Breathtaking country - Switzerland

On day 5 of the Europe trip, we were in Switzerland. It was the beginning of three hectic and interesting days. We flew in from Venice to Zurich on day 4. 

The previous post in the series is here...

We had an interesting time at the Venice airport. One of the downsides to having status on United and Star alliance is that they allow only yourself and one guest to go into the Lounge. I told the family that it did not feel right for me to take one of them in and have the other two sit outside and I would rather have all of us sit outside together. The rest of the family unianiously called me an idiot and said if they were in my shoes, they would go with whoever was most eager to come. Wish they would have a system where they could take more of the miles or money and let two extra people in. Given my food allergies and the fact that I dont even drink Coffee or Soda, that whole lounge thing is wasted on me. The little one did come in with me for a few trips and got some dessert cakes "to go" for her mom and sister.  Then we mostly spent time in the regular gate area and wandering around the shops till we realized that the France Argentina game was on. There were huge shouts and cheers and the entire airport sounded like a football stadium. 

We watched the game almost to completion before it was time to board. It was a small "rinky dinky" flight to Zurich and the gate agent forced us to check in our bags. We were greeted in the flight with some soccer ball swiss chocolates ..

and a wonderful view of the Alps though the clouds. We watched the sun set over Zurich as we landed (see timelapse in the video.. one of the most memorable landings we have seen recently) and waited for almost 90 minutes to get our baggage! There were 11 flights listed on one baggage carousel. We almost gave up and were in tears because that was pretty much all our bags. Finally the bags came and we got an Uber to our Air B&B close to the airport. 

The kids and San ate some sandwiches purchased on the flight. I made MTR instant Upma after reaching the place. The next morning we took our luggage (yes, we were literally in a different place every night) and went to the Zurich bus station. We had an all day tour 8AM to 7PM which covered Zurich (on the bus), Lucerne in the morning to noon, a lunch break at Lucerne and onwards towards Mt. Titlis..

 Zurich / bus train station area was interesting in itself. People seemed to move at a leisurely pace and were generally happy. Have never seen that many smiling faces on a work day morning in any city. It is not just the cows in Swiss that are happy.. even the people seem to be all chirpy and cheerful! 

We went on to Lucerne to see the giant Lion carved on a mountainside. It was almost lunch. We saw an Indian restaurant in Lucerne and were yearning for some Chai and Samosa. Then the bus loaded and stopped after 5 minutes in front of a shopping area for watches, on the other side of the river (apparently they were tour partners, this watch place) and the guide said "you have 50 minutes to eat lunch and come back. the bus will leave promptly". I was pissed. If she had told us this we would have just stayed at the Lion parking place, ate a nice lunch and walked to the bus. It was a 15 minute walk to the Indian place from where they parked by crossing the bridge. In any case, we walked around (I missed a turn and lost another 5 minutes) and we ended up at Kanchi.. 

while in the middle of this walk/run we still managed pictures and videos.. 

Lucerne is breathtaking. Vibrant colors (it had just rained on our entire way to Lucerne) and fresh air! 

Here are two panos from one of the two bridges we crossed..

We had 20 minutes to eat and 10 minutes to run back. The kids were not happy with the plan. We begged the guy to bring us a minimum set of dishes and he obliged. We gulped it down in 8 minutes (the fastest this family has ever had a meal) and raced out. 

Then the mother of all mixups happened. The little one had declared her intent to go to the restroom before the run back to the bus, but given the time had decided to come out following me and Jr.  San stayed back to pay the bill and decided to wait for the non existant little one outside the restoom. We are in the street.. she is waiting and the clock ticks. Finally after some tense looks without any words being spoken we all ran towards the bus only to find that another family was trying to buy Pizza at a store last minute and were trying to finish the pizza before boarding the bus. There was no food allowed on the bus. So we watched them eat pizza for a good 5 minutes while catching our breath.

During the run, I started sweating Bikram Yoga style and was completely drenched. The wife and kids said "they will kick you out of the bus" so we asked the guide and driver to open the luggage compartment and I changed in front of the entire bus with some curious onlookers giving me the "who sweats in Switzerland?" look. 

Slideshows of pictures from Zurich and Lucerne.

and a video that hightlights the first half of day 5..

We were then off to the next stop..

It has not been easy catching up on memories to write these posts. Have already spent a week in Asia. Came back and had a great day only for my luck to change. Got sick last night with an allergy attack that has left me gasping for breath. Yet to identify the root cause.. hopefully I will recover in a day or two and get back on track. 

As unique as they come

Day 4 of the Europe trip was Venice. We reached on the evening of day 3 from Pisa (previous post on the series is here...) and saw Venice by night. Our first challenge was to go from the Train station to the Air B&B. It was a 10 minute walk but the challenge was crossing the bridge over the grand canal with a broken suitcase. It was done.. with great difficulty!

The Air B&B we had was on the "attic" floor. We had pretty much the entire floor to ourselves and a great view from the window. We dropped our bags and went back quickly to catch a gondola ride. We were very lucky as we got the last ride out. It was a 40 minute ride and the sun was just starting to set.

Right when we finished the ride and docked, it started raining. The views we got on the trip were amazing. Vibrant colors from the setting sun..

I got two photographs to cherish thanks to this Gondola ride... the first one with me and San 

and the second one when we were just about to go below a bridge. The kids were in focus and the bricks look like they are moving towards us..

a fun portrait session during breakfast time using the large mirror as a frame.. we were the only ones at breakfast and they had quite a spread!

We got dinner at different places (Jr. at a burger king, San and the little one went for an Italian place where the service was terrible and the food was okay and I decided to skip) and headed back to sleep. 

Day 4 was fully dedicated to Venice. We walked around on either side of the grand canal in the morning and took a boat to Murano island. 

How they make these pencil type structures is amazing..

This is an interesting place where they have all the glass factories and the museum. There was a glass blowing demo (no photos/videos allowed!) and elaborate descriptions of how they make the different glass pieces. We spent half a day there and took a boat back to the Grand Canal station. 

Here are two slide shows of photos from Venice and Murano..

After checking out a few places and realizing that the farther we went from the train station, the better the places for lunch (price, quality and service) and we had a really nice lunch at this place.. 

Saw a lot of interesting notices like this on displays..

The people of Venice see the tourists as a necessary evil. They are not nice to tourists. We saw some blatant xenophobia and racism. The only folks they hated more than dark skinned folks were Chinese. We were joking that if DJT wants to go win somewhere outside of US, he need to look no further than Venice! 

Funny thing was another note we had read earlier in the day at Murano..

did the Syrians have a similar notice about cheap Venitian glass being dumped into their market in 1500's ?! Who knows?

Venice is beautiful. The people understanably are stressed out by the influx of tourists and the strain has taken its toll.. Still, Venice is beautiful. When you go there, do spend money. Do be nice to the locals. Maybe things will change. 

We had already checked out and put our luggage at the train station. We were walking around with just our backpacks. 

One interesting thing is the service provided to take your luggage across the bridges. All they have to do is to put a ramp on the end of the stair case on either side so folks can drag their luggage up and down. Instead there is a thriving market for these porters with their dollys and they make a living moving luggage to either side. Most of them are from Bangladesh! Guess that is not helping with the strain.. (you can see it at the end of the video)

We had exactly 24 hours in Venice and we made the most of it. We did not want to go through more museums and cathedrals. So skipped those little tours. The glass museum was unique and we enjoyed it!

After some shopping for cute things in the shops, tasting things, some ice cream and buying a new suitcase, we made it to the bus station and were off to the Venice airport.

It was time to fly back to Zurich! 

All roads lead to Rome...

Within Rome, all roads also lead to a central point.. in spite of this, it is possible to get lost in Rome today. Google Maps comes in very handy!

The previous post on this Europe trip (day1) is here..

On day 2 we got up, had breakfast at Hotel Canada (they have a very good breakfast for 10$/person) and walked to the train station. We were taking a local metro to the Vatican. The local metros in Rome are really good. On time, every efficient and people on the trains are friendly. The ticket buying system is also very easy to use. 

We were to meet our tour guide at the bottom of the steps directly opposite the Vatican entrance per instructions. This is like telling a Penguin, you walk up that island of ice and your partner will meet you there.. It looks like all of Rome is at those steps, trying to find their tour guide. There are a zillion tour guides holding flags with the tour company names and some other little beanie baby or toy tied to their little flags. The trick is to go early so you can be united with your guide. Then it is easy.. or not.. depending on, if you belong to our family.

The tour guide looked at San and the girls and shook her head. My guess was she was thinking "if you girls dress like this to Vatican, what do you wear at home? do you wear anything at all?" and my answer would have been "I have been married to this woman for 19 years and I have seen her ankles only three times in public and her knees once when she came to our Christian friends wedding in Napa. she is usually covered head to toe and gives middle eastern burka wearing woman feeling under clothed!"..

Anyways, I don't know what got into San and the kids. They decided that given Europe was going to be hot and all we had was one carry on and a backpack each for this trip (to save time at airports), they packed and dressed "light". Short skirts and shorts everywhere for the most part. Out of all of those, they decided to pick the shortest for Vatican day. Turns out the Vatican has a dress code. No exposing shoulders or knees when going into the place. 

This was interesting because most of the tourists were stuck. This problem was solved by a bunch of African and Middle eastern immigrants who were selling scarves with pictures of vatican for anywhere from 10 to 3 Euros.. "knee cover. shoulder cover".. they kept shouting and were walking among the penguins trying to find their guides doing brisk business. We bargained with two or three of these fellows, found the LCM on the price (kids, note how math comes in handy) and got three of these. The boys just pulled down their shorts to cover the knees and started walking funny with a rap star gait! I now know why these rap star folks walk funny.. when you are constantly trying to avoid your shorts from falling off your hip, you walk like that!

Where were we? yes, Vatican..

We had booked trips on Viator. The tour guides were good. They had all the tickets pre booked and it was all "jump the line". Also they made sure most of our group was from USA/Canada and they grouped families with kids together. We had a 14 people group and the walking started. 

The Vatican museum is amazing. The Christian leadership went out of their way to create this place and they made sure it will be preserved well. 

We had seen a lot of stuff in Uffizi that was repeated here, which was good. We had already been conditioned on what to expect. There is a lot of history in this place... and also some statues that put the previous one in Uffizi to shame.. like this one..Take that Uffizi!

The photographs in Portrait format in slide show..

another slide show..

 

We went to the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately there were no Photographs allowed. Some of the folks in our group were taking pictures by holding their iPhones at waist level. I thought that was not right. If me being a non Christian could accept the rules there and put my camera inside, these folks with their Crosses on their neck chains could have done better.. San told me to mind my business and we kept walking out. We also found that there were lot of folks who did expose their knees and shoulders and no one said anything. But the scarves were not exactly returnable..  I liked the ceiling but thought it was too depressing. Loved the ceiling in the Palace de Vecchio better. 

I did find a new favorite painter after this trip. Raphael! The one painting on a wall above a window where he painted a prison room with amazing shadows stayed with me for a long time. Pity this guy died young. His work was the best in that place..

The basilica is a completely different story. The place is well lit compared to most of the other churches we visited and I loved it. I like places of worship that are not dark and dinghy.. a place that can lift up your spirit. Saint Peters Basilica is amazing. I could kneel down there and say a prayer and feel a sense of calm that you get in some of the grand temples in India. Totally awe inspiring place.

Once we were done with the Museum tour, the Sistine Chapel and Basilica, the morning part of the tour ended with us in the open courtyard. That in itself is grand. (see the Pano pics below). The Pano feature on iPhone was best to capture these places.. 

this is a Vertical Pano shot by doing backbends.. 

We had a tricky situation. it was already 12:30. We were supposed to be at the Coliseum to find our guide there at 1:45 for a 2PM tour. Now that we knew that finding your tour guide takes time, we rushed out to the metro. It was a 20 minute walk. We took the train, changed trains, then went to the stop for the Coliseum. Our first thought was let's get there, check in with guide and hope to find something to eat. The kids were starting to strike saying "lets eat here and then go there". 

Eventually we ended up right in front of the Coliseum and there was a restaurant where we found food. They had sandwiches, fries, juice, etc.. so it worked out. The outside temperatures were close to 100F. There were no trees in the area. Mostly ruins for touring around. It is a good idea to have a hat or an umbrella if you are doing these tours in summer. We walked through multiple levels of the Coliseum with our tourguide Ursus. He was a family man with three kids of his own and given our group was just the 8 of us and a Canadian family with two kids and a grandma, he made sure the kids were the focus of the tour. They were all attentive and he was giving them a history lesson. The adults mostly trudged along taking pictures. 

The Coliesum in an interesting place. Human depravity knows no bounds. At least that was my one line takeaway after walking around this place and the surrounding ruins for almost 4 hours. Good news here? Free water fountains everywhere in Rome with great cool drinking water! 

After the tour, he gave us an option to continue on the other side. We said "we are all extremely tired. We will pass". Handed him the head phones and went back to take the metro to the hotel. 

A video to cover our Day 2 of the Europe trip..

We did laundry at a Laundromat near the hotel, the ladies decided their hubbies should get something for being nice the whole day and sponsored a Thai massage at a place one block from the hotel. I promptly got an allergic reaction from the oil the lady used for the massage. We ate a nice dinner again within a block from the hotel at a restaurant that played world cup games on the big screen. Think it was the Belgium Japan match where Belgium came from behind and won. It was a Monday evening.  After the dinner we called it a night.

We were going to go our different routes on the trip. We said our byes and it was time to pack up everything. The hotel part of the trip was over.

It was B&B time..