Dear English readers,

First of all, I would like to apology for not having given you any news since the beginning of our trip.

The fact is that we mainly spent these first 6 weeks in the States, so I’m assuming that you already know everything about what we discovered.

I promise I will give you more news once we will leave USA.

To summarize these first weeks:

We spent a few days in New-York, which we found quite dirty, noisy and stressful.

Of course, New-York will always be New-York and we have to admit that we enjoyed part of it.

The next two weeks were spent in a RV, driving first to Canada (Ontario and Québec) and then back to USA (Niagara Falls and Chicago).

This was quite an experience too.
I think that two weeks is the maximum I can bear, living in about 10 square meters with 5 other people, especially when it’s raining.

Montreal and Québec are beautiful cities. They appear much quieter than New-York and people look more relax too.

We also spent a few days in the 1000 islands, a region at the border between the state of New-York and the Ontario.

All these islands on the St-Laurent river just look amazing and peaceful.

We all were very impressed by the Niagara Falls too.

How to imagine such a quantity of water going each second through the falls?
I understand why Americans are so proud of it.

Chicago was a very good surprise. We were expecting an other big city, with the usual disadvantages of such cities, but were pleasantly surprised.
The city center is very well maintained: buildings with modern architecture, beautiful parks and very interesting museums.
We would recommend the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium and the Millenium Park.

Our stay in Chicago was too short and we will definitely come back in a few years.

But the West Coast was waiting for us.

Our friend René was just getting married in LA during the time we were there.
We therefore attended to a beautiful wedding in an old Mexican colonial house.

We then of course spent some time in Disneyland and California Park, had a look at Santa Monica beach, Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

We are now in Utah in the middle of the National Parks.

We spent great days visiting Mesa Verde, Monuments Valley, Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Zion Park, Bryce Canyon and many others.

This huge region is just amazing and the beauty of the nature can not be described with words.
You have to come here and see it by yourself to really understand how we can feel.

Tomorrow, I will spend some money in Las Vegas. Hopefully, I will not loose half of our trip budget on a black-jack table.

Will give you some more news in a few days.

Here is finally the English version.

Sorry for English speakers, but they will suffer a certain delay in getting “fresh” news from our trip.

(Why don’t you try to learn some French?)

Let’s start from the beginning:

No doubt that luggage for 6 people takes a lot of space on the train station platform.
There is not much left for the other passengers.

Nevertheless, the total weight of our luggage was well below the estimate provided by some of our friends (who were maybe thinking that we were taking the washing machine and the bicycles with us).

84,5 kgs

This is the exact weight that you should have chosen to win the bottle of champagne.

And the winners are:
Jérémie Girod in the category « Noble » and Frédo Vasserot in the category « other friends ».

We immediately recognise the experts in backpacking.

Check-in in Geneva went without too much trouble.
Starting from London, things started to complicate (with one and a half hour delay to take off) and it’s in New York that we fully appreciated the zeal of the US custom authorities.

Conclusion:
Instead of arriving to the hotel at around 7pm, we arrived at 10pm (4am Lausanne time). Children were tired and happy to arrive.

To follow our trip in images, please visit regularly our photo gallery at:

http://www.favrefamily.ch/photos/