Sex and the City

Did I tell you?? I saw this movie (with 12 other girls (okay, I guess we should be calling ourselves women) this past Wed. The movie theatre in downtown Geneva was packed. Every seat was sold out. I have never seen so many English speaking women in one place. It was a fun movie. It definitely won't be nominated for any type of Academy Award but it was fun, it was lively, and everyone in the audience was riled up. There was screaming, laughing, booing, and cheering. One of the most interactive movies that I have ever been to. I must say though, it made me really (REALLY) miss the States and my girls. I had to come home and have a drink - a cheers if you will, to my friends back 'home'. I miss you dearly.

The month of May.........

passed by so quickly. L had the whole month off and we had a fantastic time traveling. The trip to South Africa was incredible, we spent 9 days on Safari -what fun! The Safari was amazing and we saw all of the big 5 several times. We had so fun experiences such as seeing 400 water buffalo come to a water hole and a bit of a scary experience with being almost completely surrounded by a herd of 80 elephants! I think out of all the animals, the elephants made me the most nervous. You are constantly on the go - even though you are sitting on your a** for 70% of the time and eating oh, about 30% of the time. We met a lot of great people and were exposed to a lot of not so great people as well. All in all it was once of the best trips I have ever taken and would love to go again.


Then we were back at home for 2 1/2 days before we were off to Italy for a week. We flew into Naples and stayed the night. Now the good thing about Naples is that there are not that many tourists. It has a great city feel to it, loud, busy, cars honking, good food. BUT one night there was enough. They do still have the garbage problem but not as bad as I thought that it would be. I wanted to take a picture of it but I was afraid that I would get mugged and someone would run off with my camera! ;)

After our night in Naples we took the ferry to Capri. What a beautiful place. Although I must say, isn't everyone in the States bitching about the dollar and how low it is compared to the Euro? You would of thought that all of the Americans would stay home and travel in the U.S. NOPE - they were ALL in Capri. Now I am American and I love my country but when you see a group of 20 tourists all dressed in shorts and flowered shirts talking VERY loudly - you cringe. All you heard in the restaurants were - I want this, I want that, I don't want this, can't i get butter with my bread, don't add salt...what kind of dressings can I choose from, blah, blah, blah. Then after a large dinner they order a decaf cappuccino. NO ONE in Italy drinks cappuccinos after 11am and do you really think Italians have decaf coffee??? One of the great things about Europe is that you get what you get. If you order a sandwich - you get a sandwich. You don't have 50 million choices of what kind of bread, cheese, etc that you want. You just get a sandwich. Plain and simple.

Okay enough of that. Soooooo we spent two nights in Capri at a really great hotel. Then we took the ferry to Positano and spent three nights there. Positano was really nice but I envisioned it to be much prettier. It seemed a bit worn down to me. The views from the top though are amazing and cannot be beat. L and I rented a scooter and we took a ride to Ravello which was really beautiful. We also visited Almafi which I didn't care for at all. WAY too touristy.

After we arrived home from Italy we had two days to rest and then we were off to Chartres, France to get our puppy. I have to say that I love Chartres. It is a really cute small town about an hour outside of Paris. Def. worth the visit if you are ever in the area................

Will post about the puppy on a separate post. Your eyes have got to be blurry from reading my ramblings.

funny swiss stories.......

We were catching a flight to Copenhagen to visit my in-laws this past weekend. Our flight was really (really) early in the morning. 6:30 to be exact. At the airport, going through security the security man says to me in french...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said non......because usually they ask you do you have any liquids or a laptop. Easy enough - I said 'non'. He looks at me strangely and says (in English this time). "Where are you going?" What, I say (I never heard this question asked of me before, and I guess my non response did not cut it!)?? He says again, where are you going?? Are you going to Copenhagen? Why yes, yes I am, I say and proceeded through the line.
No wonder he looked so confused. Shit, no wonder why I was so confused. You get used to one question and then they pull something totally different out of their hat. I think it is just to test me to see if I know what they are saying when they speak French. Obviously not.

Spain..........

Was wonderful, absolutely fabulous. I mean really, when is it not?? Of course it was sunny (17-20 degrees)with blue skies the whole time.

We stayed a day/night in Alicante. Visited my old haunts, wandering around having a déjà vu every where I went. We even made it up to the castle this time. Last time we tried to walk up it - in the middle of the day, in the summer, not knowing really where we were going. Not the best idea.

After Alicante (and a side trip to Altea) we drove to Valencia and spent two nights there. Valencia was incredible. A nice big city without the tourists. Really, you could walk for hours and not hear any English. It was refreshing. Valencia has a bunch of little areas in their downtown section and we got to enjoy almost all of them. We walked so much I thought that my feet were going to fall off. We made a visit to the Aquarium, which is Europe's largest. We had been wanting to go there for awhile so part of this trip was to visit the Aquarium. Weird, I know.

After Valencia we drove to Barcelona to spend a couple hours walking around before our flight home. Barcelona is huge and crowded, and there were tourists everywhere. I much preferred Valencia although we did have a good time wandering the streets of Barcelona, trying to stay away from La Rambla.

Now I am back in Geneva and the sun has finally come out -if but only for a moment. I miss Spain, the life, the people, the food. The incessant chatter, the liveliness of it all. I miss being able to converse with the people. Upon our return I had to stop at the tailor and it was a mumble jumble of mis-matched french mumblings. Oh well. Back to the 'grind'.

Today it is....................

SNOWING. Yep, snowing. Yesterday it was bright and sunny (although a bit chilly) and I planted some flowers and window boxes for the terrace. This morning I wake up to snow - and it is still snowing. This is the most snow that I have seen this winter. But wait.....it's not winter anymore. I feel badly for the poor little birds (that make so much f'ing noise) that are nesting outside of our bedroom window. Betcha this snow shocked the hell out of them. Maybe they will be quiet while trying to keep warm. ;)

We are pretty much done with the ski season. Two weekends ago I wipe out twice and then last week I fell on the last run and hurt my ankle. It was nasty - lost both skis and poles. To my defense the visibility was quite bad at the time. I guess the faster I go the harder I fall. Next season I am going to buy a helmet.

What else, lets see.....I had a session with a photographer to learn more about my camera. What I did find out though is that I know NOTHING about my camera. It was a 2 hour session and was very informative although I felt like my head was going to explode after we were done. I was also part of setting up a photography club though Geneva online and our first meeting is tonight. I am excited that so many people are interested. There should be about 15 of us and it will be nice to get to meet some new people in this town. I know absolutely no one but will chalk it up to an experience and hope that all goes well.

Some practice shots (Jojje was not amused!)







This Thursday morning we leave for Spain. Gracias a Dios - finally a place where I can speak the bloody language. I am so sick of talking in monosyllables here. My French is still dreadful. Guess I really need to practice if I want to become better. UGH! We fly into Alicante Thursday morning, spend the night there and then drive up the coast to Valencia and spend two nights. The next day we will continue our drive to Barcelona and then leave for Geneva later that evening. I cannot wait to have a cortado. I have stopped drinking coffee about 2 months ago but I think that I will have to give in to the craving this weekend.

I can't stop thinking about it...........
:)

flower - geneve

flower - geneve
Originally uploaded by alicantina709

This picture I took reminds me of SPRING. Of course it was taken last year. That is why it looks so sunny and spring like. Ugh...I need some sun!

Good news!

L got some great news this past week and then more good news today.

His employer has decided to let him take the remainder of his vacations days instead of getting them paid out. This is good news because we now have 31 days of vacation to take. We are going to take a couple of long weekends this coming month to make a couple of 'local' trips. Spain and Italy are first on the list. THEN we are going on a safari!! We figured that we would go on safari for about 7 days and then L could start his new job early since he is such an eager beaver.

Now for even better news. It turns out that per Swiss law L cannot be on vacation (even though he is leaving) with one company and work for another. You know what that means?? He can't start his new job until June 1st which gives us 1 MONTH to vacation! Whohoo! Now we are supposed to get the puppy on May 18th but I think that I can push that back a week so that we will have 3 weeks off and 1 week to regroup before L starts that new job of his.

I have such planning to do!


Oh, we just came back from Budapest last night...very late last night as our sleazy jet flight was delayed almost two hours. We got to Geneva airport around 12am and the bus dropped us all off at the wrong place. We have to wait a good 20 minutes for them to open up our side of the airport so that we could enter! Unbelievable.
Anyway, we had a great trip. Budapest was so interesting, I highly recommend it. Will post more on the trip with some pictures later.


Did I mention - when we arrived it was SNOWING. I never thought I would be happy to see snow but snow means ski which makes me happy. It has been snowing since we left for Budapest and should continue snowing this week. I am going to try to go skiing if the weather permits tomorrow or Thursday and definately L and I will be taking a weekend trip to the mountains to ski, ski, ski! I need to work off all of that Hungarian food! :O