Advertisement
Published: October 8th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Sunrise over the French Riviera
The perfect way to start our day Today started with us enjoying breakfast in our Hotel watching the sun rise over the French Riviera -not a bad way to kick things off! We then started our journey from Nice to Lucerne in Switzerland – soon we will have another country ticked off.
FRENCH PERFUME
Our first stop was Fragonard Perfume Factory outside of Nice. A small company that produces and markets its own products.
80% of the worlds perfume comes from France and this area is the centre of the industry. We had a brief tour of the factory with a guide who explained the process, one interesting fact was that it takes a tonne of flowers to produce 1 litre of scented oil. Then it was into the showroom so people could sample the perfumes and make purchases. Fortunately Jeanette couldn't find anything she liked.
A few people on tour get annoyed that we stop at commercial businesses and basically get a big sales pitch. On our UK/Ireland tour in general there was a much greater emphasis on demonstrating how the product is made etc. In Europe it's been much more a 5 minute demo (if that) and then 'buy this - have
Perfume Demonstration
Learning more about French Perfume manufacture we got a deal for you', sort of thing.
Having said that the places we go to are always the iconic industries of the area (Venice Glass, French Perfume, Turkish Rugs etc) and you know you are buying from one of the leading and most reputable firms. We have no problem with the system and bought our Venetian Glass from the people who did the Insight demo.
On the way north we skirted around the outskirts of Milan home of football heavyweights Inter and AC. The north is the economic powerhouse of Italy with much of its big industry based there; Milan, Turin and the port city of Genoa are the major economic drivers.
SWITZERLAND
We passed through the Swiss border with no problems. The Swiss are fiercely independent and not part of the EU. There currency is the Swiss franc which is worth roughly the same as the Aussie dollar. Most of our European holiday we have been able to use the Euro which is very easy – it must have been interesting travelling in the days when every country had its own currency.
There was a change in landscape with everything much greener and
Cheers
Two huge steins to kick off our traditional Swiss night out progressively more mountainous country. The highlight of the journey was a trip through the 17 km long Gotthard Road Tunnel in the Swiss Alps. It is one of the longest road tunnels in the world and seems to go on forever.
Not that we were off the coach much (we had over 650kms to travel for the day) but the temperature had certainly plummeted. We saw quite a lot of snow on the ground just above the level of the road and it snowed on the windscreen of the bus. The great weather we had experienced throughout the trip was behind us for sure, not that it wasn’t expected as we are back up in Northern Europe and at a reasonable altitude above sea level.
LUCERNE
Located on the banks of Lake Lucerne, Lucerne is the largest town in north west Switzerland (the German speaking part – in the south they speak Italian) and the 7000 metre Mt Pilatus dominates the skyline.
Our hotel is very comfortable, close to the centre of the city and is another with a top floor bar with great views – no need for a swimming pool here though!
Our excursion
Swiss Horn
Jeanette gives playing the Swiss Horn a go for the day was to a Swiss Beer haul for a traditional Swiss Dinner: cheese fondue, beer steins, music and yodelling (apart from the cheese fondue quite similar to out Austrian dinner in Innsbruck). We had a great time, the steins were huge, Jeanette got one as well and had a few sips to get into the atmosphere, not really her drink of choice though! We both ended up on the stage, Jeanette had a go at making music using the Swiss Mountain Horn – with good success and I gave yodelling a go in an ‘international’ yodelling contest–a lot of fun. At the end all the yodellers had to drink a beer (just a ½ pint) as quickly as possible, I held my own but with plenty of spillage!
For the last week of the tour we have got into the pattern of a big travel day then a two night stop so there is a full day and plenty of time to explore the City we are staying in. It also means it’s not ‘bags out’ for the coach every day which is a blessing in itself.
Tomorrow we head up to the top of Mt
International yodelling competition
Sharing a joke with some of the other competitors Pilatus weather permitting,at this stage that looks very doubtful as we have strong winds, rain and very cold temeratures at the moment. The high winds are the biggest worry as they stop the cable cars from running.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0677s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb