3 week holiday!

My week at home in wales went by in a flash. Apart from the nice 6 hour delay I had in Geneva waiting for the flight. I had to take a trip down to Coventry for the day to secure the booking of a house to live in for my final year, which was pretty nostalgic. When I flew back a week later, my mum came along with me and stayed in the Hotel Casino in Sierre for a few days. We crammed in a few places - Biel/Bienne, Zermatt, and Lucerne. She hadn’t ventured out of the UK in a good 30+ years, and I think Switzerland was a nice place to begin for her. 

The mountain peak poking through the clouds is that of the famous Matterhorn! 

The day after she left, I was off to Grindelwald for the weekend, a dazzlingly beautiful place (literally i was blinded by the snow) on Saturday me and Chelsea went up to the Jungfraujoch ‘The top of Europe’, which held a viewing point looking across the glaciers and mountains all around. On the Sunday we took a cable car up to the First mountain, at a discount, courtesy of our hotels/hostels for giving us a voucher. Up there we found a cliff walk with a horrifyingly high drop. One part even had a glass floor, if you are prone to vertigo this is not the place to visit

After being back in Sierre for all of two seconds I was then flying to Madrid to visit Ash. I was doing that thing where you fill your free time with countless activities and then when it comes to going back to normality you feel completely exhausted. Although, living here, what really is considered ‘normality’ now? Luckily Ash was quite happy to lounge about so the time there was pretty chill. We did make some time to visit some art however! A trip to the Palacio de Velázquez.

Arriving back on Friday, I am now spending the weekend resting and preparing for the start of classes on Monday.

A British Spaniard in the Swiss Alps

What a concoction. Well it made for an exciting trip, Ash came to spend Christmas and New Year’s here, much to the disappointment of our families. Including us there was 9 of us still left in the inn, so we had an amazing dinner on Christmas Eve, and I even contributed! (and no, not just crisps this time) We both set about tackling the challenge of making a nut roast which took about 5 hours prep time and then an hour in the oven - but it was worth it! It now has its place in the Inn’s communal recipe book. Christmas day was spent recovering from all that was eaten the night before…

During the week before New Year’s we took a trip to Bern and exhausted it of all its galleries and museums (the ones which were free or reasonably priced that is) we visited the resident Kunstmuseum, The Kunsthalle, The Zentrum Paul Klee, as well as numerous other smaller galleries. In the Kunsthalle I was surprised to find works by two of my tutors from school!

Later in the week we went to explore up the heights up the other side of the valley, which required two cable car trips up to the top point of the mountain called Crêt du Midi, from which you could walk further along to other peaks but the snow up there was a good few feet deep. Whilst we were up there, dozens of paragliders were taking off from the edge near the restaurant, filling the sky with their array of colourful sails.

We spent a fair bit of time in my studio in Movimax, doing some work for my upcoming Juries at the end of January

€€€

Ditched Sierre for the week and went to Madrid to see Ash. (Here is his blog) At first i was resenting Swiss Air for having such pricey flights but once they started offering free baguettes apple strudels and chocolate on board i forgave them. Also they had looney tunes as the inflight entertainment on the return journey, so all sins forgiven 

There’s no need to mention how cheap food and other things are in Spain compared to Switzerland, I think i put on several pounds at least in an attempt to stuff myself before returning back to “frozen pizza for 6 franc” land. (I do love it here really just feeling nostalgic for reasonably affordable food)

We went to a lot of places whilst there, but the most memorable would have to be the visit to the Guadarrama mountain range in northern Madrid in an attempt to reach the highest peak of the region - Peñalara. After much sim-swapping, map reading and bus taking, we arrived there in time to watch the sunset from one of the lower peaks. Then it dawned on us that there were no more buses, no more trains, to get back down the nearest town with a metro. This is where the hitchhiking came in! Sadly didn’t actually get to stick our thumbs out as we asked some people who were already parked, and after much Spanish spoken debate between the couple they decided to help us. Dropping us off at burger king back down in civilisation, we waved goodbye and thanked the lord (the burger king himself) that we didn’t have to spend the whole night freezing to death in the wilderness.

We also took a visit to the Faro de Moncloa, a viewing tower over 100 metres high, and had a momentary feeling of vertigo whilst travelling up in their lovely glass lift. El Rastro, a flea market held in the centre every Sunday, was another one already on my list to visit

Templo de Debod. Ash had class so thought i’d take a hike. Whilst here i purchased the travelcard, with which you have access to free travel on all buses and trains (i think) and only 20€ for the month! It’s extremely handy *cough* Switzerland sort it out *cough* and i only needed it for the week.

Overall the week trip was over far too quickly and next time we need to get down to art student business and visit some galleries, the city itself is not short of art though, on the streets, stalls, etc.