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.. 

We made a "final family video"

This is part of the Europe trip posts.. The previous post on this series of the trip to Mt. Titlis is here..

Our adventure on top of Mt. Titlis deserves a post by itself.

We had reached the top, and started walking to the "glacier walk". That meant going up the Ice Flyer. 

The kids wanted to go on their own and we said "NO". That actually turned out to be a good decision.

A lot of people were turning back because there was no visibility. The traveling Narayanans were not going to turn back. Not when their leader was wearing shorts and a T-shirt to Mt. Titlis. 

So we went, sat on a ski lift type thingy with a pull down plastic cover that comes almost to the waist and the operator gave a tap on the plastic shield and off we went..

We settled in and took this picture.. we were all smiles..

It was a fast steep climb and after just a few seconds on the thing, hail started hitting our feet and the shield. The noise level was unbelievable. When we reached the top, we could not even put our foot down because everything had frozen and the operator at the top told us "you are not getting down here. the ride is closing and you have to keep going down". So we sat on it as it turned around and started coming back down. A flash of lightning and boom, the transformer was out. 

We were just hanging in there for a good 15 minutes with hail and snow coming down. I slowly stopped feeling things below my knees.. then after a few minutes below my waist. My reproductive system I could not care less about, but my ankles and knees and hips.. how will I do yoga? lots of thoughts going through my mind.. when the family started thinking out aloud.. 

one girl started praying to Vembadi Vinayagar (the local Chennai temple favorite) and another girl started talking about her last days on the planet.. we made a video while being stuck on the lift.. and then the backup power came on and very slowly we got down to the stop. There were folks stuck in the operator room (almost 40 of them) and all of them cheered when we came down. Then two more lifts came and we cheered. Apparently four lifts were stuck out there for some time and they were working very hard to get everyone down. 

The view below from the stuck lift.. blue glacial ice!

The organizers of the place told us they did not expect the storm to move in so fast and that usually they will close the ride the minute they see a storm like that move in. We told them we were good and got an adventure and will remember this for a long time. The lady smiled and said "unfortunately none of you can walk back to the building because there are still lightning strikes. please wait till we get an all clear"

We joined the crowd in a small room at the base of the lift and waited for almost 30 minutes before we were all escorted at a slow pace to the main five story building. 

We were badly in need of some warming up. A hot cocoa had never looked so appealing in my entire life. After a few minutes and a realization that we were about to miss the ride down, we ran. 

We were the talk of the bus as everyone had heard about the four lifts that got stuck. At least we made it up and came down.. most folks just ended up spending the entire time in the five story building with restaurants and shops watching the hail pound on the glass. 

This hilarious video pretty much caught the whole thing in bits and pieces.. wish I could have subtitles for it.. 

All said and done, Vembadi did his job.. we were back and had an interesting family adventure! 

This definitely helped change plans for the next day. We were to visit Grindelwald and possibly go to the "Top of Europe" or "JungFrau" but given the weather, we decided it was pointless to do the same thing again the next day and pay 500+ $ / person to go up that mountain on a train... 

turned out to be a wise decision. We actually ended up having a great time in Grindelwald.. that will be tomorrows post..