The week of fun blogs!

In the spirit of blogs, I wanted to share a few fun blogs that I have been enjoying this week:

Kressley is one of my sister's friends who recently started an adorable, crafty blog.  She creates amazing treats and handmade gifts that my sister always shares pictures and stories of with me, so you can imagine how excited I was to wake up one morning and find this blog post from her in my inbox as an ode to my love of (American) English muffins!  Yum!

My sister's wedding was featured on a wedding blog this week.  I thought the photos were gorgeous when I first saw them on the photographer's website; but, seeing them on this cute blog with the story of their wedding just makes them even more beautiful!

This past weekend I met a new American friend, Ashley, through a friend of one of my good friends, Lauryn.  Ashley recently moved to Geneva and has a great blog chronicling her life experiences.

Happy blog reading!

J'aime Paris!

Last weekend we visited Paris for a few days.  I had been a few times when I was younger but it was Ryan's first time visiting the city.  Paris is only a 3 hour ride from Geneva on the fast, TGV trains, so we caught the 5:45PM train from Geneva and made it to Paris by 9PM.  How convenient!

We bought our train tickets back in June after finding a good deal on the price.  Little did we know the reason that the tickets were such a good deal was because it was a holiday weekend in Paris, translation = Paris was empty aside from tourists.  We still had a fabulous time checking out the city, but it definitely felt a bit desolate to see a lot of restaurants closed and no Parisians strolling the streets.  Oh well, I guess that just means we will be "forced" to go back another time :)

Since the weather was perfect for strolling, we mainly explored Paris by foot, map in hand, checking in the sites and stopping many of Paris' little cafes and restaurants along the way.

I love that Paris is to close to Geneva by train, it makes for a fabulous weekend get away!  Below are some pictures and stories from the weekend.

Notre Dame cathedral in the evening, so gorgeous

We started off the second day with breakfast at La Duree, a famous Parisian tea house

In true tourist fashion, we purchased a lock, locked it to the Pont des Arts bridge, and tossed the key into the water below to symbolize our eternal love

Our secret mission was to find and attach our lock to Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick's lock, which we found after much google searching and picture analyzing. A lot of other people (presumably Americans?) had the same idea in the past because Kourtney and Scott's lock was buried under this bundle

The weather was perfect for strolling, so we waltzed towards Notre Dame to take in the architecture in the daylight

Checking out the Louvre -- did you know it has 16 KILOMETERS worth of galleries inside? that's almost a half marathon within one museum!

In front of the Louvre pyramid, evoking my days of obsessing over the Da Vinci Code mysteries...

More Louvre gorgeous-ness

Louvre

My camera died right around this time, so apologies for the iPhone photos from here on. On Saturday evening we took a tour of the Seine river by boat that took us past the major sites in the city. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone visiting Paris.

One of the river tour boats

On Sunday we met my friend Leah's brother and his girlfriend for brunch in Paris.  They just recently moved to Paris.  What fun to have friends from home in European cities!

Lake life in Switzerland

 During the summer months, life circulates around Lake Geneva. Being a New Hampshire laker at heart, this is something that makes me really happy because having the comfort of a lake nearby is something that I enjoyed growing up. There's just something so calming and relaxing about being able to have a lake to escape to for a run, a dip on a hot day, a wakeboarding session, or just for a few moments of peace to listen to the waves and feel the sun on my face.

So in honor of my favorite element of summer, here are some interesting tid bits about Lake Geneva and how we have enjoyed it this summer...

Lake Geneva is the largest body of water in Switzerland. It spans 60 miles long and 11 miles wide at its largest point. The depth goes up to 1,000 feet deep! The right side of the lake is in France while the left side of the lake is in Switzerland. The snowy mountain cap you can see on the lower right side of the picture above is Mont Blanc, which you can see from Geneva on a clear day.

Mont Blanc in the distance from Geneva on a clear day. The fountain in front is the "jet d'eau" or "water jet", a landmark in Geneva's skyline. It towers above most of the buildings in town and has become one of the symbols of Geneva.

The harbor of Geneva. When we go for runs, we typically run from our apartment to the middle of harbor in the picture above and along the left side of the lake in the picture. There is a walking/running path on the shore that stretches in both directions for several miles. There are 3 beaches in Geneva proper, one is on the right side of the photo on the jetty sticking out into the lake, while the other is on the very left hand side of the picture, to the left of the boats. The third is farther to the left (and outside the picture) and consists of a large public beach and a wakeboarding center. 

The wakeboard center has boats that you can rent for wakeboarding sessions. I don't even want to tell you how much it costs to rent one of these boats, hence why we haven't wakeboarded this summer, instead we have enjoyed the beach at the wakeboard center.

The rocky beach at the wakeboard center. You can see the jet d'eau behind the trees on the left of the photo.

Enjoying the wakeboard center.

For the past two weeks there has been a festival on the shores of Lake Geneva which consists of carnival rides and local and international food stands (like the one above). It is called the "fete de Geneve" or the "Geneva party" and its an annual summer celebration in Geneva. The best part about the festival was the fireworks show, which is a fantastic display of fireworks coordinated to music. Check out the grand finale video below...

An surf-tastic, French weekend in Hossegor

Last Thursday was a holiday in Switzerland (essentially Switzerland's version of July 4), so we hopped a plane with some of our good friends from Geneva to go to Hossegor on the southwestern coast of France for the long weekend.  Our friend Thibault's parents have a vacation house in Hossegor and they were gracious to host our rowdy bunch for the weekend. The ironic thing about Hossegor is that it is also the same town that my sister and I spent several weeks in during high school when we went and stayed with family friends who also had a beach house in the same town! How ironic, right? So in addition to having a kick ass weekend at the beach with our Geneva friends, I also got to (shortly) reunite with our family friends who were there for the weekend!

While in Hossegor, we basked in the sun, caught some waves (Hossegor is known for its large waves and surfing community), went to Thibault's parents' driving range, had some AMAZING french meals cooked by Thibault's parents (duck, foie gras, etc etc), and hit the town for a few nights out. It was a perfect summer weekend and we can't wait to hopefully return next year! It is so nice to know that as we get close to the 1 year mark of living in Switzerland, we have made some really fantastic friends and have had such wonderful experiences here. We are really enjoying our summer in Europe!

Everyone at the beach

Pre-duck destruction

Hanging out on the porch

Getting surfing lessons before entering the water

He looks so professional! 

More porch time with my love 

Exiting the water after being DEMOLISHED by a killer wave

Hanging out at the beach

Check out all of the kite boards!