Happy Paris!

Hello all,

We have arrived in Paris, yay! After some secret squirrel business involving key codes and safes we have settled into our lovely little apartment on Rue de Lappe in the 11th district. It seems to be a groovy little street full of bars, restaurants and little boutiques and is crawling with people. Happy we are...

To quickly recap the last few days:

Interlaken - no Jungfraujoch (that is the highest train station in Europe for those who wondered) for us as the weather was mostly terrible on the mountains and rainy in the town. Instead we soaked up the atmosphere, ate some lovely meals (I even tried white asparagus for the first time - YUM, and we had a cheese and mushroom fondue), drank lots of beer, visited the St Beatus Caves and Paul had "the best run ever".

After a lovely train trip through the alps to southern Switzerland we eventually arrived in Martigny, on the Swiss side of the French alps. Having enjoyed Chamonix so much on our last trip we had hoped it would be just as nice. Not so much. The hotel staff were awful so we quickly escaped to wander the town, see the Roman ampitheatre, spot some St Bernard dogs (this is the region they are from) and settled in at Cafe Barock, a local bar where the barman even gave us free drinks. Maybe he doesn't see many people drink 2L of beer each on a Thursday afternoon? Nicely sozzled, we then enjoyed quite a lovely Thai meal across the square before meandering back to the hotel. We had almost changed our mind about the town until we encountered the staff again at breakfast. Le sigh.

Happy to escape, the train trip north and then west to Geneva via Montreaux and Lausanne was beautiful. The views of the alps across Lake Geneva had me regretting we didn't stay in Montreaux afterall, or even longer in Interlaken as we most certainly could have done the Jungfraujoch on Friday. Geneva itself was lovely, we explored the old town and the lakefront for a few hours, had a coffee (and then a nap) before an early dinner in order to be well rested for our relatively early TGV ride to Paris.

We left Geneva to the hot air balloon festival and arrived in Paris early afternoon. Now it is time to explore the neighbourhood, and maybe further afar...

And tomorrow? It is Paris Marathon day so who knows what we will see?