginning of the trip we were by the coast so I mainly ran along beaches. At times I got quite a surprise as there are quite a few nudist beaches in Southern Spain. I got very good at hills as often the campsites are at the top of a very steep hill with fabulous views over the ocean.

Italy was probably the hardest place to run. Often there was no pavement, if there was a pavement the Italians have communal rubbish bins, (they do not have house to house refuse collection) and these bins are on the pavement. They're not emptied regularly enough so you have to run in the road around large piles of stinking rubbish and you've heard about Italian drivers!

Lofer in Austria was the best place to run. We were camped in the bottom of a U shaped valley so it was nice and flat (some of the hills have been just too steep to run up) and there were well marked running routes around the valley of a variety of lengths from 6 to 10km with distance posts every 500m.

Currently at Camping des Glaciers in Switzerland I'm doing altitude training as the campsite is at 1600m, you certainly feel the difference going up hills.

I've seen a lot of wildlife whilst out running including many birds of prey, deer, lizards, lots of beautiful butterflies as well as a stag.

Running around the valley in Lofer

Moleson with Ella, Charlie's friend from Kinder

Charlie's friend from Neighbourhood House, Ella and her family live around the corner from us in Melbourne have moved to Geneva for 2 years. They had rented a chalet with pool, sauna and wonderful views and invited us along for a night. Charlie and Ella had a great time playing and gave a number of 'Annie' shows. Moleson is a very pretty place, near Gruyeres where the cheese is made and there was a great alpine roller-coaster which everyone had fun on.

Geneva sounds like a terrific place to live, they had been going skiing every weekend until the end of May and of course Ella is learning French in school.

Charlie is 6 on Saturday so we took the opportunity to start birthday festivities early!

Let them eat cake!

Acrobatics in the pool

Another Day, Another Mountain

Yesterday after going to the music festival we decided it'd be a great idea to go to the top of Mont Fort (3330m) by cablecar where stunning views over the mountains including Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn were promised. Roger had not been this high since he climbed Mount Kinabalu with Rob Bruce in 2011 and wanted some altitude!  

In the Tourist Information booklet it said the cable car was between Verbier and another town, so we set off (in the car) to find it. The other town was 100km and 90 minutes away..... It turns out there was a cablecar network between these two towns and the cablecar to Mont Fort was part of this. We had driven around another mountain range needlessly! After our wild goose chase there wasn't time to go to the summit and it had clouded over but the nice lady in the ticket booth gave us free passes for today.

So this morning, with clear blue skies and now knowing where we were going we set off again. we took 5 different cablecars to get to the summit which was a lot of fun (especially the long chair lift). You could certainly feel the effects of the altitude and there was a lot of snow which pleased Alex and Charlie who of course had a snowball fight.

La Rampe is the orange slide to the left of the top station. It is a ski ramp at 60 degrees with the warning 'to be used by experienced skiiers only'(!) record speed 219kph!!

Question of the day: Which mountain are Toblerone bars modeled on?

At the top!

Panorama from the top

On the chairlift

The final cablecar (where Eagles dare)

Top station with 'La Rampe'

The Matterhorn

A St Bernard dog complete with brandy barrel

Verbier Festival

I first heard about the Verbier festival at a post concert talk by Steven Isserlis at the Melbourne Recital Centre he raved about making music in the Alps. So we decided to included it on our trip.
The Verbier festival is now 20 years old. It has grown from strength to strength and now there are a huge variety of free and ticketed events from morning til night. One of the philosophies is that renowned established musicians teach the next generation. Some musicians return year after year and collaborate in 'original chamber music'. There is also a huge program of jazz, children's and youth discovery, a Verbier Festival Orchestra, a 'music camp' for talented young musicians 15-17 years old, all in an idyllic setting in the heart of the Swiss Alps.

We wandered along to Verbier this morning and were lucky enough to catch one of the free concerts given by the Festival Academy. Breakfast of fresh pain du chocolat was laid on at the beginning which was particularly popular with the kids. It was a wonderful experience and a shame the kids attention span didn't allow us to see anymore! Also lots of Porsches, BMW's and Bentleys in evidence in this well healed Swiss town.

Camping des Glaciers, La Fouly, Switzerland

We invented a whole new navigational error today! The GPS behaved perfectly for once... usually "Daniel" our voice on the GPS doesn't know what he's talking about when we're towing the caravan. We navigated correctly to "Camping des Glaciers" but in the wrong country (France instead of Switzerland). Ridiculous you may say but the two campsites were only 9km apart (as the crow flies) at opposite ends of the glacier but 36km along a very twisty road.

Anyhow we eventually arrived at the correct campsite in the southwest corner of Switzerland, close to Mont Blanc (the highest mountain in western Europe at 4807m) and the French and Italian borders. The campsite is probably the most picturesque we've been to in a beautiful valley at the foot of the l'A Neuve glacier at an altitude of 1600m.

August 1st was also Swiss national day so there were Swiss flags everywhere and a party in the village with music and fireworks.

The boys went off and climbed one of the local peaks today Le Basset (2771m). They saw wild edelweiss which caused them to break into song! Charlie and Samantha enjoyed a donkey ride around the village.

View from our caravan, note our Swiss and Aussie flags.

l'A Neuve glacier

Edelweiss

View from the top, note our campsite bottom centre

Alex at the top of Le Basset

Donkey ride through La Fouly

BBQ at Lislott's place

Staschia's aunty Lislott kindly invited us to a BBQ at her house with Staschia's sister and her kids. The house and pool had wonderful views over the Swiss countryside and on clear days you can see over to the snow capped Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau.
The kids had a fantastic time playing and of course didn't want to leave.

We had wonderful hospitality and thank you all so much for showing us such a terrific time.

Sam loved the ducks

Pool with a view

Hunting for the boomerang!

Fun in the pool

View at sunset over to the Eiger,  Monch and Jungfrau

Bern, Switzerland

Staschia took us on a great tour of Bern (capital of Switzerland and where she grew up.) Unfortunately the weather was most inclement... see pics!!!

According to legend it's called Bern after the founding nobility went on a hunt. They were going to name the city after the first animal they saw, this turned out to be a mouse so they named it after the first animal they killed which was a bear. The bear is on the city's coat of arms and there have been records of bears being kept in Bern in the 'bear-pit' since the 1440's.

It has a wonderful medieval old town with covered arcades (luckily for us), the tallest cathedral in Switzerland with a beautiful carved door way covered in real gold leaf and the Zytglogge clock tower.

View of the city from the Rose Garden

Zytglogge tower

Carved doorway of the cathedral

The weather!!! Very heavy rain!

Biel/ Biene, Switzerland

We've moved onto our next country... Switzerland. We passed through the tiny (but very rich country of Lichtenstein) which is one of only two doubly land-locked countries in the world.

Our questions for you:-
(1) What does doubly land-locked mean?
(2) which is the other doubly land-locked country?

Answers on a postcard please to our caravan... 1st correct entry will get a very special prize!!

We're staying in Biel/ Biene on the Swiss plateau (this town is bi-lingual and has an official French and German name.) Our good friend Staschia who used to live in Melbourne but has now returned to her native Switzerland lives here and was our fantastic tour guide. It was markedly noticeable that Biel/ Biene was very multicultural compared to many other places we've visited. Switzerland has an 'open door' policy for refugees and there are over 140 different ethnic groups living in Biel/ Biene. Another interesting fact about Switzerland is that it has the 3rd highest gun ownership per capita in the world after the USA and Yemen.

Biel/ Biene has a very pretty old town with lots of cool bars, fantastic bakeries and funky shops. It's also home to the Rolex and Swatch factories. It's situated on a lake but unfortunately the weather wasn't kind enough for lake activities.

Old town with Staschia

Home of your new Rolex

Sunny meringue

Swiss choccy cake

Prices

So far we have been through 8 countries on our trip. Apart from the UK they have all shared the Euro as a common currency. This makes price comparisons between countries easy. In our opinion by far the most expensive country we have been to so far is Italy. Its not just that Italy is expensive on a  range of goods compared across Europe (see figure 1). Its the fact that for things that are typically free in other countries you have to pay for in Italy. An example of this is some waterfalls we visited in Riva Del Garda which were quite expensive (15 euros) for what they were. Italy also "felt wealthy." This is our opinion and purely anecdotal but there were expensive cars everywhere. This despite Italy having the highest fuel prices in Europe. This contrasted with Portugal where at times the motorways were eerily quiet with no traffic. We asked some locals about this and they said that some people could not afford to buy fuel anymore. The other ominous sign in Portugal was that the service stations had barriers preventing people from driving off without paying. We also spotted many abandoned residential building projects while traveling through Portugal.

We are now heading for the most expensive country in Europe, Switzerland so it will be interesting to compare it to Italy and others.

Figure 1 Cost of living Comparison.
Graph compares a range of goods and converts costs to euros for comparative purposes

Fuel prices across europe April 2013