Blog Ani i Radka
It seems like the winter is over (with the temperatures ~18 dg C.) so it’s time for a winter photo post. This year there were not so many occasions for taking proper winter shots. The ones that look truly cold and winterish are taken in the mountains. Nevertheless, the springish photos taken in December and January look nice too 🙂
Evian:
Jura mountains:
Le Turet:
Col de la Faucille:
La Chevrerie:
It’s a nice coincidence that we got to see Lausanne – the city with presidency of Olympic Games – during winter Olympic Games in Sochi this year. We started the day by walking along the board of the lake in Ouchy district where also the museum of the Olympic Games is situated.
Afterwards, we drove to the city centre to have a look at Lausanne panorama from the cathedral hill and walk down the hilly old town full of fancy shops, narrow old streets and „ups and downs”.
After a trip to Annecy Radek took our guests to visit CERN and CMS detector.
A story behind CMS can be read in this post (I won’t rewrite it). Anyway, these are the last moments to go underground because at the end of the year cavern will be closed for tourists and prepared for a rerun of LHC in late 2015.
We started visit day 3 with a trip to Annecy – a place I have seen thousands of time because it’s so picturesque that every visitor needs to see it. For summer Annecy – check out this post. Winter Annecy is way different. Today it was a bit grim, with heavy clouds hanging above the lake. Fortunately, a general colourfullness of this place (houses, alleys, flowers etc.) made the whole town view more friendly.
We strolled around the village and then stopped at a restaurant to grab a bite and sip on coffee. We ordered traditional cheese omlette and cheese dish (with Reblochon – local cheese). Coffee was served in a pottery made in Savoy (this region). How quaint and lovely… On top of that, as we were sitting by the bank of river, enjoying local goodies, sky turned a bit brighter and we could see sun reflexes. We didn’t stay too long though because later that day we had CERN visit scheduled.
We are having a longly awaited friends’ visit this week. With so many fantastic places around, we have an action packed 7 days ahead 🙂 We are starting mildly, not to tire Magda and Michał too much on their first day. Yvoire is a must for every tourist. We’ve been there with Radek a couple of times (see this post), not once in winter though. It was a real delight to stroll down the medieval allays without many tourists around. The old town is small but lovely and the coastal area with the castle… Real delight.
Since Yvoire is a 1-hour-walk town, we decided to pop by yet another coastal village on our way back to Geneva. We chose Thonon-les-Bains because we (Radek and I) haven’t seen it yet. Although those little places are similar to each other, Thonon has something that distinguishes it from the others… It’s le funiculaire – sort of a tram for lazy tourists who prefer to have a ride up and down the hill instead of walking. Yep – that’s us 🙂 Well, the truth is – we are not lazy – it’s just that the funiculaire is an attraction itself and we wanted to check it out. It took us to the lake and back. Would be hard to push a pram all the way up!
After Radek had come back from skiing, we still had like half a Sunday to do something fun. With a clearing sky and warm temperature, we decided to go for a walk at Teppes de Verbois – a nice route around ponds and vineyards. The route has not been fitted for prams but we somehow managed to go through the mud and bumps.
The road first went through a forest with ponds that are a habitat for different species of birds. There are even special observatories aside and inside we encountered a couple of photographers with very fancy and long lenses covered in camouflaging material… Well, we’re not at that point with our photography hobby, perhaps some day?
Soon we left the forest-pond area and entered the vineyards. Although grape trees are rather bare at this time of the year, we enjoyed the view anyone, especially when the clouds turned ominous dark blue (but these were not rainy clouds, it was just the sun set that made them look like sinister).
The last part of the walk led through a lovely village of Russin. Those little dots on the map are all so quaint and peaceful – like the laws of time don’t rule in this places – everything is quiet and peaceful. We went past the village, then last straight through the fields and back to the car. Very nice stroll.
I really like baking stuff, it gives me pleasure. I like eating too of course, but I guess it’s more about the act of baking rather than the act of eating. In the end – the two acts combined make for a fun day.
So I made an oat bran cake with addition of poppy seed. It turned out delicious.
Ingredients:
Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Whip egg white, then add sugar, yolks, oat bran and poppy seed – mix altogether. Sieve in the flour
and baking powder (earlier mixed together). Add almond essence Pour into a lined cake tin with a removable base. Bake on the
centre shelf for 50 minutes until golden brown.
Can you think of anything better for a cold winter afternoon than a warm, hazelnut cupcake? Well OK, I can, but still, cupcakes are awesome 🙂
I took the recipe from my favorite site: Moje wypieki.
Bon appetit!
Thanks to a recent temperature drop we decided it would be lovely to go hiking in the mountains. The trip was longly planned and awaited – our destination: Sur Cou mountain. It was our first winter hike and it surpassed all my epectations. I mean, I am very enthusiastic about mountains so it surprised me that their winter face is even more enchanting.
So, a starting couple photo and off we go…
First passage was quite easy – the path from a firm snow moved through the forest. From time to time we were passed by skiers dashing through the snow. Every now and then treetops thinned a bit showing a spectacular view of surrounding mountains. However, it took some time to see our destination – Sur Cou mountain. There are two ways to get there, we chose a steeper but shorter one. As soon as we turned left on the junction, the path became steeper and way more demanding. After a while the forest finished, leaving us on the bare slope. That was the most difficult part of the hike, since there was really a lot of light snow, not tracked by hikers or skiers. We needed to watch our feet in order not to fall down. Just one wrong step and the racquette would tilt to the side taking the rest of the body along straight into a 1-meter-snow.
The conditions changed when we approached the top. It got way windier and as a result, the snow cap was thinner, making the ascent a bit easier. Well, 'easier’ is a bit subjunctive. As I was approaching the top, I was imagining I was climbing Mount Everest 🙂 Call me crazy, but I have never gone through anything similar and although I know it wasn’t particularly difficult, for me it felt like a real duel: man vs mountain. Radek was a bit faster than me so he claimed Sur Cou first and managed to take a photo of me struggling to get to top. Looks alpine, doesn’t it?
And now… a cherry on a pie… The views… Although the photos never give justice to a real panorama, I won’t describe much. It would be difficult for me to depict with words the feeling of exhilaration I had as soon as I found myself over the clouds… I love mountains and I learned that I prefer mountains in winter than in summer.
This week we’re having guests – our mums came over to meet their grandson for the first time. We used this occasion to show them around CERN. I mean, it’s like the last chance to go underground to see the experiments because soon they will be close for visitors, getting ready for operation.
The visit started with SM18 site where magnets and other devices are assembled and tested in order to be ready for operation. Radek explained all the science behind, so mums had their private guide. Then they moved to point ALICE – a heavy-ion detector exploiting 'the unique physics potential of nucleus-nucleus interactions at
LHC energies’. In principle ALICE was built to find new phase of matter: the quark-gluon plasma.
