French Alps

I turned 30 on the 18Th of July and to celebrate we went to the french alps for a long weekend away. We based ourselves in the town of Chamonix which is in the valley below Mont Blanc. We had and amazing time and the mountains were spectacular.
We took a Gondola up to 3800 meters and saw amazing views of Mont Blanc and surrounding Glaciers and mountains. Even though it was summer and 20 deg in the village it was -1 at the top and there was lots of fresh snow.

We decided to take another gondola across the Glacier to Italy. It was an amazing half hour journey and the scenery was some of the most stunning I have seen. We had lunch in Italy and then took the Gondola back to France.

We also enjoyed the French food and had some great pastry, chocolate and coffee. For dinner we went to try the local cheese fondue specialty. It was great, basically a big pot of melted cheese under a burner and a big plate of bread for dipping in the cheese.

Our hotel was nice and had a balcony that overlooked a little church and square and had a view of Mont Blanc. One afternoon a large crowd gathered at the stage in the square to watch an international folk festival. We had the best seats in the house and watch amazing musicians and dancers from Peru, Mongolia and Romania perform in full costume.

We also did a small hike to Blue lake and it made me want to stay longer as there are so many montain biking and hiking opportunities available. Chamonix is definatly somewhere I would like to return one day and I had a fantastic birthday! Being 30 is not so bad after all.

Pics Here

Germany with Family

My Parents and sister Hannah came over to visit in may/June this year. It was great seeing them again after almost two years and we had some great times catching up and showing them around.
One of the highlights was a trip to Germany to visit the Wuensch family who are our cousins.
We stayed in there beautiful house and enjoyed their hospitality and wonderful German food.
We took a day trip to the Harz mountains to visit other relatives and stopped on the way at a great little German town called Quedlinberg.

My Grandmother was born in Bohemia in the Czech Republic and her childhood house is still there. So we took a drive over the border and found the house. It is in a pretty little town with green rolling hills and wildflowers and I can see why she liked it so much. We had a huge lunch in the town and were surprised at how cheap the Czech Republic was compared with Western Europe. The way back to Germany was very picturesque and we stopped at the German city of Dresden on the way. Dresden was bombed heavily in WW2 but has been rebuilt and is a very pretty city on the bank of the river Elbe.

On our final day we took the train to Berlin and spent the day wandering around and enjoying the sunshine. We would have liked more time but still saw some of the great buildings and soaked up some of the history.

Pics here