I'm home!

Hi, everyone... I arrived home in Toronto a few hours ago.  I'm super exhausted and I'm going to bed.  I had a wonderful trip and it was made extra special by visits to Heather and Dina.  

But I'm fucking knackered (as the British would say), so I'm not going to write anymore.  I might do one last blog to give my impressions of all the cities and countries I went to, but until then... good night!

Last day in London

So today was my last official day of vacation (tomorrow really doesn't count since I fly out at 3pm, so I need to leave for the airport at 12pm at the latest (will likely leave at 11:30am to be safe).  

I had dinner at Dina's house last night and she made her famous Gruyere and caramelized onion tart which was delicious (I say "famous" since I've had this when she used to live in Toronto). This morning, one of her friends that she used to work with at BBC had started his own tour company based on famous murders in London, so we decided to go.  He focused this particular tour to a neighbourhood called Soho.  His tour is called Murder Mile and he has clearly done a lot of research on his subject, is an excellent writer and is quite passionate about his subject and a good actor.  It was extremely entertaining and given that my feet are about to quit me and doing another walking tour after my Trafalgar tour was a bit of a dangerous prospect, I found this guy's tour slogan to be right up my alley... "Less walking, MORE MURDERS!"  We definitely got at least a mile or two in, but we heard about a lot of serial killers and murderers just in this area.  Since this guy happened to be a friend of my friend, he chatted with us about the fact that he plans to write other tours about other areas of London and that there are no end to interesting serial killer and other murder stories in London.  I don't doubt it.  London is an endlessly fascinating city for many reasons.

Next we headed off to Piccadilly Circus to go to BAFTA for lunch and drinks.  We couldn't go when I first arrived since BAFTA closes every August for renovations, so that is why I ended up going to The Groucho Club and Café Royal at the beginning of my trip since BAFTA has an arrangement with some private clubs (for arts & culture types) for the month of August.  Not sure if I mentioned that back then but we did.  In any case, since the end of my trip put me into September, BAFTA re-opened to their members, so we went today for lunch.  It was very very good and while we didn't see anybody famous (which I very much doubted we would because why would a famous person go there unless they had some kind of business meeting that asked them to be there?), but there were loads of people by the time we left and they must have all been industry types since that is a requirement of BAFTA membership. In fact on the way out, Dina ran into a BBC producer that she knows who was on his way in.  In any case, it was fun to go somewhere that, as Dina likes to say, "HCP's" (Horrible Common People) can't go to.  Not to be snobby, but it's just nice to go to a place where the general public can't enter in the middle of one of the biggest tourist traps in London (Piccadilly Circus).

Lastly, we hit Waitrose and Marks & Spencers one last time so I could get groceries to bring back to Canada.  Then we went to Dina's for dinner and drinks.

Now I am back in the flat and it's midnight at the moment (I've spent about an hour writing this blog) and I don't want to go to sleep since I don't want my last night in London to end, even if I'm in a flat and I can't really go out.  In any case, I'm going to sign off so I can enjoy at least one hour in this flat and I'll write one last blog tomorrow when I arrive home.

Peace out!

Back in Blighty!

No big blog tonight because essentially all day was travelling to Charles de Gaulle airport to drop off half the tour group to fly home from Paris.  Then they drove the rest of us to London and dropped us at Waterloo station at 4pm (which is right beside the Trafalgar office and, for those of you who don't know, is a very very central London subway station).  I had so many shopping bags plus a backpack, purse and suitcase that I got a black cab to my flat in Battersea because it was much easier given the weight of my baggage. 

Once I got there, I headed to the post office that I knew was about two blocks away that has mailing boxes and I bought the biggest one and started pouring out my bags on the floor of my AirBNB. At this point in the night, I have figured out what I need to ship back as opposed to put in my luggage just to keep it safe (and Tara, that is definitely the Baser Lackerli that will be in the shipping box because if it goes in my suitcase, it will be crushed), but I'm going to post it back to myself with a signature and on a fairly fast parcel service so hopefully I'll get it this week at the office (I addressed it to the office).

Anyway, it's almost midnight here in London, so time for me to go to bed, but tomorrow my friend, Dina, has great plans for me - we are going to Soho for a tour of the most famous murders of that area and then we are going to the private members-only club at BAFTA for lunch and drinks (Dina is a member of BAFTA if you are wondering how we got in).

I may or may not post tomorrow, but I fly out on Sunday at 3pm London time and arrive at 5:40pm EST.  So basically I'll be back on Sunday night.  I'll call people or text you to let you know I'm back.

That's all for today!

A day in Paris

Today, I spent the full day in Paris.  This is my first attempt at posting a video and it's from the end of the day when we took the Seine cruise.  After dark, on every hour, the Eiffel Tower isn't just illuminated - it sparkles.  So this video is from when we cruised by at 10pm.  Hopefully it will play for you - let me know in the comments if it doesn't.  

Me at the Eiffel Tower

We started the day with a bus tour that took us through all of the major Paris attractions - the Champs d'Elysée, a fancy designer street where the Plaza Athenée hotel is located (this hotel has been in many movies), the Arc du Triomphe, the "Les Invalides" military hospital/place where Napolean is buried, the Concorde square and the Grand and Petit Palais.  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but there is a LOT to see in Paris.  We also took a slight break from Hitler to hear about the exploits of Napolean - another European megalomaniac with narcissistic personality disorder. 

Then we went directly to the Eiffel Tower to meet our French local guide.  She took us to the 2nd floor (we didn't have tickets to go all the way to the top) and we got about 20 minutes up there.  One thing I never knew about Paris is that skyscrapers are outlawed and there is only one (not sure why the exception).  There is a suburb called "La Defense" that is all skyscrapers and that is where my hotel is - it's apparently some kind of business/commercial centre and since it's not actual Paris, the skyscrapers are allowed there.  In any case, Paris is all low-rise buildings and fancy historical cathedrals and other structures.  Almost everything is made out of a white stone and has iron wrought balconies on every window. It really makes the city unique.

Before you go into the Eiffel Tower, there are all kinds of African guys constantly coming up to you to sell cheap Eiffel Tower statues and scarves with maps of Paris, as well as watches with the Eiffel Tower on the face (and many of my tour companions bought these, but I honestly don't know why) - and that's not even to mention the gypsies who come up to you to take a fake survey (they always start by asking "do you speak English?" and then if you take their survey, they suddenly start asking for money and/or one of their friends is helping themselves to stuff in your purse while you're not paying attention). You're supposed to just say "Non!" very forcefully and walk away.  What was pretty hilarious though was one of these gypsies approached one of the Australian guys on the trip and asked him if he spoke English, and he completely seriously turned around and said in a thick Aussie accent, "No I don't speak English" and walked away - she looked utterly confused, but it was hysterical to watch.

After the Eiffel Tower, we went for a walk around the Latin Quarter.  I had assumed this meant it was where the Spanish live in Paris.  Wrong.  It is just because in the olden days, a lot of different cultures lived in this quarter of Paris and the only language they had in common was Latin, so that is what they spoke.  Nowadays, it's a student area since it is near the Sorbonne and there are loads of restaurants from many different ethnicities. After that, we visited Notre Dame cathedral - another fancy church on my "fancy churches of Europe" tour.  

Once we were released into the wild for the afternoon, I went for lunch at a nearby café because I was starving.  I decided to be very French and order a "Croque Monsieur" (for those of you who don't know, that's a piece of bread with ham on it and then covered in cheese and toasted.  It came with fries and a salad, but the croque monsieur was so filling, I barely ate the other items.  The fun thing about cafés in Paris (and other parts of France because it was like this in Nice too) is that they have these tables on the patio that basically face out with no chairs on the other side, so you can people watch.  So if you're one or even if you're two, you all sit on the same side of the table and then people watch as you have your drink or eat your lunch.  I quite like it! I wish they did this in Canada.  It also seems to be completely normal to have lunch or dinner for one doing this method and you don't seem so lonely, although on this trip, I've met so many people that I haven't dined alone more than a handful of times.  In this picture, I had tour mates on each side.  

McDonald's menu in France

And not to disappoint, although I don't believe I reported in on Switzerland McDonald's (basically it was the same as Austria - they had fried breaded shrimp on the menu and a weird "Quinoa burger" which I guess was for vegetarians), I checked out France McDonald's, or as they like to call it there - "McDo's".  So for one thing, I love that the combo meals are called "Big Tasty Party" instead of combos and they have all the normal choices of burgers and chicken burgers, but it's a party! LOL.  They also have some fish burgers under a menu called "American Summer" which includes something called a "Hawaii and fish burger" and other variations.  They then have their 2 Euro menu which includes things such as the following - 

Le Charolais looks to be just a cheeseburger, but it's listed as being made from chopped steak from the Charolais cows which I think are the white cows I saw all over France when we were driving in.  I also love the Le Petit Hot Dog.  Hilarious.  The one thing that is missing that was there, but I couldn't find in pictures is the Croque McDo.  It's basically a small Croque Monsieur (see what I ate in my lunch pic above) and it's on the value menu.

Young people drinking wine on the left and right bank

After I ate lunch, I had about four hours of free time and I went to Le Marais and the Centre Pompidou on Isaac's suggestion.  The Centre Pompidou is a modern art museum and I got to see Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Claus Oldenberg, Mark Rothko and many others - it is always cool to see the things you studied in art history in high school live and in person.  Then I walked around Le Marais (it was a very lovely neighbourhood) and sat at another café (facing out as usual) to have a drink.

Then I caught the Paris Metro (the subway) to where the tour group was meeting.  I was quite impressed with myself for navigating a subway in another language, but I've already mastered Swiss Rail and taken the subway in Montreal (and I understand French fairly well anyway - so it's not like this was in a language that was super foreign to me), so this really wasn't that difficult (plus the Paris Metro is just as easy as the London Underground).  We had dinner and then we went on a Seine Cruise.  I have no more pictures of that since my phone was near dead and my camera WAS dead. I managed to get the video of the sparkling Eiffel tower and the picture above - there were young people lining both sides of the Seine just having a chill Thursday night drinking wine by the river with friends - I would love to do that some day.  In Ontario, you couldn't cuz of the insane liquor laws.  

Anyway, that's the end of Trafalgar's European Adventure tour.  Tomorrow we have an insane 6am wakeup call and I have to be on the bus by 7:15am.  We start by taking the majority of our group to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to go home.  Then a smaller group of us heads back to London.  I will then head over to my AirBNB (in the same place as before - near Dina) and then I am going to have a chill evening with Dina and go to bed fairly early.  I have had a great voyage this past two and a half weeks, but my feet are killing me and I need to catch up on my sleep!  Until tomorrow!

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

See the thing I circled? That is the Eiffel Tower.

It's my birthday and I'm in Paris. I don't really care about my birthday, but I was kind of excited that we were scheduled to do a Seine River cruise to see Paris illuminated by night on my birthday... so of course it was switched to tomorrow night! :-/

Today the "Nouvelle Eve" cabaret show called our tour director and said that tomorrow night, they won't be offering the early show with dinner (just the late show with drinks), so they needed to switch the tour group to tonight since the dinner was part of what everyone who signed up for that paid for.  I never had any interest in that, so I didn't sign up for it.  In any case, our tour director flipped the nights on the cabaret show/dinner and the Seine cruise, so I suddenly found myself with no plans on my birthday.  I was bummed, even though like I said, I don't care about my birthday that much - I still felt like I should have something to do.

Enter Australian people. I had decided to myself to spend a quiet night in and take a hot bubble bath and sort out my luggage and all the other 3 bags full of stuff I've accumulated on this trip.  The only thing I didn't have was something to eat (and room service at the hotel was super expensive and not very good), so I headed to the supermarket next door to the hotel to find some wine and some food.  And I bumped into a bunch of travel companions who also had decided not to attend the cabaret and they invited me to the roof of the hotel to drink wine and hang out.  I bought a big French baguette, some brie and some paper plates and knives and headed up to hang with the Aussies and little did I know, but you could see the Eiffel Tower from our hotel roof (despite being 20 minutes out of Paris).  We drank wine for about an hour and then headed to a restaurant for dinner.  It was one of the many Australian couples, the one couple from Ontario, this one Australian guy who is also a single traveller and the South African couple. 

Anyway, it was fun and then I did come back to the hotel and had a nice long bubble bath and washed off all the travelling. By the way, I may have mentioned this before, but Trafalgar buys you a gift if it's your birthday (and makes the entire bus sign "Happy Birthday" to you which is just horrific in my opinion) and today my gift was the pictured book.  It was especially funny and ironic to receive this given all the conversations that Heather and I had yesterday about Switzerland.  This book is quite modern and humourous and it even had a full 2 pages on how to insult people and swear in Swiss German which I really appreciated.

So my birthday has come and gone... I'm now 39 for the 4th time.  Anyway, I have one day in Paris tomorrow - I will be going on a city orientation tour of all the major sights and then I will be going up the Eiffel Tower, then touring Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter... then we get about 3 or 4 hours of free time and I plan to visit "Le Marais" and the Centre Pompidou and then we have our night cruise on the Seine at around 7pm.  If anyone has any other ideas about what I should do with my spare time, please leave suggestions in the comments.

À demain!

Adventure off tour to Zurich and the Swiss (Newfie) Family Healey!

Heather and me

Today I left the tour for a very special side trip.  I managed to navigate the Swiss rail and go from the little town I'm in (Sarnen) to Zurich and meet my friend, Heather, who has been living with her husband and son in Switzerland for a little under two years.  Everyone at work was very excited that I was going to visit her.  To be honest, it didn't take a great talent to navigate the Swiss rail because it is so precise and runs exactly (almost) as they say it will. If they say a train will leave at 9:46, it will leave exactly at 9:46.  No exceptions.  

I did have one little surprise on the way home when my train back to Lucerne just suddenly turned into a Zurich HB/airport train and decided to go the other way - I hopped off quickly in Zug and waited for a different train to go where I wanted, so it's a good thing I was paying attention.

Anyway, I met Heather at the main Zurich station (Zurich Hauptbahnhof) and she greeted me with macaroons! We did a walk around Zurich and saw a lot of the nice areas, including the old town area, and she even brought me to an English bookstore - which I desperately wanted since I read the one book I bought in London in two days.  I need something to do on my 7 hour ride to Paris tomorrow and I was having real troubles finding English books (much less ones that I want to read). In any case, Zurich was beautiful - ALL of Switzerland is beautiful.  However, one thing I've learned in the slightly over 24 hours that I've been here - everything is INSANELY expensive here.  I thought London was a pricey city, but it is practically cheap compared to Switzerland.  Also the Swiss are very precise.  They actually measure wine out at restaurants by centilitres (there are actual measurement lines on the wine glasses).  They charge you by every 1cl and it isn't cheap.  I paid 13.90 Swiss Francs for 2cl of wine last night (which is practically nothing) - Swiss Francs are approx. 1.49 x the Canadian dollar so that's approx. $20 Cdn to get essentially what was two sips of wine.  Nuts!

Heather explained to me the concept of "Swiss economics" and it's too much to get into here, but let's just say that the Swiss are more than a little odd.  Beautiful country, but a kind of insular weird culture and crazy high price tags on everything.  My tour director told us that an average salary in Switzerland is 80,000 CHF, but that in the rest of Europe it's approx. 30,000 Euros.  I can see why given the price of everything here.  

The Horgen "badi"

After we did lunch in Zurich (and bought a giant 1kg bag of Tara's favourite cookies), Heather brought me back to where she lives which is about 20 minutes south of Zurich - a town called Horgen. Since her 2 year old was still taking his nap, we killed some time by going for a drink at the local "badi".  It's basically a private park/swimming area with a coffee shop/bar and you pay a yearly membership to belong (so nobody who doesn't belong can get in, so it keeps out the riff raff, essentially).  I paid 3.50 CHF for a day pass and we sat right in front of Lake Zurich and had a drink.  

Then we went back to her apartment and it was really nice because for once, I got to just laze on a couch and relax my feet (but don't get me wrong - my Fitbit still hit 16,000 steps today).  But for some reason, maybe because I wasn't on my own or it wasn't part of the tour - I don't understand since Heather and I still walked enough to meet that many steps - my feet seemed to de-puff a bit and heal.  I actually feel they are much better after today.  But back to the story - we went back to Heather's apartment and her husband, Tim, who had generously taken the day off to mind Jasper, got me a Swiss beer.  The thing about Swiss alcohol is that they have their own beer and wine (Fendant), but they don't export it, so you can only get it here.  The Fendant is very good (I had it last night) and the beer was quite good too.  

Short Round in Jasper's room

Then, of course, a major highlight was to see one of my favourite cats in this world - Short Round.  He is a fluffy ginger cat and he has attitude.  This is him to the left, next to the teepee in Jasper's room that Heather's dad made for him.  Short Round actually has his own room and his own teepee (which is smaller), but he prefers to go to Jasper's apparently (and Jasper likes to go into Short Round's teepee). Too funny.

Heather then made me a real Swiss fondue for dinner (which was amazing) and Tim served me some wine and other booze throughout the night (Lemoncello from Venice and some scotch).  They made sure I had a great time is the main takeaway here - Heather and Tim - you are both awesome!  And also what was so lovely of Heather was that she not only bought me a "welcome to Switzerland" gift bag with all kinds of lovely Swiss treats including chocolate, cookies, postcards and an amazing facemask, among a few other things, but she also remembered my birthday tomorrow and had a birthday cake for me with candles as well as a little birthday present of some Swiss soap.  She even bought some Italian coffee for me to bring back to Telefilm as a gift for the office.

So tomorrow we leave for Paris at 7:15am (wake up call is 6am), so I seriously need to go to bed.  I had a really great day "off tour" though and I have the Healey's to thank for that.  Thanks, Heather and Tim, for the wonderful hospitality! You guys are great!

Switzerland!

The lion statue, the flowered bridge and a restaurant in Lucerne

Today we left Venice bright and early and drove to Switzerland!  For those of you who don't know, Switzerland has 3 main languages - German, French and Italian. They also speak a lesser known language called "Romansch", but that is only in some small parts of the country.  They speak Italian in the southern part since it is close to Italy, French on the west side since it is close to France and then German in the majority of the country since it is under German and beside Austria.  I am in the German part of Switzerland.

I am staying in a town called Sarnen, which is 20 minutes or so south of Lucerne.  It's quite charming and the hotel is nice, but my room is ridiculously small - it's like a dorm room.  The hotels in the other cities were a lot bigger, but in general in Europe, they have this weird practice of putting two twin beds and pushing them together (or not) instead of just a double or queen (and that has been fine as a single traveler because the room has still been huge).  However, in my room in Italy, it was just a twin and the room was not only minuscule, but it looked like it hadn't been updated since 1952.  We had actual keys instead of the normal magnetic cards.  I actually thought it was charming and I totally didn't mind that the rooms were out of date (by the way, there are a few people on this trip who are bitching about everything that is not what they're used to at home and I want to murder them; I honestly believe that the only good way to have fun on a Costsaver type trip like this where the hotels aren't all 4 stars, you have weird showers and you have aching painful feet cuz of all the walking is to just roll with the punches and be flexible.)

The view from my room in Sarnen

In this room, it's no better than Italy (just one twin and very small - I'm almost bumping into myself!), but at least it's modern and my adaptor plug for my laptop fits in the holes here! Yay!  And despite the teensy room, please check out the picture of the view from my room.  I actually could've posted three views - that is the right view, but the centre and left view are just as gorgeous. You literally cannot look anywhere in Switzerland and have it not be a breathtaking gorgeous view (at least in my limited knowledge having been here for about 8 hours!)

Tara - I will get you this and more!

We did a rest stop about 10 minutes over the Swiss border and I found the cookies that my sister, Tara, asked me for.  She wants a much more massive quantity than just the 250g bag, but this was just to start out with.  I actually looked hard for these cookies in Germany and Italy thinking they must be there too and they were not.  I guess they really are only in Switzerland.  In any case, Tara, you have talked these cookies up so much that even after I buy your quantity and despite the fact that I am constantly dieting and do not eat cookies or sugar, I am buying a bag for myself!

Anyway, I am going to go to bed soon since I have an early call for breakfast at 7:15am, but I am not actually joining the tour tomorrow because I am going to see Heather!  Woot woot! Heather is my friend who I met at Telefilm, for those who don't know, and her husband, Tim, got transferred for his job to Zurich over a year ago.  I am going to get on the train in Sarnen tomorrow at around 8:45am and meet her in Zurich at around 10:30am.  We will hang out in Zurich for a bit and then head to her place in a suburb of Zurich (I'm assuming it is a suburb of Zurich anyway) called Horgen.  I will see her hilarious cat, Short Round, who I think is the most awesome cat ever - he's so grumpy and ginger and fluffy -

(And yes, Heather, I stole this pic of Short Round from your blog!).  And I also hope to see Tim and their son, Jasper.  Heather has told me she's making me a fondue for dinner, so I'm super excited!  In any case, it's after 11pm, so it's time for me to sign off, get to bed and I'll update you again tomorrow night after my adventure to Zurich/Horgen!

*p.s. no Euro McDonald's update today since Sarnen has no McDonald's, but Heather sent me a picture of something called "McRaclette" and after I hear the story about what this is, I will post about it.

*p.p.s. I almost forgot to mention. I am a Smurf today! I wore the top I bought on Burano Island yesterday, and while it is beautiful and looks really good on me, it leaks blue dye like crazy! My fingers were blue all day and I washed my hands about 10 times.  Then when I got to the hotel tonight, everywhere that was moist was blue - my armpits, my cleavage, under my boobs, the insides of my elbows.  Even my neck. I had to use exfoliator and scrub like crazy to "un-blue" myself and it barely even worked.  My armpits and some parts of my fingers are still blue.  It might take a while to go away.  Needless to say, that top will now be relegated to my luggage for the rest of the trip and when I get home, I will soak it in Woolite for a while to get the excess dye out of it!