alpine hiking

As my first visitor arrives at the end of June, I'm also planning for my first sibling arrival. My eldest brother is heading out here with his partner at the end of August. He thought that he already made enough frequent trips to London and wants to limit his time here so we have opted to meet a different European location so we both get to see something new.... and what was decided? SWITZERLAND. Instead of doing the typical city break - we're renting a car and driving from Bern to Interlaken then Lucerne and back. This way we'll get the most out of the verniculars (gondolas) and gorgeous swiss alps that we can. Hiking here I come!.. and maybe some glacier swimming.......

Planes, trains.... and boats

Seriously, I had to book my Christmas flight already. It was a bit hurting to book a two round trip flights to the West Coast in late May for December. However, as L2 and I realized flights are beyond expensive when travelling into Canada we opted to fly into Seattle instead. Due to the Canadian almost monopoly on air travel it was going to be over £700 a piece round trip to fly into Van and back. Instead to fly into Seattle it is under £850 for the two of us round trip. A steal we couldn't pass up! After we just have a two-hour boat ride to my folks through Puget Sound. And then after we plan on heading to Vancouver and taking the five hour train ride back to Seattle... I'm not sure that it will be visually appealing but price wise it was perfect.

L2 has never been to Seattle and I barely remember it so we figure it's a little adventure before two weeks of family time! We may book our hotel soon as well so if anyone has any suggestions....

Steely Serrara

L2 and I wandered across Pont Alexandre to a large glass museum because he had hunch that a large steel art installation was inside. His dad was convinced that it was just some old-timey pics and they went home. However, they missed out and L2 and I paid our €2 to see the craziest steel I've known. There are 5 large (so large) steel structures in this fully glass museum. It's very empty inside and you just got this amazing sense of spaciousness and enormity around you and how small you really were. Definitely worth it.I could barely grip the steel with my hand (this is just one solid piece!) and the height is more fantastic.

That very thing in the distance is one. See how thin it looks from a distance - but the height is overwhelming. The crazy thing is - it didn't even remotely touch the top.

The artist is Richard Serra and he has another work in the Louvre gardens called Clara Clara.

crawling through the catacombs

L2 and I wandered under Paris for a ridiculous amount of kilometres under the streets of Paris. We decided a must-do this time around was to go to the Catacombs thanks to a facebook album on just that. Apparently facebook is making my travel itinerary now. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Besides the creepiness of making skulls and bones art, the catacombs history is remarkable. Built due to overcrowding of the cemetaries and subsequent disease to the living - the catacombs were inititally a large underground dumping ground. Later on, it was decided to properly order the bones and therefore 'art' was born. Initially, the ossuary was a mine and that was unbelievably obvious. However, my favourite tidbit was that even the French revolution fought that deep underground. I'm sure many got lost despite the lines on the ceiling leading you out!