Let me warn you up front that there is absolutely no poker content whatsover in this post and it's only about my vacation. Song (Mark Knopfler, what it is)

When I was in Vegas I got an invitation from my father to fly out to Geneva and go to the Mont Blanc in France and then to Gran Paradiso in Italy. So after getting back on the 16th from Vegas I left on the 19th again! Plans were to go hiking in the mountains and just go camping.

10 days away from computers/poker was something I was definately ready for since poker has not been going great the last few months and sometimes you just need some time away to reflect on your game. So I was happy to be away for a little over a week. (ok I guess you can call this sort of poker-related)

So to the trip. The flight was delayed by about an hour but wasn't a big deal. What was funny was that one of my two roommates was actually returning from Geneva with the plane we were leaving with, so it was funny seeing him get off the plane I was about to board.

The first night we stayed at the house of a friend of my fathers near Lausanna where the weather was really good:


Tired from the flight and whatever we just went to bed early after finishing off a bag of pistachio's.


The next day we drove to France to the Mont Blanc and set up camp

That tent would be my home for the next 9 days.
We also visited some friends who were staying in the same area and enjoyed the view under the pleasure of some beers.



So we were off to our first hike, meeting scary people along the way


View from halfway there



Fell half asleep and woke up when horses where licking my feet... must say that I was kindof shocked 'waking up' with a huge animal over your head.


So after hiking for a couple of hours we reached the 'lake' at the end of the trail... was kindof dissapointed at the size of the lake...



We had some crepes after getting back and I helped to feed some of nature's creatures:



Basically we did another somewhat similar hike the next day so I won't post more 'pictures of the same scenery'. Because we've been to this area (well not this exact area, but the mont blanc area) before we decided to head over to Gran Paradiso in Italy.

We used the Mont Blanc Tunnel:


Which is one of the longest tunnels in the world. Was nothing special though. Just a really really long tunnel. We found a very nice camping near Aosta where it seems like a lot of locals were spending there vacation.

So we set up camp, here are my companions for this trip, my father and his gf.


In the first day in Italy we had to get some pasta's. So we lunched with pasta's and salads.
One annoying thing about Italy is that (well first off that they speak italian and I don't know Italian, anyway) all the restaurants close between 3 and 7 pm. So if you want to eat between that time you can't get a decent meal. Then at night we also had pizza. Ah there are also some good things about being in Italy!

Here is the first trip in Italy, me trying to promote leggo obviously:


On the way up we came across a fox, which was really not shy of people I guess since he just walked right by us. And my mind was still on poker I guess because I figured it was a good avatar for bfox...


Another great view from being in the mountains:



We also watched two ants try to kill a caterpillar, some pics of the battle:





These ants where monsters, attacking any animal they found, I've also seen them destroy a spider, bee, other ants and just random insects. While at the tent there were two beetles making love and one of these ants being about 1/5th of their size starts attacking them and actually killing one. You do NOT want to mess with these ants if you're as big as them. Luckily I am godlike in comparison to those tiny creatures so I took some revenge for the other animals.

Because this is becoming such a long post with so many pics I'll make the second part of the TR later.


Cliffs:
Went to france and italy and did some hiking, took lots of pics.