New Address!

We've got a new web address.  I sent some emails out and a post on facebook, but in case you didn't get it....

It's www.switzerlandhughes.weebly.com  

You can also click the button below:

Yay!  It's a lot easier to use and I won't have to waste hours formatting everything!

Ashley

Camping in France

I've finally gotten around to finishing a blog post. [gasp]  I just haven't been in blog mode lately... I just post the photos on Facebook and act like it's sufficient in letting people know what we do and that we're alive.  However, for some reason, I forget to email our non-facebook family members the link to our albums.  :(  I'm sorry.  After this post, I'll be sure to link them up on here.

Last month we went camping in Annecy, France.  It's about a 45 minute drive from Geneva and it is b-e-a-utiful.  On Friday afternoon, we crammed the clown car with every camping essential you'd need for living at Everest Base camp.... for one night... with the dogs... with a chance of rain... not knowing if we'd even find a campsite.  It was highly likely that our evening wouldn't work out well.  We wanted to go because we have planned a couple other more 'intense' trips with friends soon.  Also, Adam was SOOOO excited.  5-year old style.  So this was practice for us.  We want to make it appear that we know what we're doing when our other trips roll around.  Here's a map of our drive, courtesy of Google maps.

We headed off, got through the French border (quite busy during rush hour), found more traffic in downtown Annecy, and made it to our campground in about an hour and a half.... not 45 minutes.  Annecy is a hopping little town!  Most campsites didn't officially open until the Sunday after we were there, but we stopped at the tourist office and asked them which places were open and if they accepted two small beasts. Jackpot.

Off we went again... heading around the lake away from Annecy a little.

Another twenty minutes and we arrived at Au Coeur du Lac... which means 'heart of the lake.'  How cute. We wound up having to drive a little bit further than Annecy, but it was worth it.  It was a great campsite and even had toilets and showers!!!  I know.   That's cheating right?  We didn't take showers though.  Ewww.  I will mention that we were one of two spots that had a tent.  Seriously.  Everyone else had a camper or mini-rv.  We were entertainment for them.  Here's a picture of our spot.  This was taken the next morning after we packed up because I forgot to take a photo of our hard work. :(

Here's a run down of how our night went...

• Tied the dogs to a tree [the PETA freaks scream].  You don't know our dogs.  They're untrustworthy in new situations.  Plus, they lack thumbs and couldn't assist in setting up 'base camp.'  They sat there and looked cute while we struggled to keep our dignity in front of all of the people watching from their campers.  
• Laid the tarp down and proceeded to get out 'the big green monster.'  Our new tent was literally delivered 6 hours before we had planned to go... perfect timing.  This is a picture of it.  This is from Amazon and ours didn't exactly look this perfect when we finished setting it up.  The bottom picture is more realistic.  And yes, you can stand in it.

  

One side didn't cooperate with us.  It was our storage room, so we didn't care.  Saggy-lopsided room wasn't priority #1.  Eating was.

• Rocco escaped.  He heard a scream (from our neighbor's special needs child) and decided he needed to investigate... or save them.  He darted away from his tree and I had accidentally leashed his tag ring instead of his collar ring.  Ooops.  More entertainment for everyone... crazy dog being followed by crazy lady screaming.  I caught him and put him in the car.  He had to get used to the random screaming.  He loves the car, so he was happy as a clam.   
• Decided to let Brontosaurus off  his leash... and roam wild.  He did great and always does better when T-Rex isn't around to instigate trouble.  He followed me around the tent to stake it down.  Look at the sweetness!  

 

• Time to get grilling... the sun was going down.   Adam set our new grill up.  Yes, every single piece of our camping equipment is new.  We're not campers and we don't have a patio for a grill at our tiny apartment.  We have a tent and a large grill stored at our house in Phoenix, but we didn't bring them because we don't camp and we knew we wouldn't have a patio.  The new grill worked like a charm.  Grillmaster Adam cooked up some chicken, burgers, and veggie kebabs.  I may have over packed on food. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Decided to let T-Rex out of the car while the food was cooking.  He LOVES people food, so we knew the vulture in him would make him stay.  His favorite is vegetables, but he'll eat anything... even a bag of raw pasta noodles... or an entire loaf of bread... or even a pack of 8 waffles.  He was obviously ashamed of what he had done.  He got out of the car and followed me closely and turned sweet again.  

•  Dinner was amazing and the boys just lounged around with us on a blanket while we played cards, drank wine, and had a nice little chat about life... and how weird it was to say 'Oh yeah, we just went camping in France for the weekend.'  We still have moments where we don't believe we actually live here.

• T-Rex took off again.  The second time, he saw a young boy running back to his campsite and decided he didn't like it.  He chased him down and gave him a good 'barking at' while the boy peed his pants and scrambled to get into his luxury camper.  More embarrassment. 
• After we finished our bottle of wine, it was time to settle in.  Let me give you a quick reminder of our campsite:  lots of older people, kids, completely gated, a tiny French town, showers/toilets, office where you could buy snacks, ping pong tables, etc.  We were not in the wilderness.  However, once I laid down... the paranoia began.  I was sure that a serial killer was on the loose and targeting the only dummies in a real tent... easy victims.  The shadows on the outside of the tent, the sounds of nature, and the fact that we were sleeping in a bag... within another giant bag... with zippers... outside... all played into my mental lapse.  I didn't sleep a wink.  Seriously.  The movies Friday the 13th and Blair Witch even crossed my mind.

At one point (approximately 2am), I woke Adam up with my heart racing.  I thought I heard footsteps through the grass and our grill being messed with... stolen in fact.  Here's how it all went town

Me in whisper voice: "Adam! [poke, poke] Adam!  Someone is stealing our grill.  I think someone is outside!"    

Adam: [leaps up, unzips the tent in .3 seconds, and rushes outside ready to get the grill snatcher]

Me: [trembling with fear and hoping the grill snatcher wasn't going to kill Adam]

Adam: [comes back in] "Nope.  It's still there... and my socks are soaked."

Me: "I swear I heard someone walking around."

I checked the time and laid back down. 

• 3:00am :  Serial killer threat level: 10

• 4:00am

• 5:00am

• 6:00am: sun rises.  Serial killer threat level dwindles to a mere 0.  

• 6:30am: I woke up because I had to pee and our tent was slowly becoming a sauna.  
• 7:30am:  everyone was up and I was thoroughly made fun of for being such a weirdo and not sleeping
• We decided to take a little walk by the lake before heading out.  Here was our view:

 

  

Cue the mosquitoes.

 

• We got out of there quickly once we realized we were being attacked by mosquitoes.  It was such an amazing view though.

After we got back to our little campground, we took everything down and loaded up the car.  It came down pretty fast and we actually got the tent back in the bag!!!  Woohoo!  We were out of there by noon and on the road back to Geneva.  Once we got back home, I took a shower and then an 8 hour nap.  :)

We'll let you know how round 2 goes.  I'm hoping I'll get more sleep next time.   

Au revoir!

Ashley

Our first time to... 'Barthelona'

It's Adam today.  This post is my first attempt at contributing to the family blog..... Which probably explains why it is approximately 2 months late.

Yes, this was our first trip to....Barthelona.  We used the phonetic spelling to pronounce the word the entire weekend because we seemed to fit in better this way.

In an excuse to celebrate both our birthdays (and Valentine's day), we made a weekend trip to Espana.  That's "Spain," for you Anglo-phones.  Combining holidays seems to be the best option considering these holidays just keep coming more frequently every year, and considering limited funds.  Anyway, I digress.  Unfortunately, all of the holidays mentioned land in the middle of Winter of 2012, which was apparently a particularly cold year.  In Geneva, it was especially cold and unusual.  Check out our friend S's blog to check out some pictures she got from around the lake in Geneva.  It will give you a visual of how cold it had been.

Since it had been too long since we had "gotten out of dodge" and because Barcelona is generally warmer than Geneva and close enough for a weekend trip, we chose the Catalunyan city of Barcelona for a Winter weekend.  Wondering what Catalunya is?  Me too, this should help. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalonia). 

So, now for a summary of the trip.

- We flew out Friday morning and arrived around 11.  Barcelona has a really nice airport... huge... modern... clean... and it smelled like cake batter.

- Found our hotel/hostel, which was a 10 minute bus ride from the center of town (I think we were the first residents in this house turned hotel, that was obviously still a work in progress).  Turns out we had reserved one room in a three-bedroom apartment.  Kind of unexpected but not a big deal.  Just had to tiptoe around at night to avoid waking our "neighbors".  One of the "neighbors" told us he had been pick-pocketed on his way from the airport.  Not cool, but not unexpected because our buddy "Rick" (short for Rick Steves, who basically decides our itinerary whenever we go all these places - it's kind of like Simon says, but "Rick" says), says that Barcelona is the pickpocket capital of Europe.  Awesome.  Thanks Rick Steves for instilling anxiety in my wife, who has had two personal pick-pocketing experiences so far in Geneva.



... And the place had a SWEET rooftop terrace that we took advantage of when we came back from our daily tourism activities.
  


- Once we got settled, and failed at figuring out how to work the heater in our room, we ate some Mexican food across the street from our hostel.  Not necessarily authentic, but close enough, and in hindsight, soooo necessary.

- First, we learned the hard way that Barcelona is larger than Geneva.  We took a bus for like 30 minutes, didn't really know where we were but figured we were close enough to Park Gruell to walk the remainder.  Unfortunately, got off at the bottom of a giant hill.  Walked for long enough to feel exhausted, then gave up and turned around.  I mean, how cool can a park really be anyway?  Headed over to Antonio Gaudi's (a famous architect/artist) most famous building, a church called the Sagrada Familia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia).  Apparently, it's been under construction for 150 years, and will supposedly be done by 2026, which probably means never.

I


We decided to forego the 40 bucks to see the inside, and just check out pictures online.

- Continued exploring the city.  Rick says walk "the Ramblas," which is the most happening shopping district in the city.  It was impressive, very long and wide.  The coolest part was the fresh market (with SANGRIAS!!!).
  






- Got some TAPAS!!!  They were good, but we got ripped off - $10 for a COKE.  This is what happens when you don't follow what  "Rick says".

- Barcelona (and I think Spain in general) are known for their work schedule, which includes a midday SIESTA, and then going back to work in the late afternoon, eating dinner at like 10PM, then staying up or out late and doing it all over again the next day.  Ashley and I decided we were only good at the siesta part. Hard to stay up late with these young kids these days!

INSERT PICTURE OF NAPPING?

- Went back to our place and spent some time bundled up on the rooftop with some awesome carbonated red wine that we picked up at the local grocery store.

- Next day, we went to the beach.  Although it was only 13 degrees (about 55 farenheit), it was sunny so we decided to walk on the beach, which we imagine gets packed during the warmer months.  The following "shout out" to our nephews was Ashley's good idea.

- Then we went to the old bull-fighting stadium, that has been turned into a pretty sweet mall with an observatory deck that let us see the rest of Barcelona.  Bull-fighting has pretty much been banned in most of Spain at this point... Probably a good call.



- Next up was Montjuic (Jewish mount) and the Olympic stadium, home of the 1992 games, and the most memorable basketball team of all time.

 

-Stopped by a little bar to have a beer... great view.

- Rick says Picasso museum.  Okay, why not?  Apparently Barcelona has the best collection of Picasso's early work, which was less eccentric than the stuff he was famous for where he rearranged people's faces on canvas.  My take from the museum, Picasso is overrated.  The art we saw in Amsterdam (Rembrandt, Van Gogh) and in Rome (Raphael, Michaelangelo, and Da Vinci), was much more impressive.

- Rick says eat dinner at Restaurant la Gardunya.  Thanks Rick, great choice for some fresh seafood behind the famous market.

- When we got back to the hotel/hostel, I convinced Ashley to go watch the Barcelona futbol game at a local bar.  We went back out to the mall across the street and got front row seats to watch Barcelona lose in an away game 3-2.  It was pretty awesome to see such passionate soccer fans.  No one was there to have fun, they were there to watch the game.  Dos cervesa, por favor.

  

Other stuff I forgot to mention....

- Check out these other cool buildings Gaudi did.

- I never knew I could get so tired of seeing David Beckham half-naked on H&M billboards and at bus stops ALL OVER the city.  Oh wait, yea I did.  Anyway, Ashley and I joked that he was following me.  I'm not sure how much they paid him for this, but pretty sure it wasn't enough to alienate an entire city.

 

Oh, Hai David!!!  {this is Ashley... Adam doesn't know how to insert pictures, so I'm doing the work}

- We stumbled upon a crazy parade with a bunch of people in "Giant" costumes.

- Found a statue of Christopher Columbus pointing to the "New World" at the same time I was pointing to the gelato stand.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Rick says, this is the spot where Ferdinand and Isabella welcomed him back from his first journey.

-Found this old church.

 Overall, we loved Barcelona.  We'd love to go back when it's a bit warmer.  It seems to be a 'beach' city.

Check out our album for more pictures!

"Ya'll come back now!" -says the happy lobster

Adios!