James' in the UK

To start our holiday we flew into Geneva which was (at that point) one of the coldest places we'd been to (although a Saturday night out in Glasgow in January still rates pretty highly on the list). You know it is cold when you are wearing 4 layers of clothes on your top half (long sleeve top, jumper, polar fleece, jacket) and you can tell that one of the lower 3 layers is unzipped!

Geneva was nice, quite pretty on the shores the lake but it was totally fogged in the whole time we where there so I don't think we saw it at it's best. It has lots of quite expensive shopping and due to being the home of the UN, it has many international influences. Almost every postcard you see of Geneva is of the fountain in the lake, which is kind of like a jet of water going way up into the air. Apparently it wasn't going when we where there so I'm not sure if it is impressive or not. We went to the UN headquarters and tried to find the Australian flag out the front – I'm still not sure that we did – and decided to walk through the Botanic Gardens. This was a great idea in theory but it was so cold and everything was dead so again we didn't feel like we were seeing it at it's best.

Next we headed to Chalet Martin in Gryon where we spend 5 nights over Christmas. Gryon was so gorgeous, a village up in the mountains complete with chalets covered in snow. Where we were staying was on the high side of the village and our bedroom window looked down over the village and the valley below.

Gryon from our bedroom window

We were staying in a back packers hostel with many other Australians so there were always lots of people to talk to. We had a fire outside at night and it was all a bit surreal standing next to the fire in a couple inches of snow looking at the Alps in the moonlight. We quickly found the snow around the fire was good for keeping your drinks cold – you just shove your beer or wine into the snow behind your seat and you didn't need to go inside to the fridge for the rest of the night.

Deck at the Chalet

While most other people were heading off skiing during the day we decided to take it easy – sleeping in, taking walks in the snow, taking day trips to nearby places and generally lazing around the chalet. Although we didn't ski we did manage to take advantage of the après-ski activities with our hostel buddies.

We spent one day in Montreux, a ritzy town on the shores of the lake. We found some more Christmas markets there and did what we do best at market stalls – eat! We had a huge cheese fondue for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon walking it off so we had room for chocolate waffles before leaving.

Another day was spent in Villars, the ski resort about 1 hours walk from Gryon. Again this was quite ritzy and not the cheapest place to visit. We caught a train to one of the ski fields higher up in the mountains and had lunch whilst watching hundreds of skiers and snow boarders wizzing past. The ski fields were amazing, runs everywhere as far as you could see and some great looking snow.

Villars

One of the best walks we did was down into the valley below Gryon. The trees were all so loaded down with snow and it was so pretty. At one stage I was contemplating doing a snow angel and was testing how deep the snow was and I disappeared up to my knees – glad I tested first!

In the valley below Gryon

On Christmas Eve we all gathered around the Christmas tree and had a secret santa gift exchange, complete with a randy santa handing out the pressies. Last I saw there was some present swapping going on with the American who ended up with a jar of vegemite. Christmas day was fun while being quite different to normal. We had a bacon and egg brunch with some of the other Australians we were staying with, although it seemed as though it was a stretch to call the cured ham 'bacon'.

After calling family back home we got into the important work – cooking lunch. We roasted a chicken and some vegetables which I think we could have sold for many many francs by the time it was done. While the food was in the oven we decided to make a snow man. Another group had already started to make one which we thought was a bit ugly and scary so we decided to go one better. In all honesty I think we took the snow man making a bit too seriously but the roast was in the oven and we didn't have any alcohol until the office opened so we had to throw our energy into something. We built a cracker of a snow man and were accused of cheating because Adrian was an engineer (not sure that really helped!) and lying about this being our first snowman.

Snowman

Because the sun was shining and it was a glorious day we ate lunch on the deck outside and admired our snow man constructing handy work. Again we were struck by how different it was to be sitting on the snow covered deck looking at the snow covered mountains and snow men instead of on the deck at the shack in Port Neill watching swimmers and dolphins.

Christmas Lunch

Food of choice in Gryon: Cheese fondue and festive log