Monday, April 28, 2008

Weekend Sunshine

Ever since we moved here to Switzerland last August, there has been a noticeable pattern in the weather -- It seems to rain a LOT, but mostly during the weekdays, with the clouds leaving by Friday and Mother Nature rewarding us for putting up with all the weekday sogginess with a beautiful sunny weekend. During the week it seems like the rain will never end, but the weekend payoff is worth it!

Our friend Brian who came to visit last summer during his European bike tour knows this all too well (as you can tell from his blog post: "Rain, rain, rain -Zurich" - It cleared up for him by the weekend then too, thankfully!).

This weekend we took advantage of the warm temps and sunshine by taking a hike in the hills just down the lake from our home. Jeff shared some of the routes that he experienced during his 6+-hour training runs while preparing for the Marathon des Sables a few months ago. Lucky for us it wasn't dark and cold and snowy this time as it was for him then!

Our friend Thomas joined us - He recently moved here from Colorado. (We're working on all our friends to move here eventually!)
Last September he visited and we did some great hikes then as well. We had spectacular weather on the weekend then too (of course)...
More pictures from that trip (plus another hiking trip) can be viewed here.
Good thing he came to visit over a weekend, or else he might have never wanted to move here!

Many times we are surprised by how much these Swiss hills and valleys remind us of the countryside in north Georgia...One small difference is the slightly bigger "hills" here that have that white stuff on top of them...

And I don't remember coming across any turnstiles in the middle of trails in Georgia, like they have here on the wanderwegs (hiking paths)...


Back in our home village - The weekend weather was so nice, it seemed that everyone who owned a boat was out on the lake! (It was sunny, just a bit hazy when I decided to take a picture):
Now it is Monday and guess what - It's raining! I wonder if Mother Nature will adjust for the long weekend coming up (since this Thursday is a holiday) and make it sunny all four days... We'll see. We're heading to the french section of Switzerland to learn how to play a traditional Swiss instrument and to watch the Tour de Romandie pro race, so we'll report back to you on that after we get back.

Cheers!
Becky

3 comments:

Lisa Smith-Batchen said...

what a beautiful place to live and train!!!

Traveling Bells said...

Riiii--cola! Have fun learning to play. Agree that Switzerland is very much like No. GA (we call our area the GA Alps). What's not to love??? Even the rainy days...hugs

chocolate girl said...

I like your hills better than ours! Here's to lots of sunshine...especially in September;)