Switzerland - week 2 & 3

We said goodbye to our friends in Geneva and headed to Lausanne. Mark found a nice campground by the lake (Lac Leman). We caught the bus (free travel cards from the campground) into the city and up to the cathedral, then walked down to the lake and then back to the campground. My feet were definitely sore by then.

The next day we headed to Basel and spent the afternoon and following day exploring the city. Again, we got free travel passes from the campground so we made the most of them and caught the tram. The city is on the Rhine River and is right at the corner with Germany, France and Switzerland. Basel has been an important cultural centre since the Renaissance and is considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland. The University of Basel, was founded in 1460 and is the oldest in Switzerland.

Then on to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. Our campground was by the river so we walked into the city, about 5kms. 

On the Saturday we headed to the Jungfrau region and stayed in Meiringen. We caught up with our Canadian friends Blair and Cheryl, who we hadn't seen since 2017. We met them in Interlaken after their paragliding fun, then had dinner back in Meiringen

After the holiday weekend we headed to Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland. According to Wikipedia it has been "permanently settled for over 2,000 years"

Tomorrow we leave Switzerland and head to Stuttgart in Germany

Long before America...

and the second amendment, Switzerland had the right to arm bears...

On the road again

We said goodbye to Gandia and headed north to Barcelona. Even though we lived in Catalonia for 21 months, we put off doing some tourist stuff until we had visitors, then COVID came along and scuppered those plans. We spent the first day touring on the open top bus, and as is the norm for us , it rained in the afternoon so we got a little soggy. 

The second day we used the tickets to hop off and take a closer look at some of the sites.

We walked up to Park Güell, another of Gaudi's creations, but unfortunately couldn't see inside as all the tickets were sold out. We'll have to visit another time. The park has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.

From there, we walked down the hill to Sant Pau Art Nouveau world heritage site. Built between 1902 and 1930, this hospital was originally conceived as a city within a city.

We had a later start to day 3 and headed for the Sagrada Familia , Gaudi's masterpiece. The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (full title) is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world and is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On 7 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a minor basilica.

Construction began in March 1882 and Gaudi took over in 1883, when the original architect Villar resigned. He devoted the remainder of his life to the project, and he was buried in the church in 1926. The plan was to finish construction in 2026 on the centenary of Gaudi's death, however Covid has had an impact on these dates. 

The inside of the Basilica is quite subdued when you compare it to the outside

After Barcelona, we headed to Millau in France. The Millau Viaduct is a multispan cable-stayed bridge completed in 2004 across the gorge valley of the river Tarn. According to Wikipedia as of September 2020, it was the tallest bridge in the world, having a structural height of just over 336 metres.

On Friday we crossed into Switzerland and visited CERN. 

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and was established in 1954. A number of experiments have been constructed at CERN and it is the site of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

We spent the weekend catching up with our friends James and Steph and their two boys. On Saturday night, we all went into the city to watch as 1,350 drones took the skies above Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) to perform the largest synchronised drone show ever seen in Europe. It was part of the Feu ô Lac Festival.

Tomorrow we leave Geneva and head for Lausanne, Basel, Bern and Interlaken.

Haro - capital of La Rioja

Haro is a beautiful town and is the capital of the wine region of La Rioja.  

According to Wikipedia the first mention of Haro dates back to the year 1040, in a document of king García Sánchez III of Navarre. There are some beautiful old buildings, including the church of Santo Tomás 

Since the early 19th century Haro has established a worldwide reputation for being the most important wine town in the Rioja wine region. The number of Bodegas (wineries) in the region have multiplied 8-fold to 574 during the past 50 years (1970 to 2020). We visited 5 of the 9 best bodegas (according to Wikipedia) namely:

Compañia Vinícola del Norte de España [CVNE] (founded in 1879); 

Bodegas Roda (founded in 1989); 

Bodegas Muga (founded in 1932); 

Bodegas La Rioja Alta S.A. (founded in.1890).

 Ramon Bilbao (f.1924).

We tried to visit R. López de Heredia (founded in 1877) but they didn't do tastings or even wine by the glass, only by the bottle. If we had wanted that, we would have gone to a shop. It was evident that they didn't want to serve the public so we took our money elsewhere.

Now we are on the ferry from Bilbao to the UK. It's the first time we've tried this crossing, we'll see how we feel after 30 hours onboard.