Inter Hotel Rey Annemasse

... I went to a UNRISD conference about the Crisis and Development at the UN. <br>On Saturday I leave for Croatia. Wow. I thought I had all the time in the world, and now, I don't. I'm trying to squeeze in a day trip to Zurich on Wednesday, but then my time is over in the Schenegen zone. But, I still have 1.5 months left in Europe!<br>And that has kind of been my life for the last two weeks... until I went to Portugal (see next blog)<br> <br>

... the world. Some subjects were closer to home: the perils of driving in the snow during the Swiss winter, the relative merits of having one&#8217;s own fruit schnapps distilled, and the joys of gardening on which all my friends here agreed.<br><br>It was a wonderful meal and an exceptional evening. The Giauques having a two hour drive before them, left about 9:00 and that was the signal for others to begin leaving too. I will head to bed early again tonight.

At 10:00 the Air France flight took off for Geneva. By this time the sky was clear and we flew right over Paris. I would see the Arc de Triomphe, and the Dome of the Invalides very clearly. I could even pick out the street corner where one of my usual hotels is located. It was cloudy and clear in patches on the way to Switzerland. The Jura Mountains to the west of Geneva were clear, and lightly powdered with snow, as we descended. Lake Geneva (as we call it in English &#8211; the ...

Uninteresting day, finally escaped Mulhouse thought I would have to stay there forever ha ha. Got the train to Basel again then a coffee I needed the toilet so went off to find it taking only a small amount of swiss francs with me as we did not have many as we had not been in Switzerland. I only had 150 and the toilet was 2 so I spoke to the woman and she would not let ...

... I paid in cash every time I got gas. I filled up and<br>hoped that either Euros or dollars would work and fortunately the<br>attendant converted to euros and off I went to the airport to drop<br>off the car. When I approached the KLM check in area, I saw a group<br>of about 75 Asians in line for the flight to Amsterdam. Fortunately,<br>being a Platinum Elite I was able to walk right up to the Business<br>Class check in and in a matter of minutes I was on my way to ...

... up with Diane's mom Carol and brother Geoff! So it basically was Jon and I intruding on some Bell and Ring quality time, its was great, they treated us like we were their kids too =). We then took a water taxi by the famous Jet D'eau, went down by the "beach" and played some beer bocce in a park. We were invited to join ...

We sadly left Chamonix and vowed to return there in the winter, and drove to Annecy. Annecy was kind of a repeat of Prague, beautiful old city, on the water, with canals... we were kind of sick of that scene by then. They are applying to have the 2018 Olympics there, with the ski events at Mont Blanc. It would be a nice venue for sure.

... village is also home to Nestle. Now the fun starts...I spy some pairs of absolutely gorgeous white boots on the sale table outside the shop NZ$60! So I went in to try them on. Madame in the shop had no English and we had a rather funny encounter because I was wearing jeans that are narrow fitting around the leg, and these pull on boots would not easily go over the top of the jeans, nor could I pull the jeans up. So she was trying to explain ...

... sugar coated beaches and swam through the coolaid waters. The adults partied (more than us kids guessed, I am realizing from looking through photo albums) and the kids played, sang, bathed, swam and came up with plans for how to save the world, or at least for how to sneak cookies without our parents looking. It had been five years since I last saw any of the Goodman gang, and it was such a wonderful treat to see them again ...

... Rox and I decided to stay in Annemasse and plan our trip. We have decided to travel to Stuttgart, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Berlin and maybe Zurich. I am so excited as I've never been to any of these countries before. They all have an amazing history and are hopefully beautiful. So along with planning the logistics of the trip, as in ...