PriettoclubinSwitzerland

Hello all,

I am doing my annual journey to Switzerland to attend the meeting of the  Ramsar Scientific and Technical Review Panel In Gland near Geneva on the shores of Lake Leman. Even though most of my time here will be spent in the same room with the same group of scientists and Ramsar folk, I do get small opportunities to collect photos. Also my first day here is staying with Sandra Hails who I have worked with since 2001 and she is in a lovely new location. I am going to do the blog thing to share those photos with everyone. It is easier than getting home with 200 to share. So here we go.

I arrived at Geneva Airport at 9.45 on Sat morning, about 7.45PM sat AUS time after some 26 hours of transit time. Sandra Hails picked me up .We came straight to Sandra's new apartment in St Cergue, a beautiful village in the Jura Mountains above Nyon and actually very close to the French border. The village is much higher up than where she lived before. Normally there would be lots of snow on the ground but not this year. There is only the odd pile of dirty snow.

In St Cergue there are a lot of small shops. There are some photos of the bakery window and you will see some cow cookies, the COW thing is everywhere. There is a small grocery shop that is one of those special ones, a long time family business that keeps generous hours and stocks everything you would ever need but also has a special selection of the good things in life. Lovely fresh bread, small hand-made salamis, a cheese counter to die for and even a small gift shop full of swiss souvenirs, lots of red and lots of cows. So we bought a loaf of crusty bread and small salami and a hunk of cheese, on the soft side but with a vein of blue running through the middle.

After lunch we went up the mountain to the most beautiful recycling centre I have ever seen manned by a very friendly and helpful team of guys. You will see the photos, it looks way too neat to be a garbage recycling centre but this iS Switzerland and they DO like things to be neat!

We then continued up the mountain to Le Giverain, which is a setting off place for down-hill skiing, cross-country skiing, sledding and snow-shoeing mountain walks when there is snow  on the ground and for walks at other times. We took one of the walks, 4 KM up to a very rustic restaurant where we had a hot chocolate. There was another restaurant 2 km further. We were not the only ones there and Sandra says that if there had been snow on the ground the place would have been packed. The only way you can get to these restaurants is by walking!! Pretty amazing.
photos next