John: day 1- Today we have experienced a little frustration because we have 3 changes to get to Interlaken and we were separated with our seat reservations even though we appointed adjacent seats when we made our booking. Works out ok because of vacant seats on first leg and an Italian lady generously offering to swap seats on the Milano-Spiez leg. Gee, aren't we becoming hypersensitive to trivilalities after 3 months of travel? Anyway, we reach Interlaken and al...

Luzern, what can I say? After a day and half, we have to say that it is the highlight so far, perhaps pipping Carcassonne for all round impressiveness. Luzern is stunning. The city is so incredibly beautiful : ancient timber bridges crossing the canal ; a huge stunning lake flanked by towering mountains that graduate rapidly from a plethora of contrasting, variegated orange, red, yellow and green vegetation at the base to snow covered around half of the way up; A...

Breakfast again delivered to our door, we walk to Geneve SBB railway on a staggeringly warm late Autumn morning. Today's forecast for Basel, today's destination, is 17 degrees. Our winter coats are generating saunas that will hopefully cause us to shed our baguette, cheese and salami-laden midriffs. We were intending to catch the 10.14 train to Basel, but a 9.14 fast train is just about to depart, so we jump on in the nick of time with Loretta having to force the...

Leave Arles early for the train day we were dreading: 4 trains to get to Geneva and we have limited time for many of the changes. The weather is beautiful and sunny this morning. All goes well until we arrive at Valence TGV. Our next train is running 50 mins late so we will miss the last train from to Geneva. So, in a nutshell, we will collectively spend around 4 hours waiting in train stations. Well, I guess that is a fitting end to our experience with French ra...