Christmas, Part 3: The Alp and Geneva

Having survived our second night in The Frozen Car Park, we set off to go up an Alp for lunch. As you do. I spent most of this journey in bed in the back, too, having learnt from past experience that it was a good place to be. And it was warm - one of the few places in the bus that was, even with sunshine.

Up The Alp had lots of snow. This is a problem when you don't have shoes that cope with snow. And none of mine did, I'd found, in the carpark. So I decided we were going to an expensive restaurant, I am decidedly a city person, I would wear my heeled boots, snow be damned. It wasn't as much of a disaster as you might expect; I not only didn't fall over, but the heel actually helped grip in the snow. (Not much use in ice, but then, nor would any of my other boots have been.)

Lunch was lovely, and the restaurant (Le Blanchot, for any of you googling) was fantastic, friendly staff, and good heating. It's apparently easy to impress me after nearly freezing to death - just provide heating. But this place was good, and everyone enjoyed their food.

Eventually, though, it was time to get back in The Metal Box (after unloading an astonishingly large quantity of treacle. I think it was treacle. Nice to know we're not the only ones who ask for English food to be brought over!) and head to Geneva.

Paul and I had very sensibly booked a hotel room. I love my family, but I have never thought money better spent than that room for that night. It may have (deliberately, I think) smelt of fondue (I think they were piping it through the air conditioning, for atmosphere, since no one was cooking fondue in the corridor...) but it had a bath, and a huge bed, and space - about the same amount of space as we'd previously had to share with 4 other people. Bliss.

After a hot shower, we braved the snowy Geneva weather and went to find food. The old town in Geneva is very pretty, but would be vastly improved by a lack of snow - it compacts into the cobbles and freezes, making me nearly break my legs repeatedly. Kind of ruined it for me - I'll have to go back in the spring/summer, when it's thawed out.

An early start the next morning led us to meet James and Vix at the train station, heading for the airport. We all checked in with plenty of time to spare, to find that the flight was delayed due to the snow in the UK. In some vague attempt at crowd control, we only got our delay revealed in half hour intervals, so we had no idea when we were actually going to leave - as it turns out, we only took off an hour or so late, heading for The Frozen North, specifically, Manchester.

Photos from Up An Alp: