Switzerland

Hello again,

This trip is winding down to its last few weeks! There is still much to see and much to do but I feel the end approaching...

So where did we leave off? After the south of France, Myriam and I headed up to Zurich to visit my cousin Lori her husband TK and their new Baby Liam who I hadn't met yet. We took a few days of well needed rest and waited out some bad weather eating fondue and chocolate and watching movies and the baby!

After Zurich, we headed off to the swiss alps to a place recommended by a friend of mine. The little village of 1000 people was called Gryon and was pretty isolated up in the mountains. The view from our hostel was breathtaking. I don't know how to describe what it feels like to wake up in the morning and look out on to enormous mountains. Very peaceful and majestic.

The hostel was full of young travellers and was super nice, all hard wood (we had to take our shoes off!) Every night they made a campfire so people chatted and got to know each other. On our first day we did a 6 hour hike through the mountains, it was a hard hike but by the end I was pretty tired. I was truly beuatiful though. The next day, we decided to go paragliding (it was one of those once in a lifetime things... we just couldn't resist!) That was one of the funnest things I've ever done. I was up in the air for more than 40 minutes, rising with the thermal currents and floating back down peacefully to the ground with a view on the Geneva lake and Mount Blanc! I highly recommend! The next day, I just sat around the hostel reading and sun tanning till around 3pm when I got in the car and went to the thermal baths. This was another unforgettable day. The thermal baths are a huge complexe with pools, saunas, steamrooms... all with water from hot springss pumped into the pools. It was so fun and relaxing.

Gryon was so great, I would recommend it to anyone travelling in Switzerland, probably some of the best days of this whole trip.

After Gryon, we headed back to France to Lyon to meet one of Myriams friends. They met when Myriam was in highschool and participated in an exchange program in France. That was fun too though we didn't do anything exciting. We spent time at home with Nina and her 2 little kittens and visited Lyon wich has lots of great architechture. One cool thing about Lyon is that for 1Euro a week, you can use thecity bicycles as much as you want. They are all over the city, you just walk up to one, swipe yourcard and the next half hour of biking is free. Then you can just drop off you bike anywhere else. Great way to get around, I think we should work on it for Montreal.

Thats all I have time for now folks, but Ill be back soon to give you some news on Germany and Poland!

Miss you all

Lianne