Prolays

I'm having difficulty deciding whether I love it here more in the Spring or the Winter. We've been out walking every day of every weekend and never walked the same path or even the same valley twice.

This last weekend, on a rainy Sunday, we headed up to Lindarets which surprisingly is now a goat village with actual goats in it rather than a ski village. After waiting for the goats to decide that they were smaller than the Touareg we parked near the top of the Ardent bubble (which is being dismantled and replaced this year) and walked up the path that you can see in the winter from the Lechere chairlift.

This is Prolays now.




After marvelling at the most impressively powerful display of melting snow and heavy rain down an amazing series of waterfalls we walked back down the famous Prolays blue run. There's still snow on it and I tried some sandal skiing which is great fun until you get ice between your bare foot and the base of the sandal after which point it becomes unbelievably painful and you have to hop around like an idiot trying to dislodge the ice while your wife laughs at you. Then again skiing wearing sandals might be considered idiotic by some in the first place.

Intrepid

This awesome photo was taken on my iPhone a couple of weeks ago. It features my beautiful wife looking intrepid and atmospheric on the Arete des Intrets.

Working in Geneva

Is really not so bad.




Some of the time, anyway... However, I don't remember being able to do this during my lunch break in London. My commute has come down to 1 hour 15 minutes now that all the skiers have gone home. It's a long way but it's definitely worth it to live where we do.

The dude in the photo is my work buddy Aurelien who gives up a lot of his lunch-break time to teach me French. Carrément!

Interestingly, the bike he's riding is freely handed out by the City of Geneva to get people active, encourage tourism, and also provide work to asylum seekers. What a brilliant scheme!

In other news I've discovered the best way to learn French is to read the original Tintin comics in the original French. Mille sabords! Did you know that Snowy is really Milou? And that Calculus is really Tournesol? Weirdly Captain Haddock's name stays the same - not very French.