26/8/10 to 28/8/10 France

Good bye Asia, hello Europe! We flew to Geneva via Cairo (of course) and got there 17 hours later. We had a while to hang out at the airport before getting picked up by our friends and spent our time sorting our money (I now have US dollars, Australian dollars, Indonesian rupia, Singapore dollars, Thai bhat, Swiss francs and Euros in my change purse). We also faced some logistical challenges with charging our electronics...

This is the current system of plug and voltage converters, the last piece of which is a sketchy Indonesian job that shoots sparks whenever you plug something into it. I had to hold the string of plugs up to keep the system working. Needless to say, we got some strange looks.

So, now that we are in France, we've been trying to learn French and are failing miserably. We've been writing what we need to say down on our hands, cheat sheet style, but when it comes time to actually interact with the French, both of us tend to panic and have reverted to Spanish several times. Oops. We are staying in a gorgeous small village in the French Alps called Montagny (Mom – it's near Moutiers if you are trying to find us on a map). It's got great character but there's no “on-glay” here. We're going to be struggling when our friends (one of whom speaks French) leave and we are left to our own devices.

After getting settled in for a day, we all drove up to Chapieux and took a hike along a portion of the Mont Blanc circuit. We actually made it into Italy! Bellisimo!