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!

Venice!

 This blog is going to have to be fast because I'm running out of power on my laptop battery and the plug adaptor will not fit in the electrical socket in this hotel. It's a very very old hotel, so I'm not surprised.  On the other hand, my USB charger adaptor for my iPhone fits just fine and it seems like the pins are thinner than my other adaptor for my laptop (which has worked in the Netherlands, Germany and Czech Republic, so no idea why it won't work in Italy).  Anyway, hopefully it will be fine in Switzerland because I have 45 minutes of power left and I'd like to continue blogging throughout this holiday.  

In any case, as you can see from the pictures, I arrived in Venice this morning at 9am.  They took us to a glass blowing demonstation and then the glass blower salesman attempted to sell us extremly expensive glass and decanter sets and/or vases.  They were beautiful, but a) I don't have that kind of money (they were approx. €1,300 a set) and b) as nice as they were, they really don't go with my decor (my apartment is all modern and Ikea-like even though I've graduated from Ikea to Structube).

After that was over, they took us to St. Mark's Square and then set us free until 2pm.  It was hotter than the surface of the sun in Venice. Heather - you were right when you warned me.  My makeup was sliding down my face.  But I didn't let that bother me (or my aching feet) and I headed down an alley way out of St. Mark's (where the crowds were like zoos) and I found a nice little bistro and sat down where I ordered a 1L bottle of still water, a café latte and a small pizza (by this time it was 11am and I figured I'd better eat something since my next meal wasn't coming until approx. 3pm).  Oddly enough, this bistro was packed full of Canadians (I couldn't help but overhear conversations that confirmed it, even though the accents sounded awfully familiar).  I then wandered around Venice all day, found the Rialto bridge and got a picture of the Grand Canal and watched the gondolas and boats go by.  Did you know that a 30 minute ride in a gondola before sunset is €80? And after sunset it is €100? Holy crap. I was tempted to go to the bank machine and just do it, but then I thought riding on the water in the hot sun when I'm already feeling dehydrated might not be so good, even though it's pretty, so I stayed on the bridge and just observed.

I did attempt to continue my hunt for weird items on the Euro McDonald's menus, but the McDonald's in Venice just eluded me.  They had signs telling you where on the map it was in relation to you, but everytime I thought I was headed in the right direction, I ended up at a dead end that just lead to a canal.  I finally gave up.  I tried to find out what it could be on the internet, but it wasn't really giving me much. Oh well - let's just pretend it's a McLasagna or something. 

At 2pm, I met the tour director and the rest of the group who decided to go to Burano Island for lunch.  I was sort of iffy on this excursion at first, but now I'm glad I did it because by 2pm, I was running out of things to do in Venice because I couldn't travel too far away from St. Mark's Square because I knew I had to get back there for 2pm (and not even there, but a 15 minute walk from St. Mark's to the centre of the front of San Marco to our meeting spot).  I think properly seeing all of Venice would take a full week at least and you'd have to stay IN Venice, which I'm not doing (I'm about 30 minutes away on the mainland).  

Anyway, we saw a lot of the other islands and sailed all the way around the main island of Venice by doing this trip so it was quite good.  The lunch was intense - another Italian feast which started with a caprese salad, then had a big chunk of lasagna, then a main course (I chose chicken) and then dessert and all the wine you could drink.  Oh and fruit too (I put a peach in my purse to eat tonight if I get hungry, but I'm still not hungry and it's 10pm) and then they gave us a small bottle of Amaretto to take with us (it's supposed to help with digestion).  Then we had about an hour of free time to explore the shops on Burano Island and I ended up finding the nicest top/tank top/scarf set for €69.  It was totally my style and it screamed "buy me, Shelley!" so I did.  I tried it on tonight and it looks really good.

After we left, we sailed back to Venice to pick up those that didn't go on the island trip and we went home.  So I haven't seen Venice by night and I won't this trip since we left at 6pm - so that was kind of a bummer, but I knew that's what it would be like since this is the "Costsaver" trip and the hotel is out of town.  Since I love love LOVED Venice and thought it was just spectacular, I will come back one day and stay IN Venice and really do it right.

On the bus ride home, our tour director surprised us with a gift from Trafalgar for all of us - a Venetian mask.  I saw them everywhere, but I never thought to buy one, so it was a nice surprise.  We all put them on when we got back to the hotel and did a group shot.  Hopefully I can get ahold of that soon and post it.  

Anyway, it's off to Switzerland tomorrow!  And I'll see you, Heather, on Tuesday! Yay!

A visit to Austria and then a glimpse of Italy after a loooooong drive

Innsbruck with a view of the Alps and "The Golden Roof"

Today we left Munich and drove to Innsbruck, Austria.  On the way there, we learned Hitler fun fact #264 - Hitler was Austrian not German.  Who knew?

We stopped in Innsbruck for two hours - enough time to shop and grab some lunch.  I've actually been pretty thrifty when it comes to shopping this trip because I spent a lot of money on the trip and don't really have a ton left for shopping, nor do I need a bunch of new "stuff" - I really don't.  The first time I did a Trafalgar tour, I felt like I had to buy something in every stop and I accumulated a lot of crap I don't need.  This time I'm being choosy... but Austria was the place that I decided to splurge and you'll laugh when I tell you on what.  

First thing that sparked my interest was the Sacher Torte.  The last thing I actually need is cake, but it just seemed so fancy and indulgent and the place that made it was SO fancy that I had to go in and buy a little one (which cost €14). And apparently this thing will last in its packaging for three weeks because it is so moist, so I can save it for when I get home.  

The second thing I bought is something I swore I wouldn't do - you see, they have a big Swarovski factory outlet in the town square in Austria... but I scoffed and said I would not buy anything there because they have a big store at Yonge & Bloor (and in the Eaton Centre) in Toronto and I would bet the price would be better in Canada.  Then I decided I really liked a certain bracelet and also liked the fact that if anyone complimented me on it, I can always say that I bought it in Austria.  I can be so silly sometimes.  So I dropped  €49 on a wrap-around bracelet that I think will go with most of my clothes and I just really really like it.  Here is a picture (it's a khaki green colour if you can't already tell) -

Northern Italy (and click to enlarge for a glacier - that's for you Tara!)

Then after Austria, we drove down to the Italian border and it continued to look like Austria for many many miles. We learned from our tour director that a lot of the top of Northern Italy actually used to be Austria, but that Austria struck a deal with Italy in, I believe, WWI and promised them some land.  And then when they were successful in the war, they actually had to give the land to Italy (and it's a lot based on the drive through). A lot of Austrian farmers and others were kind of mad about this because suddenly, they had to learn Italian and become Italian citizens.  So a compromise was reached and you'll notice that this area of Northern Italy has bilingual signage (both German and Italian) and I guess the Austrians who stayed were allowed to continue speaking German and living with their culture and that remains today.  The name of this area is South Tyrol (in German) and Alto Adige (in Italian).  It was also explained to us that this is why a lot of Northern Italians are blonde (because of some Austrian lineage).

The bad part of today is that we hit the mother of all traffic jams on the Austria-Italian border and all down northern Italy until we were halfway to Verona.  We were delayed by 4 hours, so we didn't even arrive at the hotel (which is just outside of Venice on the mainland) until 9pm at night. It didn't cost me anytime in Venice because I didn't sign up for the optional extra of going on a gondola ride with a singer (I just thought - meh, that seems like a couples activity and I didn't want to do it), so I had always planned to just chill out in the hotel tonight.  I just got a little less chill out time than I wanted.  The others who did sign up will do their gondola ride tomorrow, but it will cut 2 hours out of their free time, so I'm really glad I didn't sign up for it now.  I want all the free time I can get in Venice.

Once we did check into the hotel, they sent us to the restaurant for a late dinner.  In true Italian fashion, we had an appetizer of a full piece of lasagna, then a salad, then a main course (which was turkey and potatoes), then dessert, then coffee.  If there is one thing Italians really know how to do, it's feed you!

Anyway, that's it for today.  Tomorrow we head into the city at 8am and we get a boat tour to start out to orient us and then it's free time till 2pm and then I get on another boat to head to Burano Island for an excursion.  I do plan to hop on the hop-on hop-off boat after the orientation and just float around hopping off at places I'd like to see until I have to get back to St. Mark's Square to get that boat at 2pm.  

*BTW - a quick note to the family - I won't be sending any postcards this time because I have yet to find a post office in any of these cities and if I were to send you a postcard, it would've likely been from Prague and that didn't work out... oh well!  Hopefully this blog more than makes up for it.

**One last thing I forgot to mention - you'll note in the top picture that there is a McDonald's in the main town square area... so OF COURSE I went into it.  But there was really no weird sandwich option in Austrian McDonald's.  That being said, they had deep fried breaded shrimp.  I never saw that at a McDonald's before in my life.  So another success of a weird Euro McDonald's item discovered! ;-)

Germany teil drei (part three)

Regensburg, Germany on the River Danube

Today it was goodbye to the Czech Republic and back to Germany.  We started by going to Regensburg which is a nice little city.  Nothing too different from others - still had the cobble stone streets and nice old architecture.  I found a little gourmet spices shop and while most of the stuff they had are available at home, I found some Harissa spices (I've only ever seen the paste back home) so I bought a small container of that.  Harissa spice is great on chicken.  I also bought some German wine called "Castell - Castell - Silvaner".  I'm still not entirely sure what kind of wine it is other than white, but I'm drinking it right now and it's very good.  It ought to be for €9.50 a bottle! (Remember to do the conversion on the exchange and then remind yourself that I'm on The Continent and wine is supposed to be cheap here).  

We only stayed in Regensburg for one hour - it was enough to have lunch and then do a little shopping.  I went to a small restaurant and had two small bratwurst and some potato salad.  The Germans do potato salad much differently than we do in North America.  There is no mayonnaise whatsoever.  It seemed to be potatoes without the skins, sliced on a mandolin, with onions, and maybe some sort of vinaigrette type marinade?  I wasn't sure what it had on it, just that it tasted good, but was totally different than the potato salad that North Americans make. 

Next it was off to Munich (which is where I'm staying for the night, but we're off in a hotel in the Eastern suburbs at the moment). Munich is quite a nice city and it is the capital of Bavaria, which still considers itself to be a bit separate from the rest of Germany, so much so that they have their own parliament.  It was full of footballers today (a lot of guys all over town wearing "Bayern Mϋnchen" on the back of their jerseys which translates to "Bavarian Munich" or something like that) - there must have been some kind of tournament in town.  I also learned something that I never knew before and it seems so obvious now, but here it is - do you know what BMW stands for? Because we drove by the BMW headquarters (which is spectacular btw - I didn't manage to get a picture, but just Google it).  It stands for "Bavarian Motor Works".  Who knew?

In any case, our tour guide walked us to the town hall (Rathaus) of Munich, which oddly enough had a vending machine in the washroom that not only included condoms, but a variety of sex toys (I kid you not!) for €4 each.  Weird!!!  But the highlight was the glockenspiel on the tower of the town hall  and here is where I'm about to attempt posting a video that I took of part of it... and it didn't work.  All my hotels have had amazing wifi, but this hotel sucks.  The Wifi keeps dropping and I'm worried I won't even be able to post this blog tonight.  In any case, I'm going to finish this quick so that I can at least post something tonight before the wifi completely craps out.

So anyway, there is no Euro McDonald's update today since I already posted about German McDonald's special item (Der Nϋrnburger if you remember).  However, while walking around in a German grocery store today, I noticed that Doritos "Cool Ranch" flavour here is called "Doritos Cool American"... I'm assuming it's because ranches are a North American thing and a German wouldn't know what the hell a ranch is??? 

Anyway, sorry for the lack of pictures today.  You can blame the "Park Inn by Radisson" in East Munich... stupid bad internet.

The plan for tomorrow is an early call (6am) and then on the bus for a 7:30 departure. We then drive to Innsbruck in Austria to spend an hour or two walking around and doing lunch and then to our two night destination - Venice!  I'm quite excited about Venice - I think it will be amazing.  Till tomorrow!

Prague druhá část (part two)

Prague Castle's cathedral - a very fancy church

We started the day with a trip to Prague Castle and walked around in the courtyard and went into the cathedral.  As fancy churches go in Europe, and there are a LOT of them, this one was pretty impressive.  There were Czech army all over the place though with machine guns, because they are protecting themselves, as Jan explained, unless a terrorist attack might happen there.  

Czech military on patrol at Prague Castle

Next it was on to "free time" in Prague city center.  We were dropped off in the Old Town square which was amazing and then I decided to walk up to Wenceslas Square and check out the shops.  Oddly enough, I ended up in none other than Marks & Spencer (yes, they have one there, but I haven't seen one in any other European country I've been to other than Ireland) and decided to forgo the bratwurst offered all over the square and have an egg and watercress sarnie at the M&S café.  I also found a really nice dress that actually looked good on me for 70% off (it came out to approx. 40 Euro with the exchange rate on Czech korunas).  

And, as if you didn't already predict, I walked into a McDonald's to check out the Czech McDonald's (see what I did there? Re-read it if you don't... you see? LOL) and see what the weird item on the menu was.  For the first time, there wasn't one.  The special Czech sandwich is called a "Clubhouse" and it just looks like a quarter pounder with cheese with lettuce, red onions, tomatoes, sauce, etc.  

Maisel Synagogue

After "free time", we met in Old Town square again and Jan took us on a tour of old synagogues and we learned more information about the Holocaust - mainly that there were 120,000 Jews in the Czech republic before WWII and 27,000 after.  Some escaped to North America and Israel and elsewhere, but most were taken to concentration camps and gassed.  Also, Hitler did not destroy the Jewish quarter of Prague because he predicted he would win the war and then he was going to turn that area of town into a "museum of the extinct race".  Seriously.  So the major take away from the Hitler stories I've heard over the last three days is mostly nothing I didn't already know, but just that he's even more of a sick twisted bastard than you'd think.

Charles bridge

Lastly, we ended the evening with a boat cruise down the river Vltava which included dinner.  It was fun and very scenic and oh how the Australians and New Zealanders got drunk and rowdy.  It was pretty entertaining.  Australians and New Zealanders really know how to have a good time.  We had a buffet dinner consisting of Jan's favourite foods which included beef goulash, dumplings, a potato pancake sort of thing (but it wasn't a latke), a roasted ham hock that he carved himself for us, some weird pasta dish that seemed to have sauerkraut in it and various other things.  It was quite good, but a bit heavy.  

In any case, it all ended with a bit more of a bus tour of Prague by night. I will just end by saying - Prague is well worth seeing - it is really beautiful.  It was actually the reason why I picked this tour over others.  I wanted to see more of Europe than just the south of France and the UK and Ireland (which I've already seen a LOT of) and I wanted to cover as much distance as possible.  But for some reason it's been in my head that Prague was a must-see (which is why I chose this specific itinerary because it was the only one that included Prague as well as a lot of cities in Western Europe - including ones that enabled me to see Heather and Dina - shout out!).

So tomorrow we are going back to Germany and we head to Regensburg (which is apparently on the Danube river) and then we end up in Munich for the afternoon and stay there for the night.  I'll post again after the journey (which starts with a 6:30am wake up call!)

Germany teil zwei (part two) and Prague první část (part one)

View of Nuremberg from the castle

Today we left Offenbach with another 6am wake up call.  However, we didn't even need the call because there was, inexplicably, a rooster next to the hotel (perhaps in someone's backyard) and the damn thing started crowing at 5am.  So I was sort of already half awake when the phone rang.

After breakfast, we headed to Nuremberg for our first stop.  I liked it a lot - it is very medieval feeling and apparently it is one city that did not get destroyed in WWII, so it is as it always was. After WWII, they had the famous "Nuremberg trials" there where many Nazis were tried for their war crimes.  Some were sentenced to prison, some were executed and then some opted not to go to trial at all and committed suicide - Hitler apparently one of them... yet I don't buy that. I actually have read a theory that Hitler faked his own death and escaped to Argentina and lived his life out there - I think that is far more believable (mock if you will, I like conspiracy theories). 

In Nuremberg, due to my swollen feet, on the suggestion of the travel director (Deborah), who says this happens to several of the women (never the men) during her tours, I wandered over to an "Apotheke" and bought a pair of compression socks.  I wore them all day on the bus and it made my feet and legs feel slightly better.  Then when I took them off, my feet were still very swollen, so I thought "what a waste of money"... then about 10 minutes later, the swelling had gone away (the tops of my feet were just magically flat all of a sudden).  So I guess these socks work. Deborah says usually feet swell due to the air travel and the excessive walking on these tours as well as having your feet pointing down on the bus for many hours. She finds that if you wear these travel socks, it makes the problem get better and the swelling will go away after a couple of days of wearing them.  So I won't be wearing them while I walk around various towns, but I will be wearing them on any bus travel and definitely on the plane ride home.  They certainly seemed to do the job today, so it was 22 Euros well spent. (*p.s. thanks, Mom, for the advice in the comments - I haven't touched the hydrocortisone cream in 3 days and the rash on my ankle is gone now anyway, so I don't need it).

Before we left Nuremberg, I had lunch at a traditional bratwurst restaurant.  I finally found out what the "nürnburger" in "Der Nürnburger" from German McDonald's meant. Apparently, in Nuremberg, they make bratwurst in a certain way (see my lunch at left) and they are called "nürnburgers".  Basically they are tiny sausages and they aren't very fatty - kind of a light, yet dense texture.  Very very good and I got horseradish as my sidedish.  It was very nice to sit at this restaurant and eat my nürnburgers with some German rosé wine and stare at the main town square of Nuremberg (which is all cobble stone and old medieval buildings - very picturesque). 







Then it was on to Prague (or Praha as the locals call it)!

This is just one picture from after I left the restaurant in Prague tonight, but OMG, Prague is beautiful.  It is all cobble-stoned roads and old buildings and it is just so gorgeous.  It is apparently a UNESCO heritage site and they are required to keep the roads cobble-stone for the look and feel of the place to be right. We had a tour guide named Jan (pronounced "Yahn") and he took us around Prague and then to the restaurant where we had a traditional Czech meal (very much like German - a LOT of meat and potatoes and cheese) and it was at a restaurant that is apparently frequented by the glitterati. Among it's guests have been Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright.

The one thing my tour director mentioned, which seems to be totally true, was to look out for signs that the Czech Republic was under Soviet rule for many years (from 1968-1990).  One thing I did notice was that while the city of Prague itself is gorgeous, all the outlying areas look boring and uniform and the buildings are horrible and ugly.  They are square and have no architectural "frills" and are one colour with square windows.  Very utilitarian and stark.  Seems like something that would seem practical to house people under the Soviet rule.  In fact, my hotel is on the outskirts of Prague and it is very ugly, monochrome and square. I'll try to remember to take a picture and post it.  

So tomorrow, we head into Prague at 8:30am in the morning (I never thought I'd think getting up at 7:15am was sleeping in, but now I do!) and we do the Prague Castle and then a bit more of a tour with Jan.  Then we get free time.  Later in the afternoon we do a tour of the Jewish area of Prague and then after relaxing at the hotel for a few hours, we'll go on a dinner cruise on the Vltava river. Until tomorrow night!

Germany teil eines (part one)!

Hello from Germany!  Today we started with a 6am(!) wakeup call in Amsterdam and headed out after breakfast at 7:15am.  We drove until we got to Cologne, Germany at lunch time and were released into the wild for 90 minutes to go shopping and visit the Cologne Cathedral.  It was pretty spectacular as churches go, but most of them are (spectacular that is) in Europe and there are a LOT of them.  I actually didn't wander around too much in Cologne because time was limited and all the shops are the same ones we have in Canada, so why would I buy stuff there at a higher exchange rate?  

Anyway, after that, we got back on the bus and headed to Boppard to board our cruise down the Rhine river.  All the towns on the Rhine are really lovely and there are a TON of castles.  Apparently in the oldey timey days, rich dudes built castles along the river, so they could send their knights out to stop boats and demand a toll to pass - and that's how they became even richer.  

Me cruising down the Rhine

We went from Boppard to St. Goar and then we got off and boarded the bus to our final destination for the night - Offenbach, Germany.  This is a suburb of Frankfurt.  We had a three course dinner at the hotel and some drinks.  Then, a few of our group discovered that there was a grocery store next door, so given that I have a huge fascination with foreign grocery stores, I had to go next door to check it out.  I discovered some truly disgusting groceries, but none were worse than the next picture I am going to post.  Which is - hot dogs in a jar!!!

Pretty nasty.  That's all I have to say about that. 

The other thing I did was back in Cologne. Our bus stopped next to a McDonald's and I discovered the special weird thing on the German McDonald's menu. It is -

DER NÜRNBURGER!

Here is a picture of this monstrosity - 

It looks to be three bratwurst with mustard (or cheese sauce?) inside a hamburger bun.  Not as gross as the McKroket in the Netherlands, but still pretty gross.  I see no reason for the bun here.

And here is the German McDonald's menu in case anyone was interested (click on it to make it bigger).  Like France, they also call the Quarter Pounder with cheese a "Royal" and they have beer on the menu. Oddly enough "Der NÜRNBERGER"  is not on the actual menu - it might just be a special (there were posters all over for it). * and I just looked up what "Nur fur kurze zeit!" means and it is "for a limited time only", so there you go!

Anyway, lastly, Tara was asking for me to describe who is on the tour group, so I will do that.  This group is not majority senior citizens like the last tour of Britain and Ireland I did.  There are a fair amount of retired couples, but there are also a lot of 30/40/50 somethings - some groups of friends, some couples and some (grown) kids with their moms.  There are also three single travellers, so I'm not the only one this time (one 50-something woman and a 30-something man).  I've been hanging around them and some of the other couples. In terms of what countries they are all from, there are 41 people - 4 are Americans, 7 are Canadian, 2 are South African, 4 are from New Zealand, 6 are from Singapore, 3 are from Japan and the remainder are Australian (most from Melbourne, a few from Sydney and one couple from Perth).  This is very different from the last time where it was majority American.  And oddly enough, 4 of the Canadians live about 15 minutes up the street from me (it's two daughters and their moms).  

So tomorrow's agenda brings us to Nuremberg, where I'm guessing we'll hear more about the tales of Hitler (we've been hearing a lot about that (starting back in Amsterdam in the Anne Frank House) - today we saw his favourite hotel in Dresen (not Dresden) and learned about some of his favourite things about Germany... but to the Germans reading this - Hi, Bruce - don't worry, they are giving us all kinds of other nice stories and facts about Germany, so it's not all Hitler Hitler Hitler).  Then after Nuremberg, we head to Prague, where apparently we have a night cruise and a dinner.  That should be great.

Anyway, it's another 6am wakeup call for me, so that's it for the day!