The wait was over

If there was one place that came to the top of the list on the Europe tour, it was Paris. The kids have been wanting to go see the Eiffel Tower and see Paris with dreamy eyes for at least a few years now. Many of their classmates have visited Paris over the years and they were itching to go.. 

It was surprising that they allowed us to start the Europe tour in a place other than Paris and waited till day 9 of the trip to go see the sights there.

The previous post on this series is here...

Day 9 came and we were on an all day tour of Paris which started with two hours at the Louvre. The tour covered three famous ladies including the Mona Lisa and three hallways and galleries.  The Louvre being huge, this was like a trailer for a movie.. a  two hour trailer! 

The Louvre was amazing. The entryways, the grand staircase below the glass pyramid, the hallways, the water fountains! (yes, they were a contrast to the Palace of Versailles where one could easily faint of dehydration), and the amazing art work were a treat. 

We also were fortunate to have a great tour guide for the day. This lady knew what she was talking about and paced things resaonably well.

We saw the Mona Lisa and took a selfie. There was a huge crowd just to get to take a selfie.. We did the "engaththu kaararum kutcherikku ponar" shot with the Mona Lisa.. I never realized the actual painting size was so small!! Once the guide told me that this was different from previous portrait styles in the day, I humbly bowed and moved on..

I was amazed by some of the art that I did not know about before.. the paintings were amazing as were the sculptures.. 

This one piece with the sunlight on the marble made the whole thing surreal.. how a person could sculpt something with marble like this is beyond me.. truly amazing.

The rest of the art looked vaguely repetitive because we had seen them at the Vatican or Uffizi or Vechchio museums or we had just seen the same stuff at the Versailles palace the previous day.

Here are slide shows from the Louvre Visit..

We were rushed to see as much as possible in two hours and were happy to be rushed. We absorbed what we could, told ourselves that someday we should just do a one week tour of the Louvre and walked out with the rest of the group.

It was time to go on a boat trip on the Sienne to see the Eiffel tower! 

The video that captured the entire days trip!

The video has the entire day 9.. will be breaking the other places we visited as separate posts..

It was a packed day!

When money is no object

We spent Day 8 of the Europe trip visiting the palace of Versailles. The previous post on this series is here..

It was a half day package tour with the driver of a minivan picking us up right outside our Air B&B and driving to Versailles. But the tour did not start till 10:30 in the monring. So we had to eat a heavy breakfast and go. We were to leave Versailles at 5PM and it would be close to 6:30 PM before we would make it back. 

Boo had mentioned that Saravana Bhavan was close to the train station. We checked on google maps and found that it was a 12 minute walk from our place. So off we went and were not disappointed. 

The Saravana Bhavan in Paris is really good. Way better than any of the other ones we have eaten at. By the time we walked back to our hotel, it was time to start. The van for our tour was ready. It was just the four of us and another family of 3 from Riverside. An guy who was much older than me who had a kid same age as Jr. Apparently he had money in Semiconductor hardware and had retired. He was giving me advice on how to follow in his footsteps and I was hoping for some nugget of wisdom and eventually realized that lady luck has to be on your side. 

Anyways, lets get back to Versailles. We went past the Louis Vutton building, Neiully s/ Siene (which appears repeatedly in the Jason Bourne movies) and went along the river and after an hour or more were at Versailles. The approach to the Palace said it all. It was a very hot day in that area and based on the crowds it was going to be a crazy day! and it was...

The driver told us that he will introduce us to our guide and be gone. He would leave exactly at 5 from the same place. We asked him if we would recommend any place to eat and he told us about this crepe place outside the palace. We made a mental note and went with a larger group of 34 people..

The palace is the worst when it comes to front entrace security and crowd control. There were at least a dozen tourguides with their groups all fighting to get in. They had time slots to enter and apparently the entire thing was off by one hour because of delays. Someone fainted because of dehydration in the heat. A Chinese tourguide picked a fight with the security and our tourguide was advising us to stay calm or we would never get in..There was no respite from the sun and we were out there for an hour almost. Finally we got in. 

The entrance to this place is grand as were all the art works and the corridors. Looks like the young king had all the money to dispose of and spared no effort to make this a grand palace. We saw a repeat of a lot of statutes we had already seen at the various museums in Italy and turns out he tired to import the same artists to build him the palace and was not so successful because of his temper tantrums. Our tour guide was annoying and our headsets had so much static that it made our head hurt. So we pretty much started wandering around with the group and just observing. We could get the history later..

We finished through the castle and went into a grand courtyard. This was beautiful as was the garden. 

This garden is huge with some amazing fountains and sculptures. We walked to the garden when we realized there was no water and there were no water fountains inside the Palace. There was water to be bought and ice cream to be had on the other side of the garden if we walked a mile. We walked as fast as we could and had some amazing ice cream and got water bottles. Now that we were ready to walk again, we wandered around the gardens with smiles on our faces.

They should have drinking water in a place like this. Even if they are trying to make money for water, they could at least make it available! we saw so many older people and kids suffering. It was a mixed bag, this Palace trip. A few umbrellas, some occasional shade and some water would have made all the difference. Here are three slide shows of photos from the Palace and gardens. 

After we made it out of the palace, we hit the crepe place. The road outside was much cooler thanks to all the trees that lined the road.

We took pictures while the crepes were being made..

and then had some crepes!

Then we headed back to Paris.

The kids wanted to eat something in the room. So San and me went back to Saravana Bhavan, had our fill and got some stuff for the kids to eat. 

It was an early to bed day because the next day was a tour from 7 to 7 with a hectic schedule.

Paris by night was interesting. We learned that the apartment building we were in was built in 1869! There was a lot of noise within and outside the building.

Good thing we were exhausted and were able to sleep right away!

The palace had great panoramic views.. 

and a video that captures our day in Versailles!

on to Day 9...

Visiting friends on a busy sightseeing trip.. a welcome break

Given that I have come back from Asia and had two more sick days (this is starting to sound like a broken record now) the long weekend is a welcome break. Staying at home, trying to do yoga, recovering nicely. 

That means every now and then I get to take a break from work and continue to post about the Europe trip that seems to have happened a long long time ago.. Going down memory lane to retrieve what happened is a good and happy exercise.

The previous post on the series is here..

On day 7 of the trip we went from Interlaken to Paris, but with a 5 hour stop at Basel in Switzerland to meet Boo and family!

Everytime we met she has been saying "if you come to Europe, you better visit!" and we always said "yes" and finally we made it to Europe and to Boo's!

We had a great time. I learned that Arugula can be put in Sambar and given my allergy history and I have never had Arugula before, ate it tentatively. It was tasty and my body did not react to it. So ended up eating a lot of it! 

Then we went on a tour of Basel with Boo doing the tour. She impressed us with her conversational German and we witnessed a lot more of Swiss hospitality while walking on the streets. Swiss seem to be a happy people in general!

Walked across the river to some historic buildings, had ice cream, macaroons and walked back just in time to get packing and to the main train station. Also learned that there was a thing called Bubble waffle! 

I got a great shot while we were on the bridge of the entire group. Placed the 5D on a statue on the bridge and everyone thought it was a bad idea. To top things off, just when we were all about to say "cheese" to the self timer, a tram went behind us at full speed. Was expecting the photo to be a wash.. turned out that the fast moving tram in the background gives us a crisp focus! learnt something that day!

Downtown Basel was quaint and cute.

Saw a beautiful park right next to the parking lot and the kids got to play there for 10-15 minutes.. and we were on our way!

We had a scare just before leaving their house when we saw in the news that all trains to Paris were cancelled because of a strike. Apparently Parisians are famous for striking at the drop of a hat. 

There was a package tour to the Palace of Versailles the next morning and it was imperative we made it to our Paris Air B&B that night. We planned some best and worst case scenarios and decided it was best to go to the train station and take it from there.

We went there to see the big display board flash on time for 19 trains and "cancelled" in red for the one train we were supposed to be on! Mr. Boo told us that we should go and ask the ticket rescheduling folks for options or refunds. There we were told that if we ran to a gate in 5 minutes, there was a trail to Mulhouse ville and from there trains to Paris were still running.. (that place was on the France side of the border). We ran, said bye and were on that train. There was one conductor who spoke English and was very nice. He told us that unfortunately that train was also cancelled.. but if we kept going on the same train to the last stop, there was another train from Stassbaugh (I forget the name) from which a train was still leaving for Paris!

Given we were screwed one way or another and with the tought of having to find accomodation last minute in a place we weren't planning on visiting, we said "okay, it is our turn to have another adventure". So we keep going on the same train.

Finally we got off and found that after 40 minutes there was indeed an almost empty train that was going to Paris. We made it to Paris while watching a glorious sunset across the fields from a high speed train.

We got off at Paris Est station and checked Google maps. The original train was to stop at Gare Du Nord station. Turned out our Air B&B was one street away from this Paris Est station and we kind of made up most of the hour we lost in going through extra trains!

A video that captures Day 7 of the trip!

The Air B&B was nothing like what the website promised. The whole two room place was incredibly small. The restroom including the shower was smaller than the bathroom on an United economy cabin. They must have used some really good fish eye lens to post those pictures of the place for the website. There was a bright side though. There was an amazing balcony as we were in the top floor and you could see up and down Rue de Magenta. 

It took us just an hour to get used to the confines of the apartment. Once we got used to it, the coziness grew on us. We were not exactly tired. We were all excited. It had been a good day.. smiles all around, some excitement, running across train platforms, walking through Parisian pavements in a line dragging our suitcases and finding that the place was alive and kicking at 11PM. 

The next day was going to be interesting.. Driver was supposed to pick us up bright and early outside our Air B&B to take us to Versailles! 

Reduced expectations are a good idea

Of all the days in the Europe trip (last post on series is here..) we had the most fun on Day 6. We left Zurich in the morning by bus (different tour guide this time but same Viator tours) and reached Interlaken. The views on the way were amazing, but it was raining non stop. 

After our adventure the previous evening at Mt. Titlis, we decided to not make a last minute option change to add 500+ bucks per person to go to The top of Europe .. aka JungFrau. We also had accomodation at Interlaken for the night. So we would not be returning to Zurich. So we said our byes to Zurich, tried to co-ordinate things with the guide, explained the situation and were on our way. The lakes were blue and clear and the reflections were beautiful. We had a restroom stop at Interlaken. It was interesting. Most folks had only Euro coins on them. To enter the restroom was 1 swiss frank. Most of the people were elderly and were desperate to get to the restroom. Some good samaritans stepped in and made sure that folks were able to get in. The whole thing was ridiculous. Finally after a lot of stress from a collective crowd the bus was boarded again and we were on our way to Grindelwald. 

Grindelwald is like the base for the train that goes up to the Top of Europe, but there are plenty of activities at this place. It is like a sports park of sorts with lot of mountain related adventure training places. One thing I always wanted to do here was go on a sled ride on the edge of the mountain after seeing some pictures of this posted by my friend Jessica a year ago. 

Many of us in the group were not going to JungFrau. So we were given a return ticket by train to Interlaken. We were to meet the bus at Interlaken... everyone else to go back to Zurich while we pick up our luggage from bus and leave the group. It was a good deal.

We were amazed by the scenery at Grindelwald, a river that cuts through the village, a gondola to go up another 3000 feet to the sled ride place, a restaurant at the top with a view to the Glacier and mountains, flower lined roads, cute houses.. it was like being in a fairytale! 

The only downside was the rain and low visibility of the mountains. The sled ride was also closed (it is called Pfingsteggbahn). We still had lunch at the restaurant and the food was good! Then we let the kids play in a little zip line for kids and got back down. 

We wandered around the main street in Grindelwald and asked about things that were unique to the place we could enjoy in 2 hours. The lady at the gondola told us about the Rope park which was built into an ice skating rink. The kids and San saw the advertisement and really wanted to check it out and we did.

It was a series of rope walking, climbing sets, set 80 odd feet above the ground. They had to go through a training session for 30 minutes and did 2 of the 3 courses. As soon as they were done, we went to the train station, got some ice cream and boarded the train to Interlaken.

Think the worse swiss ice cream is better than the best US ice cream. Local stores in villages are selling ice cream that is bringing me back memories as I write this post! If there is one thing that might make we want to just stay in Grindelwald inspite of the weather, it is the quality of the ice cream. 

By the time we reached Interlaken rail station, it was pouring down. We had to walk in rain for almost 25 minutes to reach the bus stop luggage drop off and we were almost an hour early. The only restaurant close to this stop which had food we could eat was a Hooters! I am not a big fan of Hooters (have been to one in Minnesotta many years ago) but the hot chocolate and TV playing the soccer game vs. the pouring rain outside was a no contest. We sat there and kept ordering fries, onion rings, more hot cocoa and eventually walked out. 

It was like magic. The rain stopped. The clouds moved out. We got a beautiful view of the glacier right from the park area in Interlaken.

Then the bus showed up and we asked the folks who went to JungFrau how it went. They said they could not see anything in the bad weather and it was a wash. We were very proud of our decision to stay and have fun at Grindelwald and started walking towards our Air B&B in Interlaken.

Given all the stuff they had eaten, the kids decided to skip dinner. So San and me left them in the house and took another walk back to the park to take pictures.

We stopped at an amazing chocolate store called Laderach and spent time there.

We also saw an advertisement for the place ... apparently it was a bond movie shooting location.  

Took more pictures and Panos..

 

bought some Chai to go at an Indian restaurant (there were 4 within sight at one intersection!)  and walked back to join the kids. 

We had a great evening in Interlaken once the rain stopped. It was so pleasant and nice and the colors came out as did all the people. One minute the place is deserted and next minute it was festive! 

Slideshows of pictures from Interlaken and Grindelwald ...

If you go to Switzerland, stay at Interlaken. Make that the base. If we go back, we will do just that. 

Here is a video of the days trip..

The next day we walked 20 minutes with our suitcases to the main train station only to find the trains first stop was right outside our Air B&B in the 2nd little Interlaken train station! We did a facepalm and moved on. The kids would not stop talking about how we woke them early on the pretext of having to walk 25 mintues to the train station in the morning dragging our luggage only to cross the starting point. 

Hopefully they do better at traveling than we do when they get to this age.. 

To be continued.. 

Colgategate

You would think that after 58 trips to Asia, you have seen it all. Then you come across something new..

The hotel has the usual stuff on the bathroom sink. 

Except now the paste and brush are in a box labelled "Dental Kit". Okay, I think. Someone new in marketing trying to copy things from a fancy hotel to a local China hotel. 

Then I open the box and in there is a paste that I don't give a second thought to. The usual is a Colgate paste and a simple toothbrush. This one with a white cap instead of the usual red but for some reason it doesn't raise a flag.

There is always a small Aluminum foil seal that you have to open before accessing the toothpaste. Still groggy and jet lagged (it is 3:30 AM and I want to brush my teeth before eating San's Ziplock packed Idlis), I pull out the Aluminum foil and then press the tube, but nothing comes out!

Turns out the entire mouth of the tube is sealed in plastic, kind of like the shaving kit in other hotels. So I try to poke the plastic out by pressing the tube into the other side of the red plastic cap which has a sharp point and in the process, the cap cuts my finger!

I was swearing about the degrading quality of Colgate and how monopolies create bad quality eventually etc. etc. in my head and look at the paste.. and realized it is a local Chinese toothpaste. It did say on the tube to use the pokey end to open. But it was not easy to open. The same thing with the brushes.. The Colgates are being replaced by local no name brands. 

Another hotel now just has "toothpaste".. that looks like Colgate (same colors, similar packaging) but it is just that we dont have anything more on the tube. God knows what is in it!

In past trips, I have brought back the brushes and used them for two weeks and throw them before going out on next trip. One thing about international travel every three weeks is that I am finally following my dentists advice on getting new toothbrushes on a regular basis!  which brings us to..

yes.. combs as well. I get a new comb every three weeks. It is something of a joke as on the recent trip, this was found in the hotel room in Italy just when I was doing a final check before checking out..

Have started looking at the paste to see what it is that I am putting into my mouth first thing in the morning and have been surprised.. 

These are all clever disguising strategies but if you cannot open the thing easily, it is not a good product, marketing and copying of the red and blue colors not withstanding.

It is time to check the bags and take my own toothpaste or take my own travel paste going forward!