So my cousin Kate was in town, so I went in to Zürich to say hello on Wednesday.
In the train station now they have a giant Swarovski Christmas tree and some markets were open. Besides this, Zürich was as dull as usual, but it was good to have a chat to Kate. When I came back into Turgi I saw they now have Christmas lights up in the main street, which was pretty cool.
It snowed today! For about 5 minutes anyway. The weather had predicted snow for today, but when I woke up in the morning I was disappointed to see that there was none. Then at work I looked out the window at one stage in the morning, and noticed IT WAS SNOWING! After a few minutes when it stopped there was no indication that it had snowed at all :( Once the clouds cleared a bit you could see the trees on the very top of the hill were snow-capped, but about 15 minutes later that was gone too.
Our trip to Luzern marked Rachael’s first journey in a double-decker train, and we got to see some Swiss countryside on the way. I originally had planned for us to go the top of Mt. Pilatus, but when I checked the site in the morning it said the cable cars weren’t running, so we gave up on that idea. Also for some reason my bank card wasn’t working, so I couldn’t get out anymore money so we had to make do with the amount of cash I already had on me.
This final Euro Trip post (before we get back to Switzerland) is to sum up my impressions of each city. In particular it is dedicated to Tim and Kate who might be coming over next year, or anyone else that plans on travelling to Europe in the future. Hopefully these tips/comments will be able to make your trip even more enjoyable than ours.
Places Rome - Rome as a place to visit is a must.
After a few quick hours of sleep in Munich, we were checking out again. At the train station we waited for the tour to start, and then after seeing a sign for the Neuschwanstein Tour, signed up. Turns out it was the wrong one, and not the Sandeman’s one that we had to planned to go on. Our guide was perfectly good though, and in fact probably needed the money more as the other group was much bigger and there was only 2 other people with us.
Due to our delayed flight from France, we got into Prague later than we were supposed to. By the time we found our Hostel we had 30 mins to get to the walking tour we had booked. We asked at reception how long it would take to get there and got told about 30 mins. So we made a mad rush, but got the tram in the wrong direction, got a bit lost and went to a Mexican restaurant instead.
Coming in on the train in the morning we got to see some epic countryside. France was a lovely country and I want to go back again and see more of it one day.
When we got off our train we needed to catch the Metro to our Hostel. The ticket system sucks. There was only one ticket machine and about 40 people lined up to use it. After we finally got our ticket we were on our way, and despite being very crowded it was pretty convenient and cheap.
I’ll take a short break from the Euro Trip story to tell you about my first time ice skating.
I went into Zürich last night with a few other guys from IAESTE to go ice skating at the Dolder Ice Rink. The rink itself was so much cooler that I was expecting. Not only is it an open rink, but in the centre they had a massive lit up Christmas tree.
Coming into Venice was pretty exciting, especially when the train finally got past the mainland and we were on a bridge, heading out to sea and the island of Venice. My first impression wasn’t that great to be honest, I expected it to be cooler. The view from the train station wasn’t particularly dazzling and it wasn’t until a bit later that we got to see places that were more like my expectations.
We start our story of Florence at first with the train journey. We got to meet a diverse range of people during the trip. Immediately opposite Rachael and I was a British couple. I don’t think I heard the girl say a word during the whole journey. She sat there for the whole trip with headphones in ear, basically ignoring our existence. The guy was a polar opposite, extremely chatty and engaged us in conversation for the entire trip.
