With the less than satisfying Parisian winter instilling a desire for snow which had been quenched neither by a trip to the Arctic nor a week of skiing, we headed into the Bernese Alps to traverse one of the more famous passes in Switzerland, the Gemmi Pass. Sandwiched between the Rinderhorn and the Daubenhorn, the pass itself has an elevation of 2250 metres and runs between the small town of Kandersteg and the thermal spa town of Leukerbad.
Read MoreDoing a fair amount of travel, I am on all of the SNCF spam mailing lists, which is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, when the Thalys sale starts, you can be ready and pick up return tickets to almost any destination serviced by them for under 40€. Thanks to one of these sales, I found myself with a weekend in Antwerp, a city that to me at the time, aside from being a historically important place, was known primarily for diamond-trading and fashion.
Read MoreOne style of travelling is to not make any plans and just see where the wind takes you. At the other extreme, there is planning everything down to a tee months in advance. I would place myself in the latter category, but with elements of the former. For instance, travel destinations are typically chosen many months in advance and planned out carefully, and likewise as soon as it is possible to purchase train tickets, they will be purchased. This has the benefit of saving a lot of money, but also gives you the “looking forward to an adventure” sensation. However during the adventure, we are often flying by the seat of our pants. So sometime during autumn, a mid-winter trip to the south of France was booked with the assumption being that we would escape the freeze of the north. As we were saving some other destinations in the south until spring/summer, we chose a location with equal length train trips from Geneva and Paris and ended up with Montpellier. When the time arrived, as the winter had been extremely mild, the “escape” was not to be the jealously-inducing weekend that we expected, but it would be a welcome adventure nonetheless. The region has some amazing landscape, so we decided to spend half our time out and about, and the other half exploring the city.
Read MoreWith the Christmas period come the Christmas markets. The Germanic tradition of selling local arts and crafts, notably toys has slowly and surely become a commercial exploit. Appearing in every city and primarily selling bulk manufactured goods or food, they have been losing their charm. Some regions have been banning markets or limiting what can be sold in an attempt to ameliorate the situation, most notably limiting the number of food and drink vendors, with certain markets being comprised solely of mulled wine vendors.
Read MoreThe coming of December brings not only much cold weather, but also the year’s shortest days. On the 8th of December, Lyon celebrates la fête des lumières (the festival of lights), a colourful and imaginative use of lights decorating the city. The festival has its roots in the celebration of Mary, who was the “saviour” of the town during an outbreak of the plague in 1643. The festival as it is now known came about after a planned celebration of the Immaculate Conception. Grand festivities had been planned as well as more localised celebrations as each individual illuminated the façade of their home. However, on the morning of the celebration, a large thunderstorm hit the town and the master of ceremonies decided to delay the event until the following weekend. The storm dispersed throughout the day and despite the official festival being delayed, the population of the town spontaneously lit up their houses and celebrated in the streets.
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