Lynne and Jim sample a bit of the old world
Thursday, September 11 – Based on reputation and recommendations, we decided to book a Globus tour called the “European Sampler” for our first foray to the old world. We left the house about 4:20 PM and took the Anderson Ferry across the Ohio headed for our first international flight. We breezed through security, even with Lynne’s CPAP, and the TSA screeners were very polite and friendly.
Delta flight 36 departed from gate B08. Lynne noticed the plane’s number was 1701, the number of the Enterprise from Star Trek, and she said it was a good omen. The flight was a little bumpy but otherwise uneventful, the food was good and we were able to get some sleep after departing Cincinnati at 7:50. While most people we knew flew to Heathrow, the direct flight from CVG went to Gatwick.
Friday, September 12 – England was mostly overcast but we saw some bits of ground as we made our descent to Gatwick. Our flight arrived early and we had a short wait until our gate became free. The walk through the twisty passages of the airport seemed to go on forever but we eventually made it to the long queue for immigration. Once up to the desk, just a few quick questions and we had our passports stamped. We picked up our luggage and met the Globus representative who steered us straightaway to a bus that would drop us at our hotel in Hammersmith. This was our first experience with left-hand driving and it felt a bit unusual. We saw a highway sign stating the Channel Tunnel was closed and learned from the radio on the bus that a freight train had caught fire in the north tunnel the previous day.
At the Novotel London West another Globus representative walked us through the London itinerary and gave us directions to the local Underground stations and restaurants. We walked over to the nearest station to check out the shops and ate Spanish tortillas for lunch at a place called Antonia’s. Our afternoon excursion was to the Tower of London. The Tower is a sprawling complex along the Thames. The Crown Jewels were much more impressive in person than in any pictures. We saw the Traitor’s Gate, Bloody Tower, White Tower, Sir Walter Raleigh’s room where he was imprisoned for 13 years, the private chapel in the Medieval Castle, and we walked and climbed until our feet ached. We had no idea how large the Tower really was. We saw the Beefeaters and Ravens and happily collapsed into our seats on the bus after a couple of hours of wandering about. The guide pointed out many sights as we zigzagged through the curly maze of London’s streets. He noted that the Roman Road was easy to distinguish from the rest because it ran in a straight line.
That night we opted for another package, dinner at Chez Gerard (when in England, eat French food) and a boat tour of the Thames after dark. The restaurant was on Trinity Square, just a block or so from the Tower of London, and the boat dock was a short stroll away. Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, City Hall, the Globe Theater, Tate Modern, and more all stood out against the night sky. Back at the hotel, Lynne got stuck in the bathroom in the middle of the night when the door refused to open. Adding insult to injury, the toilet started running noisily and took several minutes to fix so we avoided a good night’s sleep after the long day. Little did we know this was just our introduction to the joys of European plumbing.
Saturday, September 13 – The 6:15 alarm was way too early. Breakfast was at the hotel, a full English breakfast complete with roasted tomato halves and baked beans. Morning sightseeing took us through Piccadilly Circus, past Trafalgar Square, through Kensington, past Baker Street and to a stop at Saint Paul’s, one of the most amazing pieces of architecture we’d ever seen. We toured the Church, seeing the tombs of Nelson and Wellington in the Crypt, and the American Chapel in the Nave. The chapel is dedicated to the 22,000 Americans who died on their way to, or while based in, Britain during the second World War. Saint Paul’s ran us out of superlatives.
From the bus we saw statues of Churchill, Wellington and other British giants, and notables from other countries including Nelson Mandela, FDR, Eisenhower, Lincoln and George Washington, the last a bit of a surprise. In Mayfair we saw the U.S. Embassy, drove through the theater district past Saint Martin’s Church (but couldn’t see the Saint Martin’s Theater, where The Mousetrap is performed), along the Victoria Embankment on the Thames where we saw Cleopatra’s Needle, a 3,500 year old Egyptian obelisk guarded by a pair of sphinxes, one damaged by a Zeppelin bombing during the first world war, and into Westminster for a look at the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Number 10 Downing, then back to the hotel past the flats of Alfred Hitchcock and H. G. Wells, four of the Royal Gardens, Buckingham Palace, and Saint Clement Danes Church, another Christopher Wren design, now used by the RAF for all their religious ceremonies. The church was badly damaged during the Blitz; one corner was left unrepaired and the walls are pockmarked from German bombs.
No time for lunch; we grabbed a snack at the hotel and hopped back aboard the bus for a tour of Buckingham Palace. First stop was the Royal Mews to see the State Carriages and horses. Then a long, long wait to get through security to see the State Rooms of Buckingham. Originally we planned on going to Windsor but opted for Buckingham because it only opens to the public in August and September while the Royals are at Balmoral for the summer. The palace is incredibly opulent with artwork, colored marble, gilding and exquisite furniture, each room as lavish as the previous. The highlight was the Ballroom which was done up for a State Dinner with the finest china and the gold and silver utensils. The scale was monumental and the figures for the number of staff was staggering – 80 servers, 15 dishwashers, etc. A long walk through the grounds took us back to the bus.
On the way to the hotel we detoured to drive past Elton John’s London townhouse, but the driver and guide disagreed which of the houses on the street it was. From the hotel, we walked a few blocks through residential streets to the Queens Head Pub for English fare – British Beef and Bombardier Ale Pie for Lynne, Fish and Chips and a pint for Jim. After dinner we headed to the Underground and took the City line to Baker Street to see 221b, site of the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It was closed but we got a picture of Lynne standing in front of Holmes’ door. We met a woman there who spoke no English, but with gestures and pantomimes, understood she wanted us to take a picture of her with her camera in front of the famous address.
The Underground was hot, smelly and crowded and we heard “Mind the gap”, so it lived up to our expectations. Our feet were killing us by the time we got back to the Novotel.
Sunday, September 14 – The fire in the Channel Tunnel canceled our trip on the Eurostar to Brussels. Instead we left the hotel at 8:15 on a bus with Vicky, our German-born, now a Londoner for 30 years, tour guide. South London looked more rundown than the North and she said the people generally didn’t mix. Our route took us through Elephant and Castle, past Greenwich, by the undisturbed grass fields of Blackheath where the victims of the plague were buried, and by Canterbury to Dover. French immigration stamped our passports and we had a quick snack and took in the white cliffs while waiting for our 12:40 departure on the P&O ferry Pride of Calais. We could see Calais from the harbor in Dover as we had beautiful sunny skies for our crossing. We rode above deck for Lynne’s seasickness. While the Eurostar only needs 20 minutes for the crossing, our ferry took 1 1/2 hours.
In Calais we boarded our new coach and met Robert, our driver. He was from the Netherlands and had to drive down from Brussels to meet us at Calais. Then a mad dash across the low country – a pancake flat landscape, all the buildings made of cream-colored stone and red tile roofs – to make it to Amsterdam in time for our tour of the canals. France decorated their overpasses with colorful ceramic tiles. The border with Belgium consisted solely of a sign with the European Union symbol and the word “België” by the side of the highway. In Belgium we had a ten minute rest stop so we at least got out of the coach and set foot in the country. We were also introduced to the European custom of paying for restrooms – 30 cents in Belgium and the Netherlands. Just north of Antwerp we crossed into the Netherlands and had a quick dinner stop along the highway at an eatery called La Place, in the town of Hazeldonk near Breda. Canals served as fences on Dutch farms, separating cow pastures from hayfields and crops.
We rocketed through the Dutch countryside past old, historic windmills and their new electricity-generating cousins and arrived in Amsterdam a little before 9:00 PM. We were amazed at the thousands upon thousands of bicycles parked everywhere in the Dutch capital. The coach dropped us off at the dock of Rederij Lovers on Prins Hendrikkade across the canal from the 2500-space parking garage for bicycles at the central railway station. The bridges were very pretty all lit up but the houses were hard to see in the dark and a group of loudmouths in the back of the boat made it difficult to hear the narration. We found out Amsterdam has over 65 miles of canals within the city. The boat dropped us at a dock a few blocks from our hotel and we walked the rest of the way. Outside a “coffee” shop, our group was propositioned – “Your first cup (wink) is free!”. Funny, it didn’t smell like coffee. We dodged bicycles (they have right of way) and walked past the shuttered shops of the flower market to the Jolly Carlton Hotel.
Monday, September 15 – The day started with the brain tease of European plumbing followed by breakfast at the hotel. A cash machine around the corner restocked our rapidly dwindling supply of Euros. Jim managed to forget the room number and had to check at the desk to find out where we were. When we left the Jolly Carlton, Vicky had Robert drive around a little of Amsterdam so we could see it in the daylight. Massive traffic jams greeted us as we made our way out of town on the expressways. The plains of the lowlands gradually turned to a rolling landscape near Arnhem and fields of grass and sand were replaced with trees and shrubs. In Germany the toiletten were 50 cents, 20 cents more than Belgium and the Netherlands. The toilets at our first rest stop featured robotic cleaning arms and rotating seats.
We crossed the Rhein and got to Köln (Cologne) at lunchtime to see the cathedral. Started in the 1200’s, this Gothic masterpiece was stunning enough on the inside with its soaring lines and stained glass windows, and was absolutely astounding with the ornate stone carvings and the complexity of the buttresses, columns and gargoyles of the exterior. Some cleaning had been taking place on one side of the building but most showed the sooty black of centuries. Most of the interior was roped off because they were holding a liturgy, but Lynne was able to light a candle for her father in the west end of the nave. After a bit of souvenir shopping, a Berliner and a short stroll to see more of Cologne, it was back to the bus and a dash to our cruise on the Rhein. We encountered the only rainy weather of the trip and Robert had to stop a couple of times to fix the windshield wipers.
After driving past castles and vineyards clinging to the steep slopes of the Rhineland, we arrived in Bacharach for a river cruise – the Loreleyfahrten. Loreley is the siren of legend who leads ships to their doom on the rocks; our guide said it was an attempt by the rivermen to blame their misfortune on a woman rather than admit they can’t steer. The cruise boat was very nice and we enjoyed wine (Lynne) and beer (Jim) as we headed upstream for more castles, more vertical fields of grapes, and postcard villages. Our tour finished at Bingen where we met back up with our coach, across the river from the statue of Germania.
At Heidelberg we stopped for a picture of the ruins of the castle overlooking the town and a walking tour of the old town square. Heidelberg was not bombed during World War II and features one of the few intact old city centers in Germany. Our dentist had been stationed in Heidelberg for a couple of years so we made sure we showed lots of teeth when we posed for a picture in front of the old castle. We learned all Catholic churches in Germany have a cross atop their spires while Protestant churches have a rooster.
Our hotel was the Best Western Leonardo, right across the street from Heidelberg University. This time it was the doorknobs and locks rather than the plumbing that threw us and several other members of our tour group for a loop. We ate dinner with Tom and Lee from Fort Myers, Florida (late of New Jersey) as the entire group was fed good German fare at the hotel. Lynne even had a beer with dinner (well, a few sips anyway). It was a twenty minute walk back to the old section of town from our hotel and was already dark when dinner finished so we opted to make an early night of it instead.
Tuesday, September 16 – There was no coffee pot on our table and with no excuse to linger at the hotel, we took a little stroll along Bergheimer Strasse. Heidelberg was still mostly asleep; even most of the morning cafes had not yet opened. The overcast of the previous day had largely broken up and we had good weather as we drove into der Schwarzwald (the Black Forest). It reminded us of the Great Smoky Mountains. Our lunch stop was at the House of Black Forest Clocks, home to the Hornberger Uhrenspiele, which claims to be the largest cuckoo clock in the world. The proprietor of the Cuckoo Clock Shop greeted our group with thimbles of cherry wine. We picked up some souvenirs, passing on the Swiss Army Knives and the Cuckoo Clocks. Lynne found a clock she really liked but we couldn’t picture any place it would fit in our house. Sausages for lunch upstairs at the store. When we left, the proprietor came out to the bus to wish us well. He called himself Willie but we found out later his real name is Adolf Herr.
As we headed for the Swiss border through small villages and cattle farms, we crossed the Danube – more stream than river this close to its source. We had to make two stops at the border – in Germany to pay a toll to get out and a few meters later in Switzerland to pay a toll to get in. Switzerland felt different from Germany even though we were in the German-speaking part. It was more densely populated than the Black Forest region. The Rheinfalls were very pretty, plunging 25 meters and marking the end of upstream navigation on the Rhine. After all the manmade sights (castles, churches, etc.) it was a refreshing change to see a natural wonder. This stop was one of the first places where beer was cheaper than soft drinks – 4.00 francs for a Coke, 3.50 for a lager. The Rheinfalls also marked the spot where the sun disappeared, only to reappear as we drove through Zürich. The drive through southern Germany and Switzerland featured lots of highway tunnels. Near Lucerne the sky became overcast again.
In Lucerne our first stop was at the Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal), sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s tribute to the hundreds of Swiss Guards who died defending Louis XVI of France at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Unfortunately it was being cleaned and the workman on a cherry picker scrubbing the inscription below the dying lion lessened the impact a bit. Lucerne was very picturesque. We walked across the Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrücke), originally built in 1303, over the Reuss River. It connects a pedestrian-only section of the old city with the downtown core where our hotel, the Monopol, sat across the street from the train station. The Chapel Bridge is the oldest covered bridge still standing in Europe but was the victim of a fire in 1993 and only the ends of the bridge are still original – the entire midsection had to be rebuilt.
Flowerboxes adorn the sides of the bridge and swans glide through the waters below it. At the Monopol the lift took us to floor 3/4, a landing half way between the third and fourth floors. We had an odd-shaped room on a corner of the building so we kept bumping our toes on the furniture and stumbling because the bathroom floor was not level with the rest of the room. Air conditioning consisted of a large floor fan and opening the window.
Dinner was at the Stadtkeller where the food was accompanied by a show of tradional Swiss music, flag tossing, yodeling, and alpenhorns, the latter two with audience participation. Lynne got licked by a cow (a couple of guys in a cow suit anyway) that ran through the restaurant. She didn’t care much for the main course (veal and mushrooms in a cream sauce) so she grabbed a snack from McDonald’s on the way back. The McDonald’s was on the street level of our hotel along with a Starbucks Coffee and Joe’s New York Deli. If the places hadn’t been charging Swiss Francs we might have forgotten where we were.
Wednesday, September 17 – Solid overcast to start our day. After breakfast at the hotel we boarded a bus for Mount Pilatus. Robert had the day off per EU regulations so Manuel filled in for him. We found out the aisle seats on the buses slid sideways a couple of inches for more room – wished we’d discovered that sooner. A long tunnel under part of the mountain took us from Lucerne to the pretty little village of Alpnachstad and the station for the cog railway up the side of the mountain. The steepest part of the line features a 48% grade. As we headed up we passed through the clouds into brilliant sunshine and blue skies. We saw no wildlife other than birds and marmots so the experience was a little different from being in the Rockies. The railway passes through five tunnels as it climbs; exiting the last tunnel, we saw the station at the summit.
Two hotels (Pilatus Kulm, from 1890 and Bellevue, from 1963) sit in a saddle between the summit peaks. Snow dusted the shady areas of the summit. The valley below us was shrouded in cloud. We took a walking trail through caves and tunnels that circled one of the peaks. Windows and galleries offered dizzying views of the mountainside. Small icefalls rumbled a couple of times while we walked. The ceiling of the tunnel was covered in icicles. Back at the Pilaus Kulm we sat on the terrace, sipped hot chocolate in the bright sunshine, and gazed across the valley to the Jungfrau region. It was breathtaking.
Our time atop the mountain passed quickly and our entire group boarded a tram for the first stage of the descent. Five minutes later we switched to smaller 4-person gondolas which dropped us back into the clouds. We passed over some grazing cows and found out their bells were really, really loud. Not much chance of losing them despite the weather. At the base our group was short three people – they’d mistakenly gotten off the gondola at the midpoint stop down the mountain rather than at the base. A few minutes later they finally showed up. All through the trip, any time we had to wait for someone, it was inevitably one of three couples. We decided we never wanted to be tour guides.
The bus met us in Kriens for the drive back to the hotel. Once there, we ran a load of laundry and walked over to the train station for some dessert in a cafe. We crossed the Reuss to the pedestrian-only shopping area, not finding much of interest. Lynne saw a watch she liked enough to take a second look but ended up talking herself out of the purchase. We crashed in the hotel for the remainder of the afternoon and had a bland chicken dinner with the rest of the group at the Monopol.
Thursday, September 18 – At 7:15 we left Lucerne rolling through more tunnels, past more small farms, and through Basel before crossing back into France. Southern France was mile after mile of white cows, sunflowers, corn, plowed earth, and the occasional castle, chateau or picturesque village. We crossed the Saone, saw some old and new Peugeots displayed near their plant in Sochaux, drove past fields of grapes in Burgundy and caught a glimpse of Chateauneuf en Auxois, centered around a castle dating back to the 1100’s. Lunch was at a service area along the highway. High tolls kept traffic on the French expressways to a minimum until we were past the Fontainebleu Forest. Now a nature preserve and public park, it was originally walled off as hunting grounds for the royalty.
North of Fontainebleu we came to the outskirts of Paris. Shortly after we first spotted the Eiffel Tower traffic ground to a halt. Parisians are really terrible for blocking intersections and running lights contributing to massive gridlock. We gave Robert an ovation after he guided our coach through a particularly bad interchange. Our first view of Paris was the industrial zone outside the city – sooty, grimy, covered in graffiti and overall ugly. Not the best of introductions. Side streets took us into the city proper and the scenery improved even if the drivers didn’t. We arrived at the Holiday Inn Paris République a little past 18:00 and had to be ready to leave for dinner at Les Noces de Jeannette at 19:00.
Most of our group opted for dinner at the restaurant and we had a full French meal – aperitif (Kir, a mix of wine and liqueur), appetizer, main course, cheese, dessert and coffee, with plenty of wine. The coach took us on a tour to see the buildings all lit up. Laser lights project text and moving images on the front of the Parliament. We drove through the courtyard of the Louvre, saw the Grand Palais, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées, the Opera, the Orsay Museum, Tuileries Gardens, and finished at the Eiffel Tower. Because France had the presidency of the European Union while we were there, the tower was illuminated in blue and the 12 gold stars of the EU logo glowed on one side. On the hour 10,000 strobe lights started flashing at random making the whole tower sparkle. We got back to the hotel a little before 23:00.
Friday, September 19 – The day started with no hot water in the hotel and our iPod charger fried when Lynne plugged it in even though it claimed to be compatible with 240 volt circuits. After breakfast at the hotel we saw Paris by daylight with local guide Catherine and trusty Robert behind the wheel. At our photo stop by the Arc de Triomphe we crossed under the traffic to see the tomb of the unknown soldier from World War I. France was very big on commemorating Napoleon’s victories and the first World War but other than de Gaulle, had little to say about the second World War. They do have streets named for Churchill and FDR but no major monuments.
At the Eiffel Tower we rode the elevator up the North leg to the second level for a view of the city. Some military personnel were training on the tower while we were there, rappelling from the first level down to the plaza below. We grabbed a subpar bite for lunch on the tower as we took in the hazy view of Paris. The afternoon was spent at the Palace of Versailles, the most over-the-top display of opulence we’d ever seen. Our tour took in the State Rooms, King’s and Queen’s bedrooms, the Hall of Mirrors, and the gardens. Someone had the brilliant idea to display an exhibit of art by American kitschmeister Jeff Koons so we were treated to giant inflatable lobsters, balloon dogs, float toys on a chain link fence, and a life-size ceramic sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles the chimp stuck in the middle of the 18th century rooms. The sky was cloudless and it was hot at Versailles. The palace and grounds were perhaps the ultimate display of French self-importance.
The early part of the evening was spent at Montmartre, the hill dominated by the Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart) church. Robert dropped our group off at the base of the hill and we rode to the top on a funicular. We ate dinner at La Bonne Franquette with Simpson and Mara, a couple from San Francisco who were with our Globus group. Previous clientele at the restaurant included Picasso, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Monet, Zola and Vincent van Gogh, whose painting of the restaurant’s garden now hangs in the Orsay museum. The food was very good too. Montmartre (“mountain of martyrs”) was a stream of souvenir vendors, crêperies and restaurants. We didn’t see any souvenirs fascinating enough to separate us from our Euros. One of our traveling companions noted you could tell how far you are from the Eiffel Tower by the number of tacky plastic replicas you get for a Euro – one at the tower, two a bit further away, three by the time you reach Montmartre.
After riding back down the hill and rejoining our coach we drove through the Pigalle neighborhood past the Moulin Rouge and made our way to the Seine for a look at Paris from a Bateau Mouche (“fly boat”). The boat carried its own bank of halogen floodlights and illuminated the buildings along the banks and on the Île de la Cité and the Île St-Louis. Very pretty. Notre Dame is on the Île de la Cité; the Île St-Louis is the most expensive residential area of Paris. Back at the hotel we said our goodbyes to Robert and to the other members of our group who were catching earlier flights and would be gone by the time we got up. Vicky asked the group “London or Paris?” and the unanimous answer was “London!”
Saturday, September 20 – Last goodbyes at the hotel with most of our group and our guide, Vicky. Traffic was reasonable for our ride to Charles de Gaulle airport where the security line was long. We had plenty of time though and got to gate E35 in Terminal 2 about 1 1/2 hours before our scheduled departure. The flight was completely uneventful but lasted nine hours (three movies, three television shows and plenty of ads for duty-free shopping). Skies were overcast when we passed over Ireland but a little bit of Nova Scotia could be seen as we flew over it. Back at Cincinnati we handed over our customs declaration, grabbed our luggage, put it back on the conveyor, took off our shoes to go through security, got our luggage back and headed to long-term parking. On the shuttle bus we first heard about the windstorm from Hurricane Ike the previous Sunday which knocked out power to most of the midwest, downing trees and peeling off shingles. With some trepidation we headed back up I-75 and were surprised when both Scott and Michelle greeted us at the house. The refrigerator was empty, Michelle having thrown everything away because the electricity had been off for four days. Scott was still without power in Sharonville. The house was intact though and we ate Skyline for dinner while we filled the kids in with the highlights of the trip.
Milestones on this trip: Lynne and Jim’s first trip to Europe.
States and Countries we visited:Kentucky, The United Kingdom (England), Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and France.
Capital cities we visited: London, Amsterdam and Paris.
