Catching Up

Well....where to begin. There are pictures (in no particular order) of the gorge hike behind our house, a tiny beer festival in Vevey, and a weekend trip to Dijon, France. I apologize for falling so far behind in my blogging duties! Let's see...I believe the hike was first...we decided to go for a longer hike up the gorge and have a picnic with a bottle of wine and some sandwiches. From start to finish it took about four hours with a one hour picnic. We followed a trail called "Sentier de Narcisse," which was amazing due to the amount of flowers that were blooming. Not bad when you consider that we started our hike from our doorstep! The following day, Nicole found out about a small beer festival in a nearby town. Well, those of you that know us probably know that if there is a beer festival close by, we are on the next train! It was very small, but had Nicole's favorite beer, "Kwak" on tap. The weather was nice, and in Switzerland you don't have to stay in the festival with your beer. We would grab a beer and walk down and sit by the lake, much more peaceful that way. This was the first time we actually had good beer in Switzerland. This is where the story takes a turn for the worse. The bad tidings began with Nicole's dooming statement, "neither of us have been sick since we moved here." About three days later Nicole had an extremely bad migraine that had here in bed for a day or so. Luckily she was recovered before we left for our weekend trip to Dijon. After about a three and a half hour drive we arrived. We had a great dinner that night and really enjoyed walking the city the next day. Somehow Nicole discovered an exhibition on the other side of town at a place called La Consortium that we ventured to. I'll have her describe it real quick before I move on:

It was a giant open building with several rooms and completely white washed walls and ceilings. The theme of the exhibition was based on a French novel that was very "Atlas Shrugged." Man, Nature, and Industrialism. No single piece stood out, but the collection did a fantastic job creating a sense of man and machine. It mixed 17th century oil paintings, with Tapestries, wood carvings, bigger than life photos over 15 feet tall, and modernist paintings. Super interesting.

I'm back....now you are probably thinking that I was being overly dramitic with my "dooming" talk, but things are about to turn south. We went to a very nice restaurant and we each ordered tasting menus. I had the seafood option, while Nicole wisely chose the meat option. About four hours later I came down with a vicious bout of food poisoning. This went on throughout the night and into the morning. We left around 10 am. Nicole can't drive stick so I had to drive the entire way home hunched over and stopping every now and then for powerade and crackers. Five hours later we finally made it home. I started feeling better on Tuesday, right about the same time Nicole had an allergic reaction to some medication her doctor gave her. Now it is her turn for powerade and crackers! She was completely out of commision until Thursday. Well, I guess life can't always be peachy. We are now both back to normal, feeling great, and ready for our next adventure in Dusseldorf, Germany.