GO HERE NOW!!!

We are now officially residents of California. With all the privileges that entails, there is also the responsibility of...... making a new blog! Hehe. Can't guarantee it's quality, but at least one will be able to see how we're fairing!

I was going to do a sum up of La Suisse upon leaving, but I haven't gotten round to it yet. Maybe later. Suffice it to say, I still miss so much of that terribly foreign country. I must say, it's lovey to be back, though :)

PS- just in case, the new blog is fretfulporpentine.wordpress.com

Aletsch? I don't think so!

As some may know, we're leaving La Suisse at the start of June. Walter reallyreally wanted to see a glacier up close before we left... and before they're all completely gone. The big, cool one in Switzerland is the Aletsch Glacier in the beautiful region of Valais (mind you, they're all beautiful). We went last weekend to a chalet in Grafschaft with Kim, Christian and Loic for some glacier hunting and general RnR. In true Stockwell style (where have all the Swiss gone?) we visited in the lowest of the low season.... when everything is closed.... and it's warm, the snow is melting and there's mud everywhere. The upside was no annoying tourists! The downside was we didn't make it up to the glacier :( Christian made a bazillion phonecalls in a valiant effort to see if any gondolas were open, and discovered they were closed going up from the last villages to the glacier.

Thurs. PM- Mummy RnR

Wee boy RnR

This is typical of Valais. It's for grain storage, and we saw some dating back to the 1600s. Notice the big slabs of rock around the bottom? They stop vermin from crawling up to sample the delights. That was one of the views from the chalet.


Fri- A wee trip to the quaint Oberwald to find some sausage. This village has the distinction of being at the 'end of the road'. In the winter, the road to the pass closes till June. There's only one way in and out.
We took a wee walk up the local mountain. Our chalet somewhere down on the left. Notice the parking meter behind the bench? A funny addition that ate one of our francs.
Tromping up the hill. I didn't do much looking down- it got very steep, and the path got very thin.
Kim brought fixins for S'mores. mmmm the chalet had a nice BBQ pit.
Sunday- Getting close enough to the glacier to smell it.
This is the first gondola station up to Bettmeralp (car free village, where there is the last gondola to the glacier). We had to change to another to get there. The village is only 2km from the glacier.... through 6 ft slushy snow.. with no snow shoes.
Lucky for us it's a pretty village.... if a little closed that day (Sunday).
With beautiful views. We believe this could be the back of the Matterhorn.
There was the little matter of picnicing in this lovely area. We brought the picnic, but didn't really think of where to have it. The gondola station was the perfect place to spread out, and eat in style!
We tried to drive to another, smaller glacier, round some steep, hairy bends. At the 'end' of the road was a dirt track which (we were informed by some hikers) was covered in meters of snow. Lucky for us again the views were splendiferous. And I'm not just talking about Kim and Christian. harhar.
Finishing the day with a fondue.

More fun with names! Spotted on the way home.

So that was our last big Swiss trip, which rather sucks because this was going to be the year where we could enjoyably (for us and both boys) start taking trips. They're great little travellers now, which will come in handy for the coming *months* of homelessness. I'm not sure there will be much more posting as we're still getting the ducks in a row for the heave-ho!

Pru!!!

A loooong time ago, I graduated from university and decided to travel around the world while 'mulling over' the rest of my life. I decided to start in New York, and that was pretty much the only planning I had done. In the youth hostel, I met this English girl who told me she wanted to get a "drive-away" from NY to Las Vegas. She had found this other, Australian bloke in a hostel nearby who wanted in on it too. He found a couple of Swedish blokes to round it out to 5 of us, and off we went... in a Buick Regal.... with 5 very big rucksacks. I don't know if Drive-Aways are still done, but back then it was an unbelievably cheap way to travel (remember a gallon of gas for under a dollar?). We were given 7 days to get from NY to LA, so naturally we took turns and drove through the night to maximize days sightseeing. It was a brilliant intro to the U.S, especially with the company. We left the English girl in LasVegas, and carried on to LA, then up to SF (on the Green Tortoise) hehehe. She met us there a couple of weeks later, we took another Green Tortoise trip to Yosemite, and generally saw the sights of the Bay Area. The English girl decided to go to the Exploratorium one day, I had no idea what it was, but it sounded like fun.... I met a cute, brown eyed, long black haired American boy, who gave me his phone number. He told us to call him to come to a halloween party in Berkeley... we went to the Castro instead. I called him after that and we arranged to meet in Berkeley and he would show us around. We all enjoyed beer at Jupiter and some pool. The boy (Walter) took the English girl to her aunt's in Richmond. The rest is an exhilarating, marvelous history.

So the English girl is partly (Walter's late Aunt Mickey is the other part) responsible for US! Her name's Pru, and she made my trip across America super fun :) The next time we saw her was at our wedding. She was working in Australia, and had some business in LA at the same time! After that, she was traveling all over and we lost touch. Nearly 13 years later, she came to visit for a long weekend (from London where she has now put down some roots). We showed her some Suisse.

We took a ferry ride form Neuchatel to Morat (Murten), which took about 1.5 hours. Ohhh the weather we had... Made a contrast to the previous week's 6 inches of snow.

Pru and the wee boys. They had a great time with her. Allie asked Walter "How did you know which one to marry?"

On the canal between the Lac de Neuchatel and the Lac de Morat.

Final destination: Morat.

On the train home (that took 20 mins), we were all knackered and sunburned.

SNOW

One really must go to the snow in Switzerland, if possible. The weekend that Pru was here, the weather was doing its 'don't know whether it's winter or spring' thing. We had just had a bout of wintrishness, so we took her to Creux-de-Van, partly out of the vain hope that the metairie was open, and partly because we weren't sure any ski areas were open. Foolish us. There was a good couple of feet of pristine, untouched (mostly), delishushness. Below, on the way to the edge (see the post on Creux-de-Van in the summer).

Looking over the edge. Hard to tell where it ends in the snow.

Pru looks toward France.

Stop for lunch before the real work begins......

....the work of building snow centaurs! The snow was on the wetter side due to spring, so it made perfect snow balls. Walter would eventually be the only one with the strength to push the balls around!

Who knows what Allie's doing there. The boys spent a lot of time eating handfuls of snow. The poor centaur was destroyed in a bloody and fearsome snowball fight. He was replaced by the 'little people' standing gaurd over the fortress.

The lovely Pru enjoying homemade raclette after our adventure. She also got to enjoy a boozy fondue with us in Neuchatel. All bases covered ;)

We had a super time catching up. It certainly won't be another 13 years!

Fortee in Paree!

Walter turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. Fortuitously, he was traveling for work which ended in Paris. The boys and I took the TGV (hehe love saying that) to meet him after he was done. My parents even made it down from Scotland, and Meghan and Grace even popped by to celebrate.

First stop, the Eiffel Tower! The wee boys had a bee in their bonnet about going up it, so I made reservations at the restaurant 'Altitude 95' for a biffday lunch.

The Eiffel Tower is all the way over there???

The grassy wall on the way to the Eiffel Tower. Can't remember the museum, but it does smell fousty.

Parisiens may not wash their hands when they go to the loo, but they do make good nosh. Even the children's menu has nice salads. This restuarant (Altitude 95) was recommended as being child friendly, with a bit of a view and good, relatively inexpensive food. It's on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, so I made reservations and we went in the special "there's no line" line to get there, walking past hundreds of poor schmos.

!!!!BIFFDAY BOY!!!!!

After the feast, below the beast, with the BIFFDAY BOY!!!

NOT too chilly to relax at a roadside cafe.
If you look carefully at Toby, you'll see he's pulled up his trouser legs. He spent the better part of a day running around like that, holding onto his trouser legs. He was apparently too hot, unlike the rest of Paris.

the label on the gloves says.......

Now it's time for the "Things growing out of your head" series.

Rodin

A birthday trip to the Rodin museum. We made it only as far as the gardens, where the boys got to run around and we got to ponder just how melancholy Rodin was.
I couldn't pass up a different view of "the Thinker"
The last time Walter was in Paris, the glass pyramids at the Louvre weren't there!
The Tuillerie Gardens in front of the Louvre. Allie took maaaany pics of this spider. Bleurk.
Mother lion. Rooar!
!!!!HANDSOME BIFFDAY BOY!!!!

Mmmm Angelina's. The best place for Hot Chocolate in the whole wide world. And we've been around the block a few times hotchoc-wise. They even deigned to put us in the window. Fools.

Why Mummy, this cake is delish. I will certainly not smear it everywhere, then grab yours.

Why Mummy, these frys are delish. I will absolutely not drop my plate on the floor.

Ach, never mind kids, Mummy's high on hot chocolate.

Grace came a callin' with Foie Gras, champers and cake for Walter.

It was a lovely weekend: lovely to see Walter after him traveling for a week, lovely to see my parents, lovely to show the boys some cool Paris sights and especially lovely to celebrate Walter getting to the milestone of supreme cuteness!!!