After spending Christmas in the UK, I arrived in Geneva airport on the 28th (along with Marta and Lewis), where we met my cousin Asia who flew down from Warsaw. Our first day everyone was still exhausted from all the food consumed durimg Christmas, so we spent an easy day walking around Nyon, a little town down the lake from Lausanne.

On the 30th there was still a large lack of snow in the Alps, so we headed to the glaciers of Zermatt, where there is always skiing to be done.  Lewis decided to learn to ski by doing his first run from the Kleines Matterhorn, at 3800m!!  He's crazy...somehow he made it down though, and we had a spectacular view of the Matterhorn.

On our way down from Zermatt, we stopped by my friend Roman's place in Montana for a nice little tartiflette.  After eating and chatting for a few hours, we realised that we still had to make it to our friend Marie's cottage in the French Alps to sleep the night! While everyone slept in the car, I was stuck driving for a few hours until we finally made it to Essert-Romand, of course with a flat tire at the end of the trip that needed to be changed in the rain..grr...

The 31st was spent skiing in Avoriaz on the rocky and icy slopes, while dreaming of snow falling.  In the evening we ate a huge raclette, and of course partied in the cottage to bring in the New Year!

The 1st was spent driving back to Lausanne, having a few pints at the bar, and getting ready to ski on the 2nd since there was snow forcast, FINALLY! The next day we went off to Champery (the tires on our rental car were definately NOT winter tires...), where we finally got to play in powder all day!  The trip ended like any good ski trip should...with one final fondue at my place in Lausanne!

Pictures of New Years can be seen in the Gallery.  I have also made a little Google Earth collection of the places we were, check it out if you're interested.

 Happy 2007!

This year I spent Christmas with my sister and her boyfriend  Lewis in the UK.  For Christmas Eve we were invited to Lewis' dad, Ian's place in the british countryside of East Sussex (he lives right beside Paul McCartney!).  Marta and I prepared a (mostly) traditional Polish dinner, with salatka jazynowa, pierogi, kompot and a great salmon (albeit using an English recipe :P).  Lots of help of course from Lewis and his brother and dad in the cooking.  Midnight mass was in Battle, famous for the battle of Hastings in 1066.

Christmas day we were invited by Lewis' mom for a Christmas Day dinner, full of turkey with stuffing, pudding and Christmas crackers!  In the evening we visited Lewis' grandparents in the town of Rye, where we had tea and listened to lots of war stories.

Our last two days in the UK we spent volunteering at Crisis Open Christmas, an event organised every year to give the homeless a place to spend the holidays in a warm and welcoming environment, enjoy good food including a Christmas dinner, and take advantage of many services including medical advice, a warm shower, and lots of leisure activities.  It was great fun, we got to meet lots of great people and talk to many of the homeless, get to know what their lives really look like.

On the 28th, Marta Lewis and I packed up our bags and headed off to Lausanne for the second part of our vacation: New Years in Switzerland!

Pics from Christmas are available in the gallery.