a merry white christmas

hey guys and gals,

hope you all had a fantastic christmas and have a good new years lined up. i am on my way to france to go skiing for a week which will be fun.

i had a good christmas in interlaken. christmas eve, the hostel put on a big all you can eat dinner so we all sat in the big dining room together and had lots of ham. the food at the funny farm is great, i pretty much ate all my meals there all week. then we sat around the fire and had a few hot choc and rums. a few aussies had turned up and were staying in my room, so i ended up playing a game of kings with them and ending up a bit pissy. in the morning we all woke up and said merry christmas and then there was a bottle of wine going around the room.

now, there was no actual snow in interlaken and it was all foggy, but i had told the paragliding dude that i wanted a proper white chrissy and he was taking a girl paragliding up in grindlewald. so he said, i'll take the van and give you all a lift up there, so we all piled into the van... me, the rest of the aussies and a couple of american boys and went up to the snow. grindlewald was good, all full of sunshine and snow and cheese. yes cheese, lots of fondue goodness.

so that was that and then when we got back to the hostel we did the usual eat the great food and hang around the fire and play pool. if i had more time i would have spent it in interlaken, it just had such a good atmosphere and i met some great people.

one of them i was a little bit nasty to. poor jonathon, i convinced him that he really should come to jungfraujoch with me (its the top of europe) , i just failed to mention that the return trip was 170 euro!!! boy, did he whinge like a little bitch about it the whole day. but it was really good, we wandered about in the snow and the view was awesome. we tried to build a snow man but the snow was too powdery, it was like trying to build a sandcastle with dry sand. and there was also the ice palace which is all these rooms made out of ice filled with ice carvings, so we were sliding about there for ages which was fun.

anyway, so i had to leave as there was a big todo on my list. Amsterdam. It was a cool place, the whole red light district just smells like pot. I think I got half stoned just sitting in the lounge of the hostel I was in (it was a bit of a hovel), but I did go to a coffee shop with a couple of guys i met to make sure. We also did a tour of the town, the red light district, the van gogh museum and anne franks house. All good stuff, but there is heaps to do there, I could have spent a few more days at least. I never even got to ride a bike or see a windmill! But again, not enough time. So today I am off to France. So have a happy new years and talk to you in 2007!