Long overdue... Trip to Paris

I admit to having been veeeeery lazy (and busy, is that an excuse?) and having put off posting my Paris pictures for way too long. But here they are. Context: Selim's last week-end in Paris before moving to Zurich, so Vincent and me, Augusto and his gf Vero decided to spend the week-end there, crowding Selim's appartment, and making sure his last week-end would be spent in museums ;)

We had a lot of fun, and are already looking forward to all meet again in Prague in May, this time with Caro, Fabo and Gudrun as well.



The Selim and Augusto way of visiting Versailles



Don't ask me why they're trying to crush me in the pic...



Fountain in the Versailles park



The Louvres castle at sunset



The living vertical garden-wall of the Quai Branly Museum



Paris from the towers of Notre-Dame




The Sacré-Coeur at Montmartre


And more pictures if you want : http://picasaweb.google.com/joellekueng/Paris2008


Easter and ski vacation coming soon... :)

Sledging and wedding

To start the new year in a fun way, we went sledging in Les Diablerets, a ski resort about one hour away from Lausanne. There you can sledge on a 7.2km way only allowed for sledging, walkers and skiers are banned :) It was a lot of fun, specially since we only had one big sledge for the two of us, and the road wasn't in the best of shapes, with lots of holes and bumps, which my back still felt a few days later :)



And on the first week-end of January, a collegue of Vincent invited us to his wedding, which was beautiful, and would make anyone feel romantic for a nice start of the year.

Happy new year!

First of all, sorry for the long silence on this blog. As such, nothing new has happened since the last post, I haven't been on vacation since and it was just the usual job-daily routine life. After one year working as a "serious" lawyer, there would be loads to say, but more to that in a next post. As for now, a few pictures of my last day in the year 2007, spent having a walk in a nice wood above Lausanne.

This tower was built in 2003 for the new millennium (yes we're slow), made of wood from the neighboring forests. It offers a magnificent view of Lausanne, the lake and the Alps.




The tower is built in the forest of Sauvabelin, a top-Sunday stroll spot for families in Lausanne. There are all kinds of animals kept around the lake, and a restaurant with fondue specialties.

Côte d'Azur

Since the last post I've been quite busy... A lot to do at work, and then visiting my brother in Brussels for a week-end, and then Selim in Paris another week-end.

And last week, Vincent and me went (again, I know, but it's the last ones till Christmas...) on vacation, again to France. We took the car, filled it up with camping and beach equipment, and went south, where it's nice and warm :) And so it was.

Here a few pictures to make you love France (if not the french ;))



Notre Dame de Beauregard



StChamas



St Tropez



Moulin de Paillas



Pramousquier



Plage de l'Estagnol





Les Mées


More pictures :

http://picasaweb.google.com/joellekueng/CoteDAzur07

Crozant et L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer

A few pictures of last week's vacation in France...

We decided to split the car trip (of an estimated 10 hours duration without stops) crossing France from east (starting from Geneva) to west (just draw a straight line and you'll see where we were aiming at) in two parts:

So we picked almost randomly a point in the middle, found a cute little camping site and some ruins to visit, and decided that would do the trick :)

Here the pictures, which prove that it's worth stopping and not always leaving out these villages in the middle of nowhere when making a big trip.









More pictures : http://picasaweb.google.com/joellekueng/Crozant

Then on Sunday we took the road again and finally arrived in l'Aiguillon-sur-Mer, where Vincent's mother has a vacation house. The first day the weather wasn't the nicest, as you can see on the first pic, but then we had sun for the rest of the week.

One funny anecdote for those who speak french: in the village before arriving, there was a big poster announcing the "Fete de la Bouse - Open international de tonte de Moutons" happening that week-end, hilarious!! Well if i try to translate, here it goes : Cowshit party and International Sheep Shearing (or "mowing" ;)).

Other than that, people are perfectly normal around here :) Except they're french of course ;)







In La Rochelle



More pictures : http://picasaweb.google.com/joellekueng/LAiguillon07

Picture of the area and beach : http://www.lafautesurmer.net/vueduciel/arcay.jpg

Valencia and Barcelona vacations

Vincent and I attended the wedding of friends in Valencia, Spain, last week. We used the opportunity to visit Valencia (with that special America's cup finals week ambiance to it) and then Barcelona for another 4 days. As we were told afterwards, we really didn't miss out on anything in Switzerland with the autumn like weather we've been having these last weeks.



Valencia is a very nice city, much more relaxed than Barcelona and definitely worth a visit. The America's cup port is very trendy and lively (although i don't know how it will be once the cup is over), with more people in the bars at 3 am than at 1am!! And traffic jams at 3:30am, just unbelievable. Another great attraction of Valencia is the Oceanographic built in 2003, just next to the City of science, Imax and Opera house, all amazingly modern buildings coming straight out from the 5th Element or some other SF movie. All these buildings, along with a nice huge park, are located in the riverbed of a dried river crossing the city.

The wedding itself was amazing, beautiful, simpy perfect :)

Here a few pics as a "teaser", and the link to the Aquarium and Barcelona photo gallery:

http://picasaweb.google.fr/joellekueng/ValenceBarcelone2007





In the Oceanographic



The City of science, Valencia



One of the famous houses designed by Guëll, Barcelona



Nicely dressed for the wedding :)



City centre of Valencia

Saturday walk by the Lake

And not just a small walk.. down to the lake, sandwich break, and along the lake to Lutry, nice village about 5km from Lausanne. One the way we came across a mother swan and her sweet babies, as well as crazy kids jumping with rollerblades in the lake :) And at the end, we even came across some ice cream, what a coincidence :)

25th Birthday

After a year full of changes and turning points, my quarter of a century year is looking much more relaxed... no job change, no moving, no big trip (sadly...)

Here some pictures taken at the restaurant, celebrating with my parents






The Lavaux wineyards in the background, soon to be UNESCO World heritage site, and Lake Léman (or Geneva in english)



My parents



My best present : the most wonderful guy in the world (how cheesy i know, but true :))

Pictures of Istanbul

Check this link for my online photo album of Istanbul, I admit being quite lazy and having only put the nicest pics :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/joellekueng/istanbul

Again, this city is a must see, with a good guide book that is, in order to understand all the history behind it. Imagine that Hagia Sofia was first built in ~530 after JC, during the roman times when Constantinople was the capital of the Roman Empire, and then was converted to a Mosque when Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror invaded Istanbul almost 1000 years later! Luckily, instead of just tearing down all the christian mosaïcs and symbols, these were just covered up, which makes it possible nowadays to see the original mosaïcs and paintings of the Roman times, together with the religious muslim symbols, all in one place.

I could go on and on, but have to get to work, already looking forward to my next vacations... :) but who isn't ;)

Istanbul, first impressions

Istanbul is an amazingly beautiful and vibrant city, which is a must see, west meets east, history around every corner, delicious food, mosqus and churches, palaces and markets...

What made it even more special, was having the best host ever, Selim aka Slim Dusty ;) who not only hosted us and showed us around, but gave us some insight in Turkey's culture and people. Being there during the controversed president's elections was really interesting as well.

More pictures to come...

No news good news?

In my case, the saying is true :) Being cought up with a demanding but great job, and moving out-moving in and spending waaaay too much time in IKEA trying to figure everything out... has it ever happended to you, that whenever you go there, there's always something you need that is missing from their stock, but you anyway manage to come out of that store with loads of things you don't really need?

Anyway, Feb and March was mostly busy with first moving out, and then cleaning, furnishing and decorating the new flat, as well as doing a lot of throwing out old stuff at my parents'...

Since then, life has been great, here some pictures for an impression of the last month...



Sunday, March 25th : skiing in Champéry with Vincent and Laurence, we had an amazing time! Great weather, great snow... and great food :)



Easter week-end : taking care of our balcony, first stop: IKEA for the furniture, then some garden center for the flowers and plants :) We have another smaller balcony accessible from the bedroom, with more relaxed chairs and a small coffee table



The view from our balcony on the Alps, and the lake (although it is a bit misty on the pics). The best thing: we have the same view from our bed, when sitting up for a lazy breakfast :)



First picnic of the year in Vidy (Lausanne lake-side) on Easter Friday. Trying out the new rollerblades as well :)



And last Sunday, first bbq of the year with my parents at my dad's place near Neuchâtel.



Of course I'm always present once the food is ready to serve ;) I leave the hard and complicated bbq work to the men, the real ones



Calm and beautiful... I love this place :)

Painting...

What has kept me busy last week... repainting a 53 m2 flat :) My flat. Or rather, OUR flat. :) I'm so excited about moving in together with Vincent, even if it means commuting to work, but it will be worth it :)

When we visited the flat, we had to concentrate hard on thinking "potential potential"... it was in a disgusting state, the previous people living there had obviously no notion at all of cleaning :S The walls were dirty, the kitchen greasy, don't even want to mention the bathroom... But, it's cheap and well located, so we decided to take up the challenge :)

And after painting and cleaning, i can tell you it looks GREAT :) Moving all the furniture this week-end!


My mom hard at work :) She's the best!! And no, these are not clothes we usually wear ;)



It looks like the kids living there before us really liked painting the walls too... in blue ;)



I really did manage to get pain all over me, including my hair!

Skiing and birthday

2 weeks ago (I know i'm a bit slow with posting..), Selim and his sister came to visit me for the week-end and skiing (which was probably the main reason for their coming... ;)). We went to Verbier on Saturday, and although there wasn't any snow in the rest of the Alps, we had great snow, lots of sun, and not too many people.
Saturday, Caro and Fabian joined us for a fondue night, it was really great being again reunited, such a short time after London. Next time will be for Fabo's big 30th, and i hope that this time Augusto will make it too... :)

And as Selim had his birthday on Monday, he got some candles to blow :)

Skiing and New Year's

For New Year's, I went skiing four days in France with Vincent and my family (who stayed a whole week there). The first two days, the weather was great but not that much snow, and the last two days, there was plenty of snow, the problem was that it was falling on us instead of being under our skis... so we couldn't ski that much because of the snowstorm, but still could enjoy a few hours :)



Les Ménuires... usually, there should be snow everywhere on the picture :S Thank you global warming



Having fun in the sun :)



With my brother, kamikaze in chief when it comes to skiing ;) forces me to not be all too lazy and ski fast :)



New Year's eve fun :) After that we enjoyed a nice dinner in a restaurant

Christmas 06

This year my grandparents came over from France for Christmas. Everything was great, the tree, the food, the atmosphere, the presents... I love family Christmas :)



First of course you need to spend a day baking Christmas cookies.. they're so good it's really worth the effort :)



Then decorating the tree...



And finally, fooooooooood :)