Tag: water

Switzerland is pretty, aka, an introduction to Lausanne

The early morning, jet-lagged view from our apartment in Lausanne/Ouchy.

We went to Europe! Our family (me, my husband, our daughter) traveled in Europe for two weeks. First, we went to Lausanne, where it was hot and we had a lovely 4th floor apartment near Lake Geneva. The view was great, and being near the water kept things a little cooler than they might otherwise have been.

The first morning there, while my husband and I were up and ready to go and our teenaged daughter, um, wasn’t, we went for a walk to see a bit of the city. We actually mostly stuck to the shoreline. It was lovely.

I personally enjoyed this fountain of three horses fighting over who has the best access to the water.

This is apparently the hotel you stay at in Lausanne if you are royalty, rich, and/or famous. We did not stay there.

There were lots of wild swans. I chose not to get to close. Swans are dangerous.

There is a lot happening on the shoreline at Lausanne. When the Romans founded the town, this is where they started things. But after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 400s CE, the people remaining moved up into the mountains. (Lausanne is incredibly hilly. Being in the Alps will do that.) So the Old Town isn’t here, and there was plenty of room for development when the time came around.

I’ll be spacing out posts from our trip, with a different thing to do on different days. I’ll post restaurant recommendations as I come across them. Enjoy!

Climate change won’t be pretty

The Water Knife

What’s it about?
It’s Phoenix, AZ sometime in the future. There’s no water – because of climate change the drought is never-ending. Las Vegas and California are the two big cheeses when it comes to groundwater and (especially) the Colorado River. There are three interacting story lines. First, Angel is the titular water knife, a guy from Las Vegas who will do anything to make sure his city gets water. Including going to Phoenix to see who has what water around there. Second, Lucy, a reporter bound and determined to get the real story – not just the click-bait-y stories – about the politics around water rights and who gets what. And third, Maria, a teenager from Texas – which has even less water than Arizona – who’s just trying to stay alive.

Why should you read it?
The Water Knife is noir-y and grittier than I usually read and recommend. But this is good. I like the noir bits: the world isn’t always a clean place and people are often greedy. Especially in a place where there’s not enough to go around.

Look, I live in California and we are on our fourth year of drought. There’s some evidence that there will be a rainy winter this year, but there’s also a prediction that that rain is going to go north of us. We may not see it. The Water Knife is an interesting take on what a waterless West might end up looking like, particularly if there’s a weak national government. It’s worth reading.