Blog Ani i Radka
At the beginning of this your I joined CERN photo club. This granted me access to all CPC knowledge and equipment. This Wednesday CPC organized the first photo outing. Subject for this time was: Interesting photo of uninteresting place. So we went to center of Meyrin and these are my photos:
As every year during my stay in Geneva I went to Geneva Auto Salon – one of the biggest car shows in the world. I’m a big fan of motorization so this show is something that I am looking forward to every year. Unfortunately, this year there were only few interesting car premieres.
For example new Fiat 500 by Renault 😉
New Lamborghini Huracan:
And some new classics:
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:
We left two most action – packed days to the end of our friends’ visit. On Wednesday morning we took Ania and Wojtek to the airport (they flew to Poland) and we hit the road. First to Montreux where we saw beautiful Montreux riviera, castle of Chillon and of course statue of our favorite artist of all times Freddie Mercury. (You can see this statue on Made In Heaven album cover).
After Montreux we went to world famous village of Gruyères – home of Gruyères cheese and favorite place of artist Hans Rudolf Giger who is mostly recognized as a creator of Ksenomorfs for Aliens movies. In Gruyères you can visit museum of H.R Giger and drink something in bar that he designed.
After seeing Gruyères’ castle, Giger Bar and Museum we became hungry so we went to Maison Du Gruyères for some cheesy food.
For dessert that day we served ourselves a lot of chocolate in Cailler Chocolate factory in a nearby town of Broc.
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.
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.
We had a short discussion with Radek concerning the destination of today’s trip and Radek won choosing Nyon. This lovely little place is situated on the north side of Lac Leman, just 20 minutes’ drive from our place. It has all constituents of a Lake Geneva village: nice boulevard close to the water, marina, castle and narrow streets with colourful facades. We had a nice walk around the village, covering all formerly mentioned elements in just 90 minutes.
There was a really nice panorama view from a castle terrace. It’s a pity that the sky wasn’t clear enough to see the other side of the shore well. Anyway, at the end of our trip the sun went below the clouds and we had a really nice yellow-orangish setting around. I mean, winter and cold is fun, but the sun is even funnier 🙂
In 2010 when I was in Switzerland for one year we did the exact same trip: Bern first and then Thun – a small city located just a bit south and just a bit east to Bern – right at the foothill of the Alps. Thun is a pretty little place and we decided to treat it as a starter to even more beautiful mountain resorts that we want to see this winter. Also, since I didn’t feel that well health-wise, we decided to go to Thun which was the closest to our location.
The atmosphere of the city was way more hectic than at Bern. We first went by the city promenade – full of young people, Christmas emblems and crazy window displays. Then we headed to a boulevard stretching along the Thuner See (Thun Lake). A look on the Alps felt like a foreword to the views that we are going to see when we visit villages even more to east and south.
On our way back we went through an old city alley that was heading to the castle. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top. We decided to return to car because I was feeling more and more ill. Better to save my health for later – in the end, I already saw the castle in 2010 (photos from 2010 below).
And here is a view from the castle hill in 2010 (just four years ago but seems like an eternity now):
Christmas are past and Radek has still a couple of free days left so we decided to use the time wisely and do something else than my usual 'staying at home’. It’s a pity I am ill though, nevertheless I feel like getting out and so we went east – to Bern anf Thun. Bern is the capital city of Switzerland well known for its bears (emblem of the city). I have already visited it twice in the past but each time was a bit different. This year we were greeted by a thick mist which made the city look dim and mystical.
We parked our car by the bear cave which is situated just by the river with a nice view on the city. Pas de chance though – I guess the beras were sleeping so the carrots we had taken with us remained in our rucksack.
Then we went past the bridge to stroll down the main bernenian alley and admire beautiful ornaments on the tenement houses and throw ourselves into the remains of the Christmas atmosphere. I guess it was good time to visit the city – the Christmas rush was by no means over, yet there were a lot of people (mainly tourists) who made the old town vibrant.
We continued walking and passed by what seemed to be the town hall, cathedral, well known tower clock and a couple of other fancy buildings. At the end we found a Christmas market next to a coffee house we stepped in to warm up. After this short but restorative break we went back the same route. Surprisingly, I noticed a lot of different details on the way back. Perhaps a change of an angle makes the difference while observing the world surrounding us. Also, the mist became less thick so it made us see the colours a bit better. We didn’t stop any more and went straight to the car to continue on our day trip and go to Thun.
