Holiday in Switzerland (3): Water 26 July, 2008

Our elemental holiday in Geneva continues on day three with a focus on water. Specifically, the Aquapark at Le Bouveret, on the mouth of the Rhone at the southern end of Lake Geneva.

It’s a high-tech experience going in; everyone gets a little Swiss watch that is actually a magnetic gate opener and controller for the locker, and which may have money charged to it to buy food inside. (Some of the most expensive burgers-and-chips you can buy, at a guess.)

Once inside, it’s all wave pools, water chutes, children’s play areas with giant buckets of water tipping over them from time to time. There’s a spiral chute that empties out into a flattish dish-shaped area on which participants whoosh round three or four times before tumbling into the hole in the middle – an experience more like being flushed down the toilet than anything else.

Needless to say, everyone has a good time for many hours.  Joel manages to lose his ‘watch’, but Dad smuggles him out with a two-in-one trick at the exit barrier.

Holiday in Switzerland (2): Ice 26 July, 2008

The second complete day of our holiday, and Philippe and Julie drive us to the southern end of Lake Geneva, then up an Alpine mountain road to Les Diablarets.  From there it’s two 30-person cable car rides to the mountain top, then a ski-lift to the glacier … and, with the excited participation of Stefan and Ian (and perhaps also the adults), our children’s first experience of snow.
We make a short walk across the ice. To be honest, there’s probably quite a long walk on the ice, but we don’t get too far because we find piles of snow that have been amassed by a snow plough and the children stop to make snowballs.

This quickly turns into an artillery war, with the boys making an emplacement across a slushy river and the adults trying to dislodge them with high-altitude ordnance. The girls, inevitably, change sides whenever they see a clear shot at anyone else.

After a while we fulfil another years-long ambition by making snowmen, though a short lifetime of reading books about the snow means we are in default because we haven’t brought carrots.

Snowman; cool, and armless

After an hour of this jollity we head back, but become distracted by the ‘summer toboggan’, a metal track that snakes down a precipitate slope and on which two-person cars can race down at quite alarming speeds.

We all have a go on this – two goes, in the boys’ and Anisa’s case – before taking the cable cars back down the mountain for the beautiful drive back through the valley and to the lake-shore autoroute.

More pictures here.

Send in the snowy artillery

Switzerland holiday (1): air 25 July, 2008

We started our vacation with a flight to Amsterdam and a connection to Geneva, where we are staying with our friends the Guitons.

The first day after we arrived had a big focus on air, with a visit to the nearby Mont Saleve and the chance to see paragliders and a hang glider take to the air. It looks like the start of an elemental holiday; with earth (mountains), water (an Aquapark), ice (snow on the glacier) and perhaps even fire (church in the historical Protestant heart of Europe) to come.

Hang gliding on Mont Saleve, near Geneva

The paragliding becomes even more entertaining as Philippe explains his own history of hang gliding, with explanations of the way the pilots find thermals and stay aloft … and occasionally descend more spectacularly than they intend with accompanying contusions, breakages and other injuries.

We watch a two-man team take off under a paraglider, joining others who are already aloft. Then a mature chap with an extraordinarily beautiful hang-glider joins them, quickly finding the warm updrafts and soaring into the deep blue sky.

For more pictures, go to the gallery.