Our holiday was fantastic. It honestly is hard to remember it now because although we have only been back for a month (arrived back on 24th Jan), so much has happened since then, that the little snippets of our trip are a distant memory now.
We started in Israel which was so much fun. We travelled around the north part of the country and around Tel Aviv & Jerusalem, doing all the touristy things, visiting Nazareth, Safed, Haifa, Caesaria, and a bunch of other places, and we also visited many of our relatives, which is always fun. We met up with some close friends from Sydney who did some of the touring with us, and basically had a really fantastic 9 days in the country. This was just the beginning of our trip though, which was predominantly a ski holiday. There was a lot to look forward to, and we were not disappointed!
A typical Israeli breakfast
Beautiful Caesaria
Switzerland was amazing. We started off in Zurich for 1 night, and loved our hotel room which was super swish. Zurich city was very cute, but we were surprised by the number of sex shops and stip clubs (wtf?). Maybe when your main industry is banking and watches, you kind of need some excitement to compensate..?? From Zurich we took various trains all the way over to the alps, to a picture perfect town called Zermatt. Zermatt was SO beautiful and cute, and full of Russians, of all people. The ski slopes in this town were so incredible -- wide, expansive, long, super high elevation, and beautifully set amongst the rocky summits of the swiss/italian alps. We also had some opportunities to go over the border into Italy and hang out with our lovely Italian friends. It was a wonderful, enchanting 12 nights in Zermatt, and I would love to go back one day. I don't have too many pics available now, but will definitely post more later.
The Matterhorn. You will recognise its distinctive shape on any bar of Toblerone.
Amazing slopes.
A peek of the town. This was just the sleepy end of it where we were staying.
Sampling the local fare...
From Zermatt, we were off to another remote town - the tiny little village of Happo One (pronounced "happo oh-nay") in Hakuba, Japan. Home of the Nagano Winter Olympics. The town has not seen any infrastructure improvements since the olympics, which was in 1998 but I think all the lifts, except for the "gondola" were built pre-Olympics... many many years pre-olympics. I didn't like the resort facilities at all, especially after spending 2 weeks in super ultra-modern ultra-high tech Zermatt (the ski lift systems there were just amazing). The eateries on the slopes in Happo were also lacking, and pretty much anything to do in the town was lacking. Having said that, the snow in Japan, is THE BEST. There is just SO MUCH POWDER. I spent 15 minutes at one stage, trying to dig myself out of a massive snow ditch. Most of the days that we were in Happo though, either the visibility was crap, or it was just too windy so they would have to close most of the resort and we would be stuck with the newbies where all the powder had been scraped away. I also noticed a much large proportion of snowboarders to skiiers in Japan, whereas in the Swiss Alps, most people ski, which is lucky for them, because there is hardly any powder on the groomed runs in Zermatt (this was the only down side - many runs were quite icey).
Having said all that about Happo, I did find the people to be very warm, kind and hospitable, even if they didn't speak a word of english (hardly anyone in Japan speaks English!) and the culture is really beautiful and fascinating to observe. We stayed in a cute traditional guest house, and our room was a traditional room with tatami mats, sliding screen doors, and all that Japanese caper. It was a great experience! We even had our own kimonos to wear every day, and the guest house (Ryokan) had its own Onsen (Japanese hot spring bath), which was BOILING hot, but very relaxing.
Stan outside the gondola station
Amazing powder
Still of me from a video. Bad quality, but you get the idea.
Drinking tea in our Ryokan
My favourite thing about Japan was the snow monkeys. We took a day off from Skiing/Snowboarding to visit these cute little guys in their natural habitat. They are the most amazing creatures. They live in the snow, and hang out in hot springs all day long when they arent foraging through clumps of snow for food. They were SO cute!!!! Definitely the highlight of my trip. Hahah! I LOVE MONKEYS!
Cute!!!
Super cute.
Well, thats all for now folkes. Thanks for reading.
Yay its friday!!
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