the town all ski towns are emulating

if there were ever a town in france that i thought tim would go nuts about, it would be chamonix. after a week in talloires, annie (a fletcher friend, wonderful travel buddy, and incredible woman, for that matter) and i headed back to the geneva airport and caught a ski shuttle up to chamonix for two nights. i don't even know what to say. it was just awesome.

we took the aigule du midi, an insane cable car, up to about 14,000 feet above sea level, and experienced light-headeness along with an incredible view of mont blanc. we walked around the insanely cute ski town of chamonix, and met some wonderful people in the local saturday market. we drank red wine! we tasted the local liquor, genepi! we ate FONDUE!

i don't even ski anymore, but i can't wait to go back with tim while he skis! (i apologize for the wealth of photos. i could not decide in this instance.)

les hommes francais are so romantic.

snostation- spa chalet (where we stayed): http://www.snostation.com/property.php?id_property=41&property_name=Mont+Blanc+SpaChalet

annie and i made a stop in to this wonderful relais & chateaux property: http://www.hameaualbert.fr/en/gallery

the venice of france

while in talloires for the week for a conference on leadership in humanitarian action, we had the opportunity to pay a visit to the nearby larger town of annecy, "the venice of france." i can't tell you too much about the town, because i didn't pay attention to the history lesson. but i can say that annecy it is absolutely beautiful, with beautiful canals, very friendly and warm shopkeepers, and colorful old buildings. also, if you enter a store that has liquors in large tubs with little spouts and it looks like you are allowed to fill your own bottles of liquor (see below), you are not, in fact, allowed.

bonjour d'annecy!

a week in tallories

i spent a week in the small town of talloires for a conference a few weeks ago. tallories is a small (and when i say small, i do mean very small) town on the shores of lake annecy in france, about an hour from geneva. i was there because tufts has a campus of sorts there, an old 16th century priory that an alumni donated to the school. it was an incredibly relaxing place for a conference. absolutely beautiful scenery, easy to get between our small french hotel and the priory for the conference, incredible restaurants where we had some amazing french meals, and not too much else to do!

the town of tallories was absolutely incredible, but the wonderful people i met during the week were really the greatest part of it all. and i'm not being cheesy. it was easier to get to know people being "stuck" in a small town together rather than being in a big city where people might have had friends or activities to partake in after conference hours.

...and did i mention there is an absolutely beautiful lake?

i'll be back, talloires. with tim next time.

hotel beau site http://www.beausite-talloires.com/
le cottage-incredible food and atmosphere http://www.cottagebise.com/

biking in acadia national park

i seem to be doing a lot of catching up after a few months of non-stop travel! this summer has been busy, but such a blast. a lot of activity outdoors and and a lot of learning how to eat more fresh veg!

my family went up to bar harbor on mt. desert island in maine for a few days of biking in acadia national park. amazing--one of the most beautiful places i have been to go biking, without a doubt. bar harbor itself was quite the cool town to dink around in. it felt like a mix of lake george village and chatham, ma. i would love to get up there more often, but it is a HIKE from boston.

in addition to biking straight up cadillac mountain, a highlight of the trip was meeting a south shore firefighter on a sunset sail on the margaret todd. he was such a nice guy, and was so much fun to talk to. apparently, firefighters spend a lot of time fighting one of the biggest problems we have in this country, obesity, and spend a lot less time fighting what they originally signed up to fight, fires. we ended up randomly running into him again on a stop during our lonnng drive back. it felt like we had really made a friend. ha ha. life is good.

view from the top of cadillac

cadillac mountain road- are we in the united states anymore?

famous blowhole of some sort

http://www.barharborinn.com/

paying a little visit to westport

we spent the weekend at camp dudley in westport catching up with some very dear friends. i usually return from weekends away exhausted and wanting to take a snooze. but not this time.

thought i would share a quote which was included in the sunday chapel sermon, delivered by a man i truly admire!

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." 

-George Bernard Shaw

saturday market in sainte-foy-le-grande

we were lucky enough to have a few hours to spend at the weekly market in the town of sainte-foy-le-grande during our bike trip in bordeaux. the market is a huge part of the local economy--and the place where most of the people in surrounding rural towns buy their food for the week. the beautiful town is right on the dordogne river, and is one of the oldest bastille towns in france. don't bother asking me what that means, because i don't know--i wasn't paying attention during our tour.

i've been to quite a few open markets in my travels, and this was one of the best i have ever seen. the most fresh, beautiful veggies and fruits, fresh meat and fish, and also, the most expensive gummy bears that i have ever tasted. notably, related to my last post, i noticed that the meat in the marked actually looked like the animal it came from! and contrary to the idea that the french are unfriendly, some of the warmest, most friendly people we met during our trip. we had so much fun poking around. here are some of my favorite shots!

some of the oysters were opened to give customers an idea of what's inside!

we loved the look of these tomates

might have been ripped off b/c we looked like biking tourons, but 15 euro for a small bag of candy!

les animaux de aquitaine

as many of you know, i became a vegetarian (well, to be perfectly clear, a pescatarian-i'm still good on eating fish for now) last november. part of the reason for my decision was the realization that as americans, we are simply too far away from the food products we eat. we often don't internalize the fact that our cheeseburgers come from cows, our bacon comes from pigs, and our chicken nuggets come from....well, chickens. i had been cutting meat out of my life for some time, but after really considering the fact that meat comes from animals, i decided that i'm not interested in eating it any more. this might change in the future, but it is where i am now.

of course, like many other things, this mentality is very different in the rest of the world. i noticed that in rural france, people are very close to the animals they eat and use for milk and other animal-based products. in the US, our obsession with the idea that we need meat at every meal for "protien" has lead to the growth of commercial farming and poor treatment and living conditions for domestic animals. in france, the domesticated animals that we came across live with quite a bit more dignity than our animals do. here are just a few shots of les animaux from rural france! some were for food, and others were not, but were just plain cute.

i love hamilton, ny

while attending colgate, i didn't think too much about how wonderful  the small college town  of hamilton, ny really is! what a community. i won't deny that the community and the local economy are driven almost completely by the presence of the university, but still, a great town which some pretty great people call home.

while in hamilton for tim's sister's graduation, we caught up with the best folk singer in all the land, ed, at the colgate inn (newly remodeled!), and spent quite a bit of time walking around the town and the campus. it was the first time that i thought about what it would be like to live there-- and not be a student.

wonderful saturday farmer's market

colgate campus

downtown hamilton at the best time of the day

martha's vineyard in the off-season

it's SPRING BREAK for this graduate student! to mark the occasion, tim and i took a little bike trip to martha's vineyard. we'd both had never been there--and we lucked out with some incredible weather. in two days, we managed to bike almost the whole island and saw all the sights...oak bluffs, vineyard haven, edgartown, and gay head. the island was empty (it was, after all, a sunday and monday in the middle of march), but it was nice to get an idea of what it is like for people who live there on a year-round basis. not too much stuff is open!

http://www.harbor-view.com/

i could have spent a few more days here...

i just returned from a few days in mexico's riviera maya. although we were there for our "field studies in global consulting class" we managed to see quite a bit of the the area considering we were there for three nights. i also managed to completely fall in love and was tempted to skip the plane and stay!

previously, i would have thought that the riviera maya was just like cancun--large multi-story hotels, watered-down pina coladas, and late nights. the two areas do share the same airport, after all. i couldn't have been more wrong! centered around playa del carmen, the riviera maya is quiet and "beachy," if that is a word. playa del carmen has a bunch of small shops and restaurants, and many of the restaurants don't even have real doors.

we were taken on a visit to tulum, about an hour south of playa del carmen. i would have thought that tulum was just a bunch of tourist shops and vendors surrounding the gates of the mayan ruins at tulum. however, it  is more of a "yogi" destination--a no shoes allowed kind of place, with fresh fish, hippies, and small restaurants right on the sand. and as far as tourist spots go, it felt relatively untouched. i can't wait to go back!

i could eat breakfast here every day for sure.

downtown playa del carmen.

tulum-mayan ruins.

restaurant/hotel in tulum: http://www.zamas.com/

excusez moi, can you tell me how to get to the ice palace?

we stopped in for a visit to the brand new snow village during a short trip to montreal. the village includes a hotel, restaurant, bar, church, and conference space--all made out of snow. it is modeled after the icehotel in sweden. i've visited the icebar in stockholm before, but this place was on a different level! absolutely incredible.

kinda looks like you are walking on the moon!

http://www.snowvillagecanada.com/