I've done a couple of Australia Days before, but doing it in Sydney was definitely the best one so far. Jake got us an awesome dinner table with sweeping view of the Sydney Harbour and Opera House in the background, not counting a fairly good multi course Japanese dinner:
And great views:
The fireworks were good, even if we were downwind and sometimes saw too much smoke:
I flew to Sydney for linux.conf.au and given that it was my 5th time there, I didn't quite go see the basic tourist attractions, given that I had already seen them once or twice, or more.
So this time, I opted for a few different museums:
On my last day, I went back to try learning Surfing south of Sydney and while I didn't do great, I at least learned some during the day.
On the last night, I went to Black Bar and Grill in a fancy hotel/casino to try some Wagyu. Sadly, the smaller and more expensive one of the two was actually the lesser one as far as melt in your mouth, went. Thankfully the 2nd one was not Japan good, but still pretty good:
It was then time to take the airport train back to Sydney Airport and fly home after trying 3 different lounges in the airport :)
So, Lausanne is worth a bit more than 2.2H, I had planned on giving it a full 3.2H but heavy snow in Verbier got us to miss 2 trains and having to bridge a train that never came, with a taxi instead:
pretty but this got our bus very late
in turn, our bus had a hard time driving down with stuck trucks on the way blocking the road
finally made it to Lausanne, not the best lake view ever :)
I got lucky during my quick walk
made it to the cathedral
nice view from the clock tower
2.2H was really short of what I was hoping of, but I had enough time to walk to the cathedral and climb to the top, then take an uber to the Olympic Museum], which was definitely worth closer to 2H, but I did the best with 1h or so I had.
did I say great lake views?
it was then time to get back to the train station and catch my direct TGV back to Paris, for my plane to SFO and foloowing plane to Sydney :)
France did break and still holds the world speed record for wheeled trains
After Bourg St Maurice, we took a bus to cross the train track sections that were unusable, to a train, to another train, to Geneva, where we got yet another train (Swiss this time), and another train, and a bus to get to our hotel in Verbier. Needless to say it took all day...
Switzerland was pretty expensive, restaurants were kind of reaching the outlandish pricing range, so we took a deal to have the dinner of the day at a mere $25/day. It wasn't great every night, but it was simple enough and onsite, so that worked :)
Due to horrible ski conditions in Bourg Saint Maurice, Arturo and I rented a stupidly expensive compact car for just over 100 euros and drove to Annecy for the day.
We first stop was at Paccard museum, next to one of the 2 factories in the world that makes giant bells. Cool place:
keyboard to play static bells
You can listen to the video from the bells:
We then drove around the lake to the north part where Annecy lies:
Annecy old town is very nice, almost a small venice:
lots of water due to recent rains :)
We then went to the local castle which wasn't much, but had reasonably interesting displays in some rooms:
old town
Eventually it was time to walk back to the car and go home after stopping by a nice local cathedral:
While Annecey is not a must do in France, it was a nice day tour for a day we otherwise couldn't ski. Thanks to Arturo for the driving there and back.
On Jan 3rd, I took a train to a train to a bus to a train to get to Bourg St Maurice. This ended up not being an easy rip since I was done right during a big snowstorm that disabled the rail to our destination. I did get there eventually, but it was much more work than planned.
The rest of Bourg St Maurice is not much to see, just a good base to go to ParadiSki (les arcs), and have Tignes/Val d'Isère be about 1h away by bus. Sadly, the weather was crap as in warm crap. It rained on the bottom slopes (up to 2000 meters) while the top slopes were shut down for wind most of the time.
I ended up only skiing 2.5 days out of 6, pathetic :(
