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a snowy afternoon at château de chillon: a photo essay
When we arrived in Switzerland, the snowy mountains put us immediately into the holiday spirit–but Château de Chillon on Lake Geneva was the real kicker. We were told by one of our hostesses that Switzerland rarely sees this much snow in early December. Some seemed flustered by it all, but for us, it was a dream come true. This was our first view from the train, days before our close-up visit: Smitten. A few days later, we stepped off the train to a winter wonderland on Lake Geneva. The snow did what it does best — muffled everything except for…
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WTF is l’Escalade?: an anthropological study of genevan celebrations
When we chose Geneva as the homebase for our Swiss getaway, we got more than a few stares from those we told. Mrs. O Around the World even dared us to find a restaurant in the city that was open on Sunday. Nervously, we began our research on what we could see and do in Geneva in December and briefly came across something called Fête de l’Escalade. Buuuut then we got distracted by the Montreux Christmas Market and the snow forecast in Verbier and also our last-minute decision to extend our stay in Dublin and promptly stopped worrying about our…
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hostels & hotels & chalets, oh MY!
When we started planning our Swiss adventure, we had big dreams of snow-covered chalets and opulent apartments overlooking Lake Geneva. Because our itinerary had us going to a different city almost daily, we knew we would wind up covering all the accommodation bases. It wasn’t until we looked at our lodging options on paper that we realized: over the course of seven days, we stayed in four very different types of accommodations in each hub of our trip. Boutique Hotel: Hotel Ermitage Verbier Tourism graciously arranged for our first night’s stay, and this couldn’t have been a more perfect way to…
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swiss eats: plus de fromage, s’il vous plait!
One of our favorite and most anticipated parts of traveling is eating… obviously. Doesn’t that go for everyone? This was particularly true when we started to research Swiss eats. Prior to our trip, we had a pretty good idea of what to expect. Cheese, chocolate, more cheese, maybe some more chocolate, definitely more cheese. Though we certainly got our fill of both, we happily made a few additions to our list of Swiss staples. They can eat, that’s for sure. Raclette and Fondue! We were told by B&K that we had to try raclette long before we touched down in…
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four days in switzerland: an ode to the swiss rail
Back in October when we booked our trip on an OMG-I-NEED-A-BREAK-FROM-WORK whim, we didn’t have much of a plan. Shocking, right? A mutual return to Paris was very tempting, and, quite honestly, almost won. But we looked at a long list of cities and finally settled on Geneva. Armed with a plan to explore the surrounding region, we couldn’t wait to visit Switzerland — a country that was new to both of us. And, best of all, one we would be able to see a TON of thanks to the famous Swiss Rail. We had no idea just how much…
