LUCERNE DAY TRIP Our full day in Switzerland included a cable-car ride down the mountain, which was insane for views. I took a bunch of photos, dunno how good they'll turn out. Stupid tourists. Once at the bottom, in a village called Weggis (pronounced "Vegas"), we caught a ferry over to Lucerne, which is a pretty nice place, especially if you're into watches or Swiss Army knives. We're not into that sort of thing, so it was really just a chance to see some co...

ELEVATION We arrived in Switzerland in the afternoon on Monday. Everything people say about the views is true. It's a naturally beautiful country. Photographs and video footage could never do it justice. It's super-grouse. The people here are really nice too, and pretty relaxed. German is the prime language spoken where we are, so we're pretty screwed if people don't speak English. We took a train straight up Mt Rigi, where we're staying at about 1500m. The t...

FULL TOURIST MODE Our last full day in Paris. We made the most of it with another day of epic trekking, but we saw heaps more stuff today. Started in the morning with a couple of hours checking out the exhibits in the Louvre. I now know that if anyone ever asks me "hey guy, how big is the Louvre?" the correct answer is "holy sh!tballs, Batman". We saw a bunch of awesome old stuff, mostly Egyptian, Greek and Roman artefacts as well as the obligatory Italian oil ...

TEN THINGS I'VE LEARNT IN PARIS 10. STEREOTYPING - Western tourists are immediately presumed to be American (as in USA). Nell and I were given sugar sachets with our orange juice at a cafe, you know, just in case we wanted to sweeten our juice-drinking experience. We gave the waiter a clear look of 'WTF?'. He was then surprised to find out that we are Aussies. 9. TRANSLATION - This wasn't too bad, but there were quite a few humorous written translations around ...

ON TOUR We did our first bit of guided touring with TopDeck tonight, starting at Montmartre to check out the view. Nell and I also found a grouse little restaurant for dinner near the top of the hill where we somehow managed to order and finish our meals within the 45 minutes required before rejoining the tour group. I had an awesome lamb shank. After that we did a bus tour to check out the city lights of Paris, taking in all of the touristy spots, which was pr...