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Published: August 23rd 2006
Hi Guys.
Well, we made it on the big Europe Summer thing, and all that. It was awesome and it was great to finally get to see some of the countries we had been wondering about for years. There were a few places that we would love to go back to, and some places where one visit was enough, but it was all worthwhile and we made it back safely last night. Vaughan is already off to work again today so I feel a bit sorry for him, so I’ll try working hard too by getting on with this travel blog, and you can all see what we have been up to - it’s pretty hard work as well. Hope you have all been safe and well, and we look forward to catching up with you all in the next few weeks. So here’s the exciting action that was our trip - I’m just remembering it off the top of my head, so hopefully I don’t miss anything out. Good luck with reading the novel!
PS - Unfortunately we discovered tonight that we have managed to lose the digital camera with most of our holiday pictures on it, somewhere
between leaving the B&B in Amsterdam and arriving back home in London. We think it has slipped out of Vaughan’s bag somewhere, as it was in the same pocket that all our tickets and passports were in, so he was in and out of there quite a lot. The camera case was the same colour as the bag so we may not have noticed it - we are pretty sure it wasn’t stolen. This means that we now don’t have pictures of a lot of what we have done (from Florence onwards), but will try to get our films developed and put to onto CD so that we can share them with you. It’s a real shame as we took the digital camera to a lot of places that we didn’t take the other camera to, but it’s not a total loss. I hope you enjoy what we do have anyway, and I will put up this first blog until we figure out about the other photos.
Zurich, Switzerland: July 27th - 29th
Day 1 - Well, it was ‘all actions go’ on the morning we left to fly out for Zurich. Our flight was due to
depart just after 8am but as we were flying out of Gatwick Airport, which is quite far from us, we had to leave the house by 5am to take all the various trains we needed to get there in time. I set the alarm for 3:30am so we could shower, pack, eat breakfast, etc. I kept waking up as I was so paranoid that the alarm wouldn’t go off. I must have been psychic because that was exactly what happened - luckily I decided to check the time at one point, just about having a heart attack when I saw it was 4:30am!! We managed to race around & get sorted out in that half an hour so we could leave in time, but what a rush!
Thankfully we made our flight just fine & arrived in central Zurich around lunchtime. It took Vaughan 20 minutes to lose all the maps that I had photocopied for our trip, & we hadn’t even arrived in the city from the airport yet! We sussed out a few things in the main train station, as we were going to train around Europe from Zurich, & we needed to know how all the
systems & timetables & stuff worked. The train station was massive, about the size of Christchurch international & domestic airports put together, so we both felt a lot better when we figured out where a few things were. From there we found our hostel, which was right in the middle of the ‘old town’ area, on a cobbled pedestrian street full of great restaurants. The hostel wasn’t bad for what we paid - quite new, with a kitchen on each floor & an internet computer in the reception area. Shame it was up 5 floors with no lift, as it was quite hot - lucky us 😊
It looked like most other buildings in the area are designed for the snow season - steep roofs with no overhang, & shutters on all the windows - it was interesting to see the architecture of other countries. They also had these amazing flower boxes hanging off all the windowsills that made the place look so bright! We went for a walk around ‘old town’ to see where things were, first taking in the main street area with all it’s ‘high street’ stores, which we were used to seeing in London. We
ventured down to a couple of massive clock towers, as Zurich seemed to be full of them - the main one that is a summer attraction for tourists was closed for renovations, so we just looked at them from the outside. One has the biggest clock face in the world, I think - quite massive really. We enjoyed just wandering around, as the streets weren’t full of hurrying people (like in London), and it was easy to walk without crashing into people or being stood on. Much more relaxing! We noticed in the shops that almost everyone in Zurich speaks 3 or 4 languages. When you say ‘hello’ in whatever language you speak, they instantly switch to your language - it was quite impressive!
We had a look down at the waterfront, as Zurich is in front of the Swiss Alps, offering a fantastic view - the melted snow runs down into Lake Zurich which is right by ‘old town’, & then a river runs off it, through the city - really quite pretty with all those mountains in the background! The lake was fantastic - it was a hot sunny day and people were just sitting on the
edge of the lake in the sun. The lake is surrounded by concrete edging, kind of like a wharf, so you can dangle your legs over. There were gardens and flowers everywhere, and the water was clean and very blue. You could see right down to the bottom, and I didn’t even see one piece of rubbish floating around in the water the whole time we were there, nor lying around on the street anywhere. It was just so clean and beautiful! One other cool thing that we noticed was that there were these water fountains everywhere - apparently there are 1100 of them just in Zurich! They were different sizes & heights (some even had a lower level so your pets could drink from them) but they all sprayed out fresh clean lake water from a nozzle, and everyone could drink from them or fill up water bottles or whatever. It was great - we never needed to buy water while we were there. It was really hot so it was nice finding a fountain every 100 metres or so and just splashing your face!
In the evening we went and had a better look around the restaurants
in the cobblestone area near our hostel - there were so many places to choose from. It was hard to estimate how much it might cost for anything as Zurich has their own currency (they are not part of the EU so they don’t use Euros). We ended up eating some traditional food at a place that seemed like more of a local’s bar, but we sat outside - no one seems to eat until after 9pm in Europe, and it was still nice and warm outside. Vaughan had schnitzel & I had bratwurst sausage, which both came as huge meals with heaps of side dishes. Nice one Zurich!
Day 2 - Today we had to get a few things sorted out for our train departure the next day. The pass we were using had to be validated the day before the first day of travel, so we had another walk to the train station. While we were there we were changing some money in an exchange place and I found an envelope on the counter with heaps of money in it. I wanted to keep it but thought it might have belonged to the guy who had
been standing there filling out a form, who had now moved over to another counter, so I just handed it in. It would have been nice to keep since I don’t get paid anything over the holiday break! Oh well 😊 We had another walk down the main street and then went down to some markets at the bottom, near the lake. The markets are only on once a week I think so we were lucky to be there on the right day. The markets mainly sold amazing and brightly coloured flowers and bakery foods, as well as all kinds of vegetables, Swiss cheeses and meats (or ‘Heidi food’, as Vaughan kept calling it). There was so much variety - it all looked & smelled great! Since we were by the lake we decided to see if we could go on a boat ride, as it was free with our Eurail (train) tickets. We managed to jump onboard one that was leaving straight away - it was a small ferry type boat, so we stopped at various locations around the lake to pick people up and drop them off, but it was really good and it was nice to see
the town and all it’s bridges and clock towers etc, from out on the lake. After that we went to a local store and tried Swiss chocolate and truffles. SO good, but we resisted spending all our money there. I also had a Swiss pastry at a bakery in the afternoon.
We went back to the hostel for a rest as it was just so hot by that time (the sun wasn’t out all the time but the air was still hot) and then went back out in the early evening. We went to the supermarket and got some fresh bread, salami and Swiss cheese, and just walked down to a park by the lake to eat it. It was really nice at that time of night, sitting in the sun on the grass. We had another wander around the cobblestone areas and also some of the bridges around the city afterwards. I thoroughly enjoyed Zurich for it’s friendly people, nice outdoor spaces and clean environment - it was just so easy to be there and I would love to go back in Winter sometime to see all the alps covered in snow! No wonder Zurich is meant to
have the highest quality of life in the world - I could definitely live there! 😊
Zurich - Nice, France: July 29th - 31st
Day 3 - We jumped up in the morning to get to the train station to depart on our first train trip, through Switzerland (via Geneva), and down to France, where we would arrive in Nice (pronounced ‘niece’), which is on the South Coast of France in an area known as the French Riviera. The train we were on was a huge, brand new, double-decker thing, so we sat on the top deck so we could see better. The journey was awesome - Switzerland was really hilly, with lots of forests & farming animals (especially sheep and cows) and also wheat type crops. They were all organised in these neat multicoloured squares. There were also a few tunnels, and when we came out of one of the bigger ones, Lake Geneva was right in front of us, looking just as nice as Lake Zurich (but bigger) - immediately we noticed that the area was used for growing grapes. They were everywhere! Geneva looked like a really nice place to stay as well, so
maybe we will get back there one day!
Going across the border to France, the trains do not stop (only if you are going to/coming from a non-EU country) so we chugged on south. France seemed very flat in comparison to Switzerland, & almost desert-like in areas. There seemed to be a lot of houses grouped together in tiny towns, with fields around them that were quite dry and barren. When there were trees, they seemed less like commercial forests & more like native bush. The houses here didn’t seem to have shutters on the windows, but they all had nice balconies on the top storey and most had swimming pools. Many of the fields had sunflowers and wheat products growing in them. I guess the sunflowers were grown to make sunflower oil - there were miles and miles of them, all over Europe in fact. They were so bright and nice to look at while travelling. There was also a lot of industry that we could see from the train tracks, so France seemed a bit ugly at first in some ways. We went through a place called Marseilles, which must have been the biggest dump I have
seen in ages. All the houses looked like they had had a bomb drop on them, every available inch of space was covered in graffiti, and there was so much rubbish around that people were practically wading in it. So crazy - at least we weren’t staying there! As we got closer to the coast, the flat barren land gave way to steep cliffs and rock formations, like on the port hills in Christchurch - of course this meant that the train had to go through a lot of tunnels, and when we emerged we were on the coast! We went through Cannes (where they have the film festival every year) when we were almost at Nice. Cannes is on the French Riviera too and it looked totally luxurious - huge mansions and nice beaches! The whole coast was nice with heaps of places for swimming, and miles of beach set up with deck chairs and umbrellas. Some of the sections of beach were ‘private’ so you had to pay to get in but you got your own umbrella & deck chair to yourself. We arrived in Nice and made it to our hotel which was close to the station.
It was incredibly hot (over 35 degrees) and our room didn’t have air conditioning, which we desperately needed as it was just so humid.
We had a quick walk down to the beach which took about 20 minutes to reach. It had a big boardwalk above it so you could look down on all the people sunbathing and swimming. Across the road were tons of hotels, apartments & restaurants (most with nice outdoor tables). It was getting dark but it was still hot and everyone was still in the water. I got some ice-cream and we just kind of wandered around, also taking in the cobbled pedestrian streets a few blocks away, mostly containing restaurants too, as well as a few tourist stores. It was quite nice just having a look at that time of day.
Day 4 - Today we wanted to have a look around the coast so we took an extra train and went east to Monaco, where they have the Grand Prix. The train journey itself was amazing as all the beaches were so beautiful. It was very hilly and filled with millions of timeshare apartments, but it was kind of cool being
there. We went up to the palace which was on top of a hill (of course) and watched the ‘changing of the guard’, which was a very short ceremony and not overly worth waiting around for, but it was still good. We went back down the bottom to the water and had a look at some super yachts, and Vaughan got to walk on part of the Grand Prix racetrack - yay! 😊 Then we headed back as we wanted to have more of a look around the central area of Nice. We made it to the main square and believe it or not, the entire thing was being dug up for some reason and all you could see was dirt and fencing! In fact the entire main street was also in the same condition and it was really hard to get to the shops, so most of them were closed! Shame! We went down to another pedestrian street that was closer to the city centre and had a look at all the restaurants there - so many outdoor tables! Vaughan found an Irish bar so of course he wanted to get a Guinness. We ended up staying there for
a few hours as the Grand Prix was on TV (I’m not sure where it was being held but it wasn’t Monaco) & there was great air conditioning in the bar! The bar tenders were actually Irish and quite friendly to talk to. From there we went down to the beach again but we were at the other end, so we walked all the way back down the boardwalk. The beach wasn’t that nice, as it wasn’t sandy like most beaches on the Riviera and had heaps of stones (big ones that hurt your feet and were hard to walk on). We still decided to go for a swim when we got back to the part of the beach closest to our hotel - there were so many people in the water and all kinds of boating and parasailing going on. The water was fairly clean and it got deep quickly so you only had to walk a few metres and you were up to your shoulders. It was really warm though, and since it was so hot outside in the air, we stayed in the water for several hours, until dinnertime. Then we went back and got changed and
came back to the beach to have some dinner in one of the restaurants with outdoor tables. It was really nice - even though we were in France we both had Italian food. Perhaps we were just preparing ourselves for our next mission to….surprise, surprise….Italy! It was a pleasant evening and great to have a swim again, as there is nowhere to really swim around London. Apart from the heat, Nice wasn’t too bad, but we were looking forward to our week in Italy. And the trip goes on……still 21 days to go! 😊
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Marianne
non-member comment
Itchy. itchy feet
Once again you've mamaged to fit so much into your travels, even though Europe is so close to the UK there are so many cultures and tastes to explore. Can't wait to here read the next episode. Love to you both. Take care