We arrived at London Heathrow on Tuesday night at 9:45pm from Istanbul and proceeded to the car rental area where we loaded up a car and I took the wheel - on the right side of the car - and settled back into driving on the left (for those of you unaware one of my favorite places to drive is London). There was little time for enjoyment because we started Wednesday morning with the first of four school visits (ambitious in London, but someone was watching over us). We took the Tube, or the Underground, a few stops and visited American School in London at 8:15am, then we went back (on the Tube) to our hotel, grabbed our bags, and piled in the car and drove - on the left - out to our other three school visits in the west suburban areas of Greater London. The last visit was wrapped up around 4:00pm and we had an hour - yes, a whole hour - to putz around before returning the rental car, so since we were in a familiar area, I thought the three newbies to London would like to see Windsor Castle.
The pictures up above include Windsor Castle, and you can read about that in last fall's blog post about London (we did much more sight-seeing), but we also walked along the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park. The Long Walk extends for 5km from Windsor Castle, through the grounds of the Great Park, which used to be the royal hunting ground for Windsor Castle from the 12th century until the 1950s when it was made a public park.
We departed London Heathrow for Geneva and arrived Wednesday evening after 10:00pm. We rented a car again in Switzerland, but it wasn't as exciting because they drive on the right, but there was some excitement (see ahead). On Thursday we visited schools in Geneva, Luasanne, and the villages in the 45 minutes between the two cities along the shore of Lac Leman. One of the most prestigious schools we visited was Institut Le Rosey, a boarding school that costs $80,000 annually and has graduated kings and queens for years. Another school we visited was La Chat, and they had a display of paper mache cows in their school library (could you be more stereotypical Swiss school?):
Friday was a great day because we went up into the Alps about two hours east of Geneva to visit more boarding schools. The first school was Leysin American School, in the town of Leysin, now a resort but it was known for its sanitoriums for tuberculosis. The town is almost 4,500 ft in the Alps and Leysin American just moved to a new - still under renovation - campus:
The building used to be the Grand Hotel de Leysin, which was originally built as the main sanitorium for treating tuberculosis. Everyone and anyone came to Leysin to be treated, and the hotel had visitors like Gandhi. There is a private train line that connected the hotel to the main train line in town, so, as we found out, that guests with TB could arrive and be taken into the sanitorium without being recognized. The place was so cool and the views of the Alps amazing:
That second picture, if you hadn't guessed, is of me and my three travel companions. After visiting Leysin we headed into the Alps on our way to Villers where a second boarding school is located. Dane, who was in charge of setting up the visits on this portion of the trip, had found a "short cut route" from Leysin to Villers that did not involve us going down and back up into the mountains again (as we did last year). So, we followed the route, and at first it was fine, look at these pictures (ah, the Alps):
But, we started to climb higher and higher in the Alps, the road lost its pavement markings, and then there was no traffic and it was secluded and there were some minor rock slides on parts of the road. We kept going, and then we reached the snow line and there was snow on the road...still going though, we had a Volkswagon, so it was going fine. Until, the incline of the road and the depth of the snow caused the car to stop moving forward. Whoops, so much for the short cut that seems to be on the crest of the Alps. I had to back up for about a half mile before there was room to turn around and head back down, below the snow line, below Leysin, to the valley and then back up to Villers on a marked road with traffic winding through a mountain valley. The one positive is that we had a little fun (in hindsight) and got some gorgeous pictures of the Alps in all their glory.
That was the third long day, and we completed the 11th school visit in three days, in two countries, so we were pretty exhausted. Buuuut, not too exhausted to help out the Swiss with a little road maintenance work...
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