Nice, Mt Blanc, Switzerland and more!

A quick update before I explain the photos...we decided that instead of going straight on to Italy from France we would head up to Switzerland so save us extra driving later on...

We continued up the French coast for a few more days and stayed here in Nice for two nights. It was great. Shopping, eating out and swimming. We explored the harbour and the 'old town' which was a maze of narrow alleyways filled with cafes, icecream shops and everything you can imagine. We also got to wander through a night time market and 10 Salamancas worth of resturants. There wasn't enough time to try all the food!

We stopped at Mt Blanc on the way to Switzerland. When the lady sold us our tickets to go up the mountain she said 'the visibility isn't perfect' what she meant was 'there is no visibility whatsoever'. We were a bit disappointed.

The next day dawned and it was so sunny and clear that we went up again, still a little cloudy up the top but mind blowingly beautiful.

We then went on to Switzerland. We don't have many photos because it was pretty grey for a few days. We have however visited the lovely medieval town of Gruyeres...famous for its cheese. We got to see it being made and then that night (thanks to a conversation with Monica) we went out and had proper gruyeres cheese fondue - about a kilo of it! Delicious!

This is Interlaken, we camped here on the side of lake after visiting Bern (which I'm pretty sure is the capital). It was a cool place, I wish we had had more time there and that it hadn't rained all day. At Interlaken we also visited the caves of st Beatus, an Irish missionary monk who was rumoured to have slain the dragon living in the caves. We did a tour 2km into the caves, it was pretty cool but the best bit was when all the lights went out...we had to get the emergency torches out to make our way back.

Camping in Switzerland is very expensive (45-55 swiss franks per night) so we have done a lot of roughing it...this was the view from our car park in Weggis on lake Lucerne. Small towns in Swizerland are great, they put on heaps of stuff for tourists. The first night we were here we went to a 'folklore evening', we couldn't understand anything but the yodeling and little kids dances were fun =)

The next day we caught the cable car from weggis up to the top of Mt Rigi and did some walking. The views were spectacular. That and the constant sound of cow bells in the background made me think of the Sound of Music and Heidi a lot

Were now in Arbon near St Gallen which were visiting to see an ancient library made by monks. Last night we went to an out door cinema to see 'Black Swan' assuming it would be subtitled. After waiting an hour and a half for the movie to start we found that the whole thing was done with German voice over, oops! However the atmosphere was lovely, the cinema on the edge of the harbour and other towns along the lakes edge were setting off lots of fireworks so we had a good time anyway.

Miss you all.