Category Archives: Europe Holiday 2013

It’s actually a lot further than I thought to Geneva from Bern, so we didn’t arrive until about midday. The weather was sunny, with a slight breeze. The train trip via Lasuanne was nice, and we passed the medieval vineyards again –

Once in Geneva, we had a look around, found their main shopping street and quickly realised that most of the shops were out of our price range. Also, there are a lot of shops selling watches in Geneva, although most were a couple of hundred dollars each, so no new purchases were made.

A short stroll away was a nice park (with free WiFi) beside Lake Geneva, where we found this clock in their garden bed –

We visited St Peter’s church and were able to get a good view of Geneva from the top of their bell towers –

Although it’s a bit hard to see here, there were about 50 cranes I could see from here in the local Geneva region. Afterwards, we took a quick visit to the Palais Des Nations which is the HQ of the UN in Europe before heading back to the station for the train trip home, as we needed to pack our bags ready for our train to Italy tomorrow.

Cheerio, Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, Ciao, Chau

Well the day started out overcast and rainy, but we had hope that it would clear up. We left on the first of 4 trains to make our way to Jungfrajoch. Our first train took us to Interlaken (means “between lakes”) which is situated on a river/channel connecting two lakes. The train ride swept along a bank on one side of the 1^st lake, giving us great views over the lake and the mountains behind.
Our 2^nd train took us from Interlaken Ost, to Laturbrunnen, this time alongside a river flowing down through the valley. At Laturbrunnen, we changed onto a 3^rd train to start our ascent. This train was propelled upwards by the use of a gear track running in between the normal rail tracks, and the engine car dragged the train up the mountain (all powered electrically). This train offered us some spectacular views over the valley below before we disappeared into the mist and clouds.
Finally at Kleine Scheidegg, we changed onto our 4^th train for the journey to Jungfrajoch – Europe’s Highest Train Station. Most of this journey would take part in a long tunnel through the mountains, with two stops along the way, so we could peer out windows in the side of the mountain side.

Upon reaching the top, we were greeted by views of …. nothing, as it was cloudy and snowing (one might possibly say sometimes it was a small blizzard). It was -6*C outside with a wind speed of about 35km/h. For those of you who want to know what it looked like, here’s a 360 I took on the Plateau –

We walked around the rest of the visitors centre at the top (a large complex of tunnels under the mountatin, which includes 2 cafes/restaurants, a hotel and observatory), visited their ice palace which is actually carved into the glacier itself, found some great free Wifi access (work better than the Internet at the hotel in Bern, which we’re paying for. Why is it I can get a great internet connection 3500mtrs up a mountain, but my hotel in central Bern is not free and doesn’t work as well….) and had some yummy vegetable soup for lunch. After a couple hours, with no sign of the clouds clearing, we decided to call it a day and begin the long journey back down. We were disappointed that we didn’t get to see the spectacular views, but the train trip down (and up) was worth it, with some great photo opportunities, and we’ve both put this destination on our “to see” list for next time we come to Switzerland.

On our way back we were greeted with some sunshine, so took a couple more photos, before finally arriving back in Bern ready for some dinner and bed. Looking forward to visiting Geneva tomorrow, as it’s suppose to be sunny weather (hopefully)

Cheerio, Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, Ciao, Chau

We took a lovely 1 hr train trip through the Swiss countryside today to Zurich. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too good, but we were greeted by a brief sunny spell when we arrived in Zurich so took the opportunity to do a little bit of sightseeing. We took a tram (Swiss City Public transport is free for us to use with our Swiss Eurail Pass) down towards the lakeside and saw the largest church clock face in Europe. A short stroll away were the twin towers of Grossmünster Church, which offered us this view over Zurich from the top –

We walked down one of Zurich’s shopping streets (looks a bit like the one pictured below) –

and found ourselves a chocolate shop. After a brief stop and a small purchase, we continued onwards, only to find another chocolate shop. After another brief pause and some more purchases, we returned to the main train station (for free WiFi access) to plan our route to the final chocolate shop (All good things come in 3s, Save the best for last & 3^rd times the charm) – Lindt Factory Shop.

It took about 15 mins by tram and bus to get to the Lindt Factory, but we were greeted by a smell of chocolate in the air and once inside the store, had a huge range of chocolate to choose from –

Outside the Lindt Factory Shop in Zurich (note the bag full of chocolate on my shoulder)

Inside the Lindt Shop…

Anyone for a 2.5kg bag of Lindt??

Suffice to say, we spent a significant amount of time here and I ended up purchasing about $100 AUD worth of chocolate (it weighs about 2.2kgs – luckily we’re posting another package home from Switzerland 🙂 ).

I also saw a really interesting watch design here in Zurich called “Part Time”. I would have bought one, but the cheapest started out at 500CHF (about $550AUD). Instead, here’s the link to their website instead, so you can have a look for yourself – PartTime

Then it was time for the trip back to Bern, through the Swiss countryside again. Upon the way back, I spotted this small castle on a hill above a little village –

We’re going to Jungfraujoch tomorrow as the weather forecast says it’s suppose to be semi-sunny and only -1*C so not too cold 🙂

Cheerio, Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, Ciao, Chau

Our train from Paris took us to Lausanne, where we caught a regional train to Bern. This took us along a scenic route beside some UNESCO listed vineyards from the medieval times –

Medieval vineyards on the hillside

Upon arrival in Bern, our first impression was positive, that was until we arrived at our hotel. The room is very basic, which we already knew from booking online, but the lack of double glazed windows means a lot of street noise comes into our room at night, making it hard to sleep. The bathroom is in need of a renovation (and better ventilation) and our room had a very strong smell of stale smoke (this hotel unfortunately has a couple of rooms which guest are allowed to smoke in). The smell was semi-fixed by opening the windows for fresh air and the purchase of a odour neutralise box thingy. The lack of free WiFi Internet access at the hotel was also annoying. There is 1 Internet kiosk in the lobby that we can use, but the computer is probably about 6 yrs old and doesn’t handle viewing more than 3-4 tabs in Chrome at a time. There is WiFi all throughout the building but it’s a Swisscom Public Wifi Hotspot, so in order for us to use it, we needed to purchase access through Swisscom. After much deliberation, we decided it was going to be difficult and impracticable to not have access to the Internet for 6 nights, especially as we needed to look up things to do in Genevia, Zurich and booking a hotel in Italy, so we ended up purchasing a 30hrs voucher for CHF45, which is about AUD$50 (very expensive for Internet access)

Once we left the hotel, Bern presented us with a brief sunny spell in which to explore the city. The official language of Bern is German, although I suspect most people would speak English as well as a 3^rd language (Switzerland has 4 official languages – French, Italian, German and Romansh)

As I write this, I’m currently sitting in a self-service laundry just 5 mins outside Bern City Centre, waiting for our clothes to tumble dry. Out of all the self-service laundries we’ve used so far, this has been one of the easiest. There are instructions in English, machines look in good condition, and you simply put your detergent in, insert the coins and press go. It was convenient to get to via trolley-bus from the city and is right next door to a cafe (which has free WiFi)

The Laundromat is called JetWash

As Switzerland , doesn’t use the Euro, we had to work out another set of coins, and here all their coins from the 10cents to the 5 Fr coins are all silver, except for the 5cent coin which is golden in colour. Consequentially, it makes it a lot harder to work out how much money you have, especially when the ½ fr coin (eg 50 cents) is smaller than the 20/10 cent coins. On the plus side, it appears my card works here with the PIN, so this should make things easier.

(NOTE: Just to clarify, our cards have worked everywhere we’ve gone so far, but not all countries will let us use our PIN, eg UK, Paris required us to sign, whereas Switzerland, Sweden, Copenhagen all allowed us to use our PIN. This doesn’t make use stand out as much, as all European use PINs with their cards these days.)

We’ll be visiting Zurich, Geneva and Jungfraujoch whilst we’re here in Switzerland as we got a Swiss Eurail Pass and the train network here is very extensive, reliable and efficient.

Cheerio, Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, Ciao, Chau

After our flight from Berlin to Paris we arrived in the ‘city of lights’ and found our hotel was literally only 30 metres from the exit of the metro station, which was a very nice surprise. Our bags and suitcases were considerably lighter as we’d posted home 13kgs of stuff in Berlin (partially because the flight had a strict 20kg limit on suitcases and partially because it was getting hard to fit everything into our bags).

Freya took the opportunity of having a lighter suitcase to purchase more stuff in Paris to fill the void and I was able to reorganise mine.

Unlike last time I visited Paris, there seems to be more people here which unfortunately meant more queues for things like the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Catacombs etc.

On our first day in Paris we visited the Sacre Coure but it was raining so we decided to come back and climbed the Dome another day. We also visited the Eiffel Tower, but decided to come back as it was cloudy, rainy and wouldn’t have been very pleasant to ascend. After a small bite to eat for dinner, we visited the Louvre as it was open late and managed to see roughly half the displayed collection, including the Mona Lisa. Even though it was about 8:30 at night, there were still hundreds of people at the Louvre, although the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa weren’t as bad as last time I visited so I was able to get a picture in front of her.

The following day, we went back to the Sacre Coure to climb the dome whilst it was sunny, which turned out to be a good idea, as we had just descended the dome, when it promptly started to storm. Whilst waiting out the storm under the roof of the Montmartre Funicular, we spied an interesting looking gift shop, and once the rain had cleared we stopped for a browse. After dinner we visited the outside of Notre Dame and saw the Eiffel Tower perform it’s light show, before heading home to bed as we needed to get up early tomorrow.

On Sunday, we took the train to Versailles
Freya enjoyed visiting the Palace but the huge tour groups of people (which I had warned her about) semi ruined the palace tour for her.

After the tour we took stroll around the gardens and were able to see the fountains working, be that for a limited time of only 1.5 hrs. I filmed the Neptune Fountain (this is the largest at Versailles and requires all the other fountains to be turned off in order to run) –

We then headed for the train station and the trip back to Paris. On our way to dinner that night, I spied a bridge just behind Notre Dame which was quite interesting and the first I’ve seen so far. I’ve included a picture of it below in the gallery.

On Monday, we visited the Eiffel Tower. When we arrived, we joined the queue and spent the next 1.5-2 hrs in the queue just to get a ticket. Once we finally got up the Eiffel Tower, we then spent the next 45 mins queueing to get the lift to the top. Anyway, once we finally made it to the top, we had a very nice view over Paris. By this time some clouds had started to move in, so it wasn’t as sunny, but the view was still alright –

On our last day in Paris it decided to rain most of the day, so we headed to the Catacombs, but the line was extremely long, so instead we headed back to Notre Dame (via the Shakespeare Book Company shop, where I purchased two books). After queuing for 5 mins in the rain, we finally got into Notre Dame. It was quite busy inside, due to the bad weather outside and the free entry. I purchased a guide book for 2 euros from a vending machine and we had a look around. Afterwards, we decided to head back to the Catacombs, however when we arrived the queue still went all the way around the block and the Catacombs were only open for another 15mins, so we had to give this a miss. As it was still too early for dinner, Freya decided she had some time left to do some last minute shopping and I payed a visit to the Grand Arc at La Defense (the modern centre of Paris) which forms the western end of the Axe Historique which is a line of monuments, buildings and thoroughfares that extends from the centre of Paris, France, to the west. The axis starts in the East at the Louvre, and continues down the Champs Elysees, through the Arc De Triomphe to La Defense –

Later on we had an early dinner and visit the Arc De Triomphe for a nice view of the sunset and Paris by night.

Freya particularly liked Paris and is already planning to come back here again in a few years time. I was pleased that I didn’t need my phrasebook nearly as much as I was expecting. Unfortunately the weather this time round wasn’t great, but we still managed to get some semi sunny days and see the sites of Paris.

We’re getting a train tomorrow from Paris to Bern ready for our travels in Switzerland (hopefully we can get some chocolate as well…)

Au Reviour