Luxembourg - Land of Natural Beauty and $6 Chapstick

We trained out of Brussels on Thursday evening bound for Luxembourg. Unlike the other trains that we had previously been on, this one did not have assigned seating. We were in luck however since Brussels is one of the termini of this particular route. Since we had many seats to choose from we decided to pick a pair of seats that would travel facing forward. We were quite pleased with ourselves for being so clever up until the moment that the train began to move in the opposite direction than we had thought.

Oh well, you can’t win them all.

Once we got off the train, we found once again that we’d arrived after the local info bureau was closed, so we wandered over the bookstore to check out a map. Unfortunately, the only one we found was one attached to an expensive guidebook (pretty much everything in Luxembourg is on the expensive side – ask Randy sometime about his $6 Chapstick). Given that we didn’t want to spend all of our beer money on a guide book, we wandered across the street to the local Best Western and threw ourselves on the mercy of the desk clerk, who rewarded our cheapness with a free map and turn-by-turn directions to our hotel.

It was a bit of a hike up to the hotel, but Luxembourg is an amazingly scenic country, so the walk was very nice. Once we arrived at the hotel, which was located in one of the main town squares in Luxembourg City, we found Angel and Randy waiting for us at the café outside our hotel. They had very sweetly bought flowers and gifts for us (thanks, guys!) and waited for us before eating dinner.

We checked into the hotel, then met Randy and Angel downstairs for some dinner/drinks and listened to the orchestra playing in the gazebo in the town square before retiring for the night and agreeing to meet down at the breakfast spot at hotel café.

When we awoke the next morning, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and the town square was bustling. It was a regular Disney movie Saturday morning. Randy and Angel were waiting downstairs at the breakfast buffet for us, so we grabbed some basic morning yummies, sat for a quick breakfast and then headed out for the day.

The agenda for the morning called for a walking tour of Luxembourg City, which Randy had researched and put together, complete with awesome maps indicating where all the major sites of the city were to be found. The first stop on our tour was a small park with a war memorial, overlooking the deep valley that is part of the city. From there we saw a couple churches, wandered across the city’s “Old Bridge” and began following the path down to the river, which according to our two maps would eventually lead us to the city’s “New Bridge” and back to the city center.

And that’s where the adventure really began. We followed the river under, over and across many bridges, passed through lush forested land, passed cuter-than-cute little neighborhoods and generally got lost in the stunning beauty of Luxembourg. And I mean that literally.

After about an hour and a half of walking, we didn’t seem to be any closer to the New Bridge – or, more to the point, couldn’t tell if we were because, as it turned out, we’d walked off the edge of the map that we had, so we stopped to ask directions and discovered that if we kept walking that direction, we’d have to walk the circumference of the globe to make it back to Luxembourg City and our hotel. Since Randy and Angel had left the car in the city at a 2-day lot, we had a hotel room booked for a second night, and we need to be back to our jobs sometime this century, we promptly reversed course and headed back up the hill to the city. The walk back up was as stunningly beautiful as the walk down. This is definitely, by-far, my favorite walking city thus far.

After making our way out of the no-so-wild wilds of Luxembourg City’s green valley, we found a great little Indian restaurant for lunch and enjoyed butter chicken and Hot Tikka Masala for lunch before working our way back to the Place d’Arms square in which our hotel was located. Once there, we took in the big band that was still going strong in the town square. Or, I should say, they were going strong until a group of roving Hare Krishna followers entered the square at one corner, singing and dancing an chanting – at which point the band wisely took a break until the Hare Krishna group completed their tour of the square, exiting at an adjacent corner.
We then wandered a short bit more before Angel and Randy decided to stop for dinner while Rolf and I went souvenir shopping. Having had a full day we collapsed for the night – apparently sleeping through some raucous partying in the square that kept Angel and Randy up ‘till the wee hours of the morning.

Brussels – The Adventure Continues!

Travellers note: If you are going to sleep in Brussels you would do well to bring earplugs with you. Amongst their other attributes, the Belgian are apparently tireless workers, as evidenced by the construction crew who was grinding metal at 2 in the ever-loving morning! Just a tip.

Anyway, the construction crew eventually went home for the morning and I was able to nab a few hours of sleep to get me through another day of cool European cities to see. Megan and I swung by the breakfast area for a quick bite to eat and then headed once more into the town square of Brussels.

Our first stop of the day was the Brussels Museum of cultural history. This museum is housed in a very large structure that was previously used for another purpose. Perhaps a palace, or maybe a state house. I’m a bit fuzzy on this because throughout the museum the only languages available were French and Belgian Dutch (a.k.a. Flemish), neither of which I am literate in. Since I don’t know for certain, I am going to say that the building used to be the Brussels College of International Clown Sciences.

As befits a school for clown science, most of the upper floor was dedicated to the many costumes that belong to the statue of a tiny (approx. 2’ tall) peeing boy named “Manneken Pis”. And they had every outfit imaginable: Cosmonaut, Elvis, Aztec Chieftain, Policeman, Prince (the royal-type, not the gender-ambiguous-‘artist-formerly-known-as’-type). All said, Manneken Pis’ total wardrobe numbered over 700 different outfits. The little dude could change his clothes 2x/day and still not make it through his entire closet in a year! He had some nice threads, too, I must say..

After taking in some local culture at the museum, we strolled up the hill to the St. Michel Cathedral, which is beautiful. We toured the interior for a bit, noting that there was a concert scheduled there for lunchtime, so we decided to move onto our next scheduled event and return for the music later.

The next fabulous sight on our tour of Belgium’s capital city was the Museum at Belgium’s Central Bank. I know it sounds kinda lame, but it was actually a very informative look at money around the world and in Belgium since early man first used seeds and beans as currency. There was a particularly large portion devoted to the recent significance of the Euro and the way that the value of that currency is managed collectively by the central banks of the E.U. They also had a weird alchemy room that we didn’t understand because neither of us know French or Flemish alchemy terminology (clearly a failing of our schooling). To this day, we are still very confused about why this room was included in a money museum. But, what-ev. The museum was really nice despite being a little cryptic in that regard.

On our way out of the museum, we hopped back across the street for the lunch-time choir concert at the Cathedral, as mentioned previously. It was everything you’d expect a choir concert in a gothic-style cathedral to be. Their voices filled the giant stone forum like a chorus of angels. Cheesy, yes, but I’m serious because it was really beautiful. Unfortunately, we only had time to catch about 10 minutes, though because we had a train to catch and hadn’t eaten lunch yet.

Lunch was awesome, as nearly all the food has been up to this point. This particular meal consisted of a Croque Hawaiian and also cream-sauce covered pasta at an outdoor café; this was followed by an official Belgian Waffle (covered in Chocolate and strawberries) sold from one of about 50 store-front vendors that sell these in Brussels. They are *divine*. IHOP ain’t got nuttin’ on this place : )

Finally, we were off to the Bruxelles-Midi train station for our next train to…. Luxembourg!

Day 10: Brussels

If there's one thing that Brussels has in spades it's chocolate and beer. Ok, ok. Yes, that’s two things. Or, as I like to think of them: two great tastes that taste great together.

Upon arriving in Brussels Thursday morning, we started by taking care of bid-ness - i.e. purchasing train tickets for Germany and finding a hotel. Then, we were off to see the city. First stop: The Grand Place - a big medieval market square, just a short metro ride from our hotel.

After spending about 10 minutes taking pictures of the lovely old buildings in the G.P., we began our gastronomy sight-tasting tour of the city with a visit to the Cacao and Chocolate Museum. The museum (which would be better described as two-room-root-cellar-turned-money-making-venture) invited us in with some scrumptious chocolate biscuits and a 5,50/person (Euro) entry fee. After perusing the educational plaques describing the history of chocolate (N.B. Christopher Columbus liked Chocolate, too.), we were treated to a display of praline making, followed by an interactive session of praline-tasting. Guess which I liked better...

After leaving the World of Chocolate a la Belgique, we were parched. So, naturally, we made our way to the beer museum, just a stone's throw (if you have a Major League arm) from the cacao museum. There we saw a well-crafted video describing the beer-making process, different kinds of beer (including cherry-flavored beer) and Belgium's general megafantasitico prowess in the realm of beer-making.

Once the film ended, we started back up to the bar to collect our sample beer, promised as part of the tour. Sadly, we had not paid much attention to the exact route down the theater area of the museum, so we actually wandered in and out of bathrooms, offices and other places we clearly weren't meant to be until we actually found our way back to the bar. Keep in mind: we haven't actually had anything to drink yet. We're such lightweights, we get drunk just being in a beer museum. (All of my Belgian friends officially disowned me just now, after reading that.)

Next on our agenda was finding an Elvis/1950's Americana themed shop that we found in our French-language Brussels’ travel guide that we'd bought at the Paris train station.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the address in-question, we found that Elvis had succumbed to the bad economy, the wrecking ball or both - as the entire building had been demolished.

No worries - there were still more sights to see, like... the Brussels Comic Museum. The comic museum is a nice historical and technical introduction to comic strips, with 3 floors of exhibit material, including a movie theater and many famous comic characters such as Belgium's own Tintin.

After the museum, we hit not one, but two different places for dinner because our stomachs had decided suddenly that they would no longer be on the same eating schedule. And then we did a little more souvenir shopping before retiring the hotel for the evening.

Paris, Part Deux

Paris – Tue and Wed

· Tuesday

After our late first day in Paris we woke up and headed downstairs. I did not get yelled at by any hotel staff, which means the day was already starting off better than the previous one. We trundled down the creaky stairway to the bottom floor (floor -1, since they 0-index in Europe) and wolfed down some croissants and cheese.

With breakfast out of the way it was time to see some more sights of Paris, so it was off once again to the metro system and into the city proper. We arrived at the Isle de la Cite (which Megan informs me I should not refer to as “Isle de la Morte”), a tiny island in the middle of Paris that is home to Notre Dame (the famous one) and a few other sights.

One would think that a giant cathedral on a small island would be easy to find, but Notre Dame was surprisingly good at hiding from us. As was Saint Chappelle, our secondary cathedral objective. We wandered about for a bit before bumping into the line (pretty much literally) for Saint Chappelle and the Halls of Justice. I was interested to see if Hawkman was in, but Megan was more keen on stained glass, so we got in line for Saint Chappelle.

Saint Chappelle is pretty much the coolest display of stained glass that I have ever seen. It’s a small (for a cathedral) 3-level building, the middle section of which is a large room with stained glass that goes from about head-height up to the very tall ceilings. With the exception of some skinny columns and a ceiling, the whole place is made of stained glass. The glass is ¾ of the walls, curving around an altar at the front end. The 4th wall is mostly stone, with a large (at least 8’ in diameter) circular stained glass window at the top. Do a bing search on it to get a good idea of what I’m talking about. If you see nothing else in Paris, go see Versailles, Saint Chappelle, and the Eiffel tower.

Next up on out hit list after Chappelle was the famous Notre Dame cathedral of hunchback fame. Surprisingly, they totally do not work the hunchback angle at all. It’s like they’re white-washing history. If I was running the joint there would totally be Hunchback stuff all over, complete with bell rope for youngsters to go crazy ringing. The neighbors might not get much sleep, but the place would be hopping.

What they do have is a bunch of women outside asking everyone if they speak English. We had been warned of this scam by the venerable Rick Steves, so we just pushed on past. I do wonder what the next phase of the scam is though. Phase 1) Ask if they speak English. Phase 2) ??? Phase 3) Profit!

Having run the gauntlet of gypsy polyglots we arrived at the Cathedral proper and went inside. Being as we were, inside, Megan was unable to view the famous flying buttresses. In fact, these buttresses would not make an appearance until much later in the day. What we did see were more stained glass windows, a cool wooden pulpit, some ivory statues of dead religious dudes, and some prayer candles.

The circuit of Notre Dame was complete with nary a deformation to be seen and so we headed back outside to check out the line to climb up to the landing. Long story shorter, the line was quite long already and thus we opted to instead go check out some Manet and Monet at the Orsay.

I actually enjoyed the Orsay more than the Louvre. The Louvre had more recognizable art, and more of it, but was actually just too darn big and cluttered for me. I’m one of those people that likes things very clean and Spartan, so when I enter a tiny room with fifty sculptures worth more than my condo my brain starts to go numb. Too much to process, and they all start looking like one another. How many marble busts of disembodied heads can one really appreciate at one time anyway?

It is also possible that the liter of beer that I drank directly before visiting the museum helped.

By comparison, the Orsay was much less crowded and much less condensed. There were still a lot of famous works that I vaguely recalled from my art history lessons (yes, I actually took an art history class in college. I’m not quite as uncultured as you lot would believe) along with some lesser known works from the heavy hitters of impressionist painting.

The Orsay was “near enough” to one of the local Gares (train stations) for us to hike over and grab our train tickets to Brussels and Luxembourg, so we made a small detour to take care of business before heading back towards Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower.

We re-located the ticket for the boat tour and hopped on board. What followed was an extremely relaxing hour cruising down the Seine in the pleasant pre-summer sun. I nearly drifted off to sleep from the gentle rocking motion, but managed to stay awake long enough to catch the local sights.

Speaking of sleep, we wrapped up the boat tour and decided to call it a day, returning to the hotel for some slumber time.
· Wednesday

We work up early the next morning excited for the day’s excursion to the opulent palace at Versailles, home to the slightly-less-modest-than-myself King Louis “Sun King” XIV (AKA “P. Louie X.I.V”, AKA “My Sun Homie”). Versailles is totally over-the-top in many wonderful ways.

First off, it’s huge. And I mean HUGE. Not just the chateau itself, but the entire complex including the gardens, menagerie, and Marie’s hamlet. Walking from the palace to Marie Antoinette’s fake farm takes about 30 minutes by foot if you know your way, or about 60 minutes if you are following my directions (sorry Megan!).

Secondly, the entire place is decorated. Inside, outside, upstairs and down. Everywhere you look are marble statues, gilded fountains, brilliant flowers, and lush shrubbery. Megan and I contemplated how many people it must take to keep the place running, and we conservatively estimated 100 just for gardening. That’s like the entire team that worked on the new UI in Windows 7. Imagine the plants we could have made…

Regardless, into the Chateau we went. There are many accounts online of the contents of the Chateau, so I won’t bore you with the details here. If you are intensely interested you should do a bing search. I will note one thing which may be missing from online accounts. You know how you can always tell which part of a statue people touch as they go by because it’s more polished than the rest? Well, there are these tiny naked cherubs located near the hall of mirrors. Guess which part has a shiny sheen?

To paraphrase Jeanine Garafalo, “It’s ok to love the art; Just don’t love the art.”

Versailles took us the better part of the day wandering and wending our way through numerous buildings, gardens and faux hamlets. Thus, we were pretty much petered out at the end. We arrived back at the hotel and promptly slept for about two hours. We woke up just long enough to walk down to the corner restaurant for Megan to enjoy one last Parisian chocolate mousse and then it was back to bed in preparation for Brussels the next day.

· Paris by the numbers
o Priceless art viewed: 100+
o Metro rides: 12+
o Croissants Consumed: 8+
o Times Rolf was yelled at by hotel staff: 2
o Times Rolf was yelled at by waiters: 2
o Times Rolf was yelled at by cops: 1
o Times Rolf was hit by a car backing up out of a hidden driveway: 1
o Waiters that robbed Megan: 1

Days 7 & 8: Paris

We got into Paris via train on Sunday night. Unfortunately, we got in after the tourist info office closed, so armed with the metro maps available in the train station and the address of our hotel, we were mostly on our own to find our way there. The hotel had been advertised as being close to l’Arc de Triomphe and le Champs Elysees. Having some knowledge of Paris geography and the address of the hotel, of course, I was confident that we’d be able to find it with that information.

First stop was at the metro ticket window, where we bought a pack of 20 metro tickets for about 23 Euros. We then found the line running to the Arc de Triomphe and hopped on board. So far, so good. Exiting the metro at our stop, we examined a local neighborhood map to find our hotel’s street. No dice. Next stop: another ticket booth, where we asked for directions to our street. The guy in the booth hadn’t ever heard of it, so he looked it up in his handy street-of-Paris directory. Bad news, he said: we’d metro-ed to the wrong end of town, and we’d have to take two different lines to get to the right area. Still a little in denial, we bought our own map of the city and looked it up ourselves. It looked like he was right and that we’d have to get back on the Metro and travel to the other end of the city.

Nothin’ to it, but to do it at this point. So, we hopped back on the metro line that we’d just gotten off, in the opposite direction. At the station that basically represents the center of the Paris Metro system, we switched to another line taking us to the opposite end of town. Once we arrived, we surfaced to find ourselves looking at an Accenture office and a neighborhood covered in graffiti. We definitely weren’t in the 5-star hotel district. We’d been able to find our hotel’s street on the map, so we set of to find it. After about 10 minutes of wandering around, seemingly without getting any closer to the street, we stopped into a run-down Holiday Inn to ask directions. The nice woman at the counter also had never heard of the street in question, but looked it up in her Paris atlas and gave us further directions. So, off we traipsed, with all of our luggage in tow, to find the hotel.

About five minutes later, we finally found our street and started looking for the building number. This took us about two blocks closer to the Seine until we arrived at the correct the address – which was a large whitewashed cement block building with no business markings and no obvious hotel. Uh-oh. We wandered as far around the building as we could without climbing any spike-covered gates and still could not find the entrance. We double-checked the address and we seemed to be at the right place. We were tired and hot and it was getting dark, so we decided to head back to the friendly arms of the aforementioned Holiday Inn.

When we walked back into the lobby of the Holiday Inn, the desk clerk gave us a sympathetic smile as we told her we’d been unable to find our hotel. We asked if we could use their Wi-Fi to try to locate our hotel, which of course was asking a lot (can we please use your resources to help us give money to your competitor? ) However, she eventually took pity on us and gave us a wireless key good for ½ hour of access. With this, we were able to find our hotel’s local number (all we’d had previously was a number in New York – yes, New York City, USA). Upon calling the hotel, we were able to get accurate metro directions (which, as it turns out took us back past the Arc de Triomphe again.), and about 40 minutes later we found ourselves in the lobby of the hotel in which we had actually reservations!

When we checked in, they told us that we could handle the payment arrangements the next morning. Great! We were very tired, so we got our key, headed up to bed, figured out the Wi-Fi (which cost us 10 Euro – the first time we’d had to pay for Wi-Fi yet.

When we awoke the next morning (now yesterday, we headed down to breakfast). Along the way, we were stopped by the front desk clerk to tell us that she needed a printed copy of our hotel voucher. Huh? What voucher? We told her that we’d made the reservations online and that we had no way of printing any confirmation, etc. that we’d received. She seemed put-off by this, and sent us downstairs to eat breakfast, with instructions to see her after we were done.

Breakfast was good - typical French baguette, croissant, cheese, yogurt and fruit. Rolf swears that the lady running the buffet yelled at him to sit at a different table, but I didn’t see any yelling, so I think he may be exaggerating a touch :)
After breakfast, we headed back up the front desk, as requested, at which point, the front desk clerk decided that it’d be ok for us to use her computer to print out the voucher – since it meant that she could get paid :) That process was relatively painless – and then we were off to explore the city!

The first stop on the tour of the city was the Arc de Triomphe, which is being cleaned/restored along each side, so the city of Paris has cleverly covered the worksite with big banners that replicate the stonework underneath. Considering that they’re falsies, they actually look pretty decent. We considered getting in line to climb to the top of the Arc, but with most of the extremely long lines that we’ve encountered since in Paris, decided that it wasn’t worth the wait, since we could see most of the monument without standing in line.

So, off we went again – now up the Champs Elysees, which had been closed to traffic for an ecodisplay put on by France’s farmers. Imagine a bunch of giant planter boxes spread across Paris’ most famous street, surrounded by a scattering of beauty bark, and you’ve got the eco display. Nice, and it kept the crowds a little of the sidewalk where we were walking. Once we got to the end of the Champ Elysees, we continued past the Grand Palais and the Petite Palais to the Seine. Then, up the Seine and across the river to the Musee D’Orsay. Continuing further up la Rive Gauche, we then crossed the River again to the Louvre.

The lines at the Louvre were moving pretty quickly, so we decided to go inside. It took us about 15 minutes to get through security and buy our tickets. Not too bad. First stop, per Rolf’s request: Yup, the ol’ Mona Lisa. As many of you’ve heard, it’s on the smaller side and the room is super crowded, so you basically just pop in for a couple pictures and then move on.

After taking a gander at the M.L.., we descended to the ground floor, where they had an exhibit of ancient Egyptian and Etruscan artifacts and art. We spent about an hour walking through that (Missing Ramses III our first time through because he’s kinda shoved off into a corner ). All in all, it was a great exhibit – and one that really worked up an appetite because afterwards we agreed that we needed to hit a café for lunch.

We found a nice one across the street from the Louvre, in a paved square where a large group of classical musicians were playing every famous classical piece that you can think of. It was a really nice setting for lunch, so we grabbed an outdoor table, ordered some tasty food and beverages (at which point the waiter smiled encouragingly as I worked out how to say ‘1664’ [as in the year and the beer] in French).

Once lunch was done, we strolled through les Jardins des Tuilleries, up the Champs Elysees, stopping multiple times along the way to buy kitchy-cute souvenirs and back the hotel for a nap because all that culture can really wear a person down .
When we awoke about 3 hours later, it was about an hour before sunset, so we grabbed our cash and IDs and headed out to see La Tour Eiffel. We got off the Metro just in time to catch the Towers on-the-hour light show (in which they randomly light various lights on the structure for a “twinkle” effect) through a gap between a couple buildings. The line to ride to the top of the tower, when we got there was atrociously long, so we walked down to an outdoor café along the Seine to grab some cold drinks and hang out until the next light show.

While down at the Seine, we also found a nice boat tour place and filed that away as a to-do before we left, and then headed back to the hotel to catch some ZZZZZZZZs..

Day 5ish - Strasbourg

After our adventures with particle accelerators we headed North into France and the border city of Strasbourg. However, in a recurring theme of this vacation, the road to Strasbourg was closed. It wasn’t quite as closed as the road that ended in a 40-foot-tall wall (literally. The road just stopped at a gigantic wall. It was all very Shel Silverstein), but it was still impassable by automobile.

Our only map at the time was that of the rail lines through Europe, which wasn’t exactly the most useful for this particular situation. Therefore we stopped at a gas station and I was promptly gang-pressed into service as back-seat navigator. It is no secret that I kind of like being a back-seat driver, so this was a happy situation for all involved. With the aid of the map we began our trip down the alternate path of the French countryside. I won’t say that this was the most direct or quickest route, but it was extremely scenic.

The weather was beautiful again as we passed through tiny village after tiny village. Each one had its own personality and each was as beautiful and quaint as the one before. Along the way we saw a castle atop a nearby hill and so decided to take a break to stretch our legs and see another ancient fortification.

We arrived at the castle and walked a short distance up the hill to the front gate. Nobody was around, so we wandered inside to see what was going on. What we found was a somewhat surprised (but extremely nice) lady who took our money and then promptly locked us inside. It turns out that this was the only worker in the castle, and so she was the ticket vendor, gift store cashier, tour guide, custodian and security force. That’s a lot of hats for one person, so you don’t take any chances when three Americans and a giant dog show up at your castle. That’s how the English lost the colonies (or something, I’m not very good with history).

Anyway, we had managed to wander in right as she was about to give a tour to a group of teenagers. Just five minutes later and we would have been greeted with a giant closed and locked door. Us having no siege engines (We couldn’t check them at the airport), we would have had no way of touring the castle.

The castle itself (like the other castles before it) was incredible. We crossed a real live drawbridge, got to see the cell of the famous French womanizer Maribou, descended 200+ steps to the dungeons, saw a gigantic well that seemed to go down forever (the tour guide dropped some water down the well and it took ~8 seconds for the water to travel down and sound to travel back up), and finally emerged once again in the (thankfully empty) moat at the base of the castle.

The tour guide was kind enough to unlock the castle doors (but only after we had purchased some items at the gift store) and so we climbed back into the car, rejoined the freeway, and cruised the remaining distance to Strasbourg.

The most prevalent landmark in Strasbourg is the gigantic Notre Dame Cathedral . Most large towns have at least one of these mammoth structures, and they are all quite impressive. This particular cathedral is made from a dark brown stone and appears to be some form of iron when viewed at a distance. It’s huge size, angular features, and aforementioned metallic appearance all converge to give this structure a German industrial feel. Closing one’s eyes, one can almost see giant clockwork steam airships circling the uppermost towers.

Speaking of the uppermost towers, that’s where we headed. For a very reasonable fee one can climb up the 300+ stairs to a height of 66 meters. From this landing it is possible to see literally miles in every direction. I’m running out of ways to describe spectacular views, so I’ll just say that it was well worth the workout to get to the top.

After the cathedral we bid a heartfelt goodbye to Lynn and Loki. Many many thanks to Lynn for being an awesome friend. She put up with us for a week without complaint, which if you know me is no easy feat!

One thing that the readers of this blog may not know is that most of our trip hasn’t really been planned out. We came to Europe with a start date, an end date, and a general outline of the things that we wanted to see and do. We’ve pretty much been playing it by ear ever since.

This has afforded us a ton of flexibility, but it is not without its drawbacks. Specifically, we decided to spend another night in Strasbourg before heading to Paris. We had only booked the previous hotel room for one night, and learned that neither the hotel we stayed at nor their sister hotel had any rooms for the near future.

We would find this message repeated at the next few hotels that we visited, and so we were starting to consider our plan B options when we finally found a hotel with a room. This was the hotel Grillion, which seems to mean “Jimminy Cricket” in French. This is a place that rents rooms that can be described as “Spartan” and more accurately described as “closets built for tiny French midgets who don’t use the toilet or shower”. Lest you think I exaggerate, I hit my head on the ceiling of the room not once, but twice during my stay. Shaq would have needed to crawl around on hands and knees.

Regardless, it fit our criteria of “private space with walls, ceiling, and locking door” so we made do. Surprisingly, they had free internet access, which was nice as it allowed us to update status and do some internet-type maintenance.

Once we had acquired a “room” for the night our minds turned back to touristy pursuits, and so we decided to take a boat tour of Strasbourg. The tour was quite relaxing. The sun was shining down on our open-topped boat as we gently drifted down the river to the accompaniment of our pre-recorded narration.

We saw the many bridges of Strasbourg, the new administration buildings for the EU, and “the tower of torture” which was probably not a ride at Disney despite the catchy name. The part of the city in which we spent most of our time is an island in the middle of the Rhine, river that flows through the town. However, in our first day-and-a-half, we’d managed to only see about half the island, so taking the boat tour informed us about which parts we might want to explore in our last half-day in Strasbourg. As a result, after enjoying breakfast at the hotel on our last morning here, we headed out to explore La Petite France district, which made for some good photography.

We had some additional time in the city before our train ride to Paris today so we took a sightseeing tram around the city. This was accompanied by some narration explaining the sights of the town. Interestingly, the background music to this narration was Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven” rendered as Muzak. As one can imagine, this made it difficult to concentrate on the narration.

The guide would be talking about how such-and-such building used to be an abbatoir and I’d be whaling on my air guitar and shrieking “There stands a LAY-deeeee we all know-oh-oh!” . So pretty much all I know about Strasbourg is that they rocked out.

So, that was Strasbourg. We enjoyed it immensely and would highly recommend it on any itinerary in France. Now onto Paris…

Day 4 - One Box of Wine and an Ice Cream To-Go. SEE-VOO-PLEY.

Thursday was a day of great adventures and serious weirdness. The morning started early (pre-dawn), as we’re still not quite adjusted to the time difference, so we got up shortly after Lynn and Laura left for the airport (Laura left for Paris on a o-dark-hundred-hour flight this morning. What a trooper!) Rolf and I did some interweb surfin’ until Lynn got back about 7, at which point, we made some tea, gathered our dirty unmentionables (pretend like I didn’t mention that) and headed off for the self-serve Laundromat.

While waiting for the laundry to wash, we headed off the grocery store to do some shopping. All was going according to plan until we discovered that the store doesn’t open until 8. D’oh! So, then we made a quick course correction and traipsed down the street to the boulangerie for some heavenly baked goods of the ‘petit dejuner’ (breakfast) variety. So far, so good.

After eating breakfast, we then headed back to the Laundromat to throw our now-mentionables in the dryer and sit around and chat for the 24 minutes that it took them to dry. Next stop: Lynn’s place to drop off our clothes and pick up our tourist gear for a morning tour of the UN and an afternoon visit the the CERN (think Large Hadron Collider) museum. So on to the bus we went for the short trip to the NGO/Diplomat district of Geneva.

Lynn has been on the UN tour many times, so she walked us to the gate of the UN and then set off to run some errands. Rolf and I entered the UN, got a visitor badge (yes, just one badge. The deal is that I give them MY passport info and then I’m responsible for whatever Rolf does inside the UN. The guard who issued the pass was laughing and making jokes about how Rolf was now my charge and I had to make sure he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to. I was laughing on the outside, but, internally, I was imaging what the inside of the interrogation room would look like at the UN security department. If you’ve met Rolf, you know what I mean. [Love you, Sweetie :-)]). Lucky for me, though, Rolf behaved himself and we thoroughly enjoyed the UN tour.

After the tour, we had about an hour to kill before we met up with Lynn outside the UN, so we took the opportunity to take some pictures of notable sights around the UN grounds. There’s one location with all the flags of the UN member countries on a long plaza facing a beautiful old building. In front of that, there’s a beautiful chalk-style mural, depicting many different people and cultures of the world. And across the street from that is a sobering sculpture of a chair with one half-missing leg, meant to represent victims of landmines around the World. Being at the UN and seeing the important issues that they’re working on represented in such an emotional way is a definite must-do if you are ever in the great city of Geneva.

So, once Lynn picked us up, we headed out to the outskirts of Geneva, by the airport, to find the CERN museum. For those who don’t know, CERN is the organization that, among other interesting scientific contributions, has built the a very large particle collider (the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC) under Geneva and part of neighboring France to study what the universe looked like very shortly after the Big Bang. Contrary to popular belief, the intent of the collider really is for research, not to create a black hole that will transport us all to a far-away Klingon planet. The museum is awesome, with lots of interactive science exhibits, in addition to a thorough history of CERN and the LHC.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself, because a funny thing happened on the way to the CERN museum... You see, we were navigating our way to the CERN museum via a general map of Geneva and surrounding areas. And, this is where it gets interesting. The map shows CERN, not in Geneva, but just over the border in France. Being cartophiles (people who love maps, not wheelbarrows. Buy a dictionary, people), we never questioned that the map might be leading us astray.

So, with Rolf’s impeccable navigational skills and Lynn’s expert driving skills we successfully made our way to CERN. The problem? The CERN building that we found was clearly not meant to be found by your average Joe (though it was the only one on our street map - AND the dude at the Indian place down the street from us gave us directions to it, also, so it’s not exactly a well-kept state secret) . So, we arrived at a building marked Cern Bldg {some number that I can’t remember}, which indicated that it was only for authorized people. And while the three of us, together, are pretty awesome. We’re not “Authorized” Awesome. So, we did what any annoying tourist would do – we headed to the guard building for directions. And this is where it gets a little wonky.

Rolf and I pioneered Mission-Get-Directions while Lynn looked for parking. When we got there, I managed to put together enough French to ask for directions to the museum. At which point the guard invited us into his office, made some phone calls and started printing out a small novel of directions (or something) for us.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (err… parking lot), Lynn had found parking and headed over to the guard building to meet us. And, while the guard had been ok with two tourists in his office, having three in his apparently was the critical mass (Physics Joke Alert) for guard flip out. Because, as soon as Lynn walked in, he went into a seemingly infinite loop of asking who she was and what she was doing there. Eventually we managed to convince him that she wasn’t an international spy or general nutcase, at which point he told us he’d lead us to the museum; then he got in his car and we got in ours and off we went. Arriving safely at the museum 10 minutes later, we shook his hand, thanked him and headed inside to check it out. As previously mentioned, la musee was awesome.

Upon completing our tour of CERN, we got back in the car and headed off for Lynn’s place in Geneva. On the way, we passed through Swiss wine country and decided to stop in a little town to tour a couple wineries. At the first wine cellar that we entered, we found a cozy little tasting room/wine shop run by an American woman. She was really fun to talk to (as she rightly observed: ‘The entire country of Switzerland is a postcard’) and she sold us a few bottles of excellent wine, one of which we enjoyed with cheese and bread later that evening.

Bolstered by our success at the first winery, we headed up the road a piece to a second picture-perfect wine town and stopped into a second winery to see if they also had samples of their specialties available. Lynn waited outside with Loki while Rolf and I went in. Upon entering, we said hello in French, and then (because I don’t know the word for “wine tasting”), asked if they spoke English.

Nope. So, I proceeded to try to ask if they sold individual bottles of wind or if they had any glasses of wine available, in French. Unfortunately, my recollection of high school French failed me here (despite the fact that my 3rd year French teacher had actually gone to some lengths to teach us important phrases like “It’s necessary to always be drunk - ”Il faut etre toujours ivre”), and I asked, not for a bottle of wine, but a box (boite) of wine. And" then I asked, not for a glass of wine, but some wine ice cream (glace de vin), at which time, the woman running the place looked at me like a complete moron alien.

At this juncture, Rolf accurately correctly assessed that this very awkward situation could only become more awkward, no matter what we did, so he high-tailed it out of the shop, leaving me to blubber on in French, while I slowly backed out of the door until my display of complete lack of knowledge of the French language was concluded. E-Fail. Oh, well. C’est La Vie. (That one I’m sure of, people.)

Having had enough adventures for the day, we stopped by the grocery store on the way home for a few things without further incident and pack for the next leg of our journey.
Next stop: Strasbourg, France.

Day 3 – A Tale of Four Cities

The Gruyere cheese factory tour was a hoot. The audio guide was narrated (English was an option, thankfully) by a young female with a Britishy accent pretending to be a cow named Cherry. If this all sounds weird to you… it was.

We walked down the hall of smells and turned the corner to see the cheese factory proper. As it turns out, one can make a very large amount of cheese in a fairly small amount of space. The factory consisted of four large vats where the milk was being processed, some salt baths, and some cheese squeezes. All told, it probably took no more than about 2500 square feet of space to make approximately 280 pounds of cheesy goodness.

After watching the cheese wranglers work their magic for a bit, we proceeded to get quizzed on our newfound knowledge (don’t pick the wrong answer or you make the cow mad, and no one wants that.) before doing a bit of shopping in the gift shop.

After satisfying our consumeristic needs we hopped back in Das Auto and tootled down the road to the Castle of Gruyères. And a funny thing happened on the way to the castle, as they say.

At the base of the castle is the little town of Old Gruyères. This quaint town is the very epitome of rustic old-world charm. The roads are cobblestone and slope wildly about the town. Everywhere you look you see giant mountains and tiny houses with steepled roofs. It is the town that time forgot. Oh, and located right across the street from the cozy tavern is home to the official H.R. Geiger museum.

For those who don’t know, Geiger was the Oscar-winning artist who designed the non-Sigourney-Weaver creatures in the films Alien(s). He also did work on Species and a number of other smaller films. His work is largely a collection of low-chromatic sketches of nightmarish biotechnological portraitures and landscapes.

The museum that bears his name is very surreal. Upon entering through the large alien-themed doors one encounters the receptionist. Naturally, she is wearing all black, has tattoos and piercings, and is listening to Disposable Heroes. One imagines the local populace gathering across the street, hunched over a cup of mead while they speak softly to one another about which large body of water the receptionist will be thrown into so as to determine the level of her witchery.

Also inside the museum is a lot of art from the movies proper in the museum and a bunch of related alien-themed drawings, paintings, and sculptures. There are life-sized statues of the alien monsters hanging from the walls and a table-and-chair set that Marylin Manson would be proud to own. I wanted to see about picking up one of the large wall-sized murals. Megan voted no.

After wandering the alien world, we moved on to medieval times at the Gruyères castle. Think Knights of the Round Table x 10,000,000 awesomeness points. It was amazing. The castle sits atop a huge hill with amazing views of the surrounding country side. Once inside, you start in the basement prison and then work your way up to the towers at the top. Along the way you see beautiful art (both period and modern, as the castle doubles as an art gallery) and displays of the way it all supposedly looked in the 14th Century. Though I’m guessing they tidied up a little for us, though; I usually hide the junk mail and dirty laundry when I have people coming over, too.

The next stop on our tour was the Chocolate factory in Broc. Yes, chocolate factory. The initial tour was like a Disney ride (if you had to walk on a Disney Ride). Each room was designed to explain a particular aspect of chocolate-making or the Cailler/Nestle chocolate dynasty. It was well done, but of course, the real awesomeisity occurred in the last room where they set out a chocolate buffet of wonderfabulousity in which you can gorge yourself on chocolate until your completely sick or you’re ready to move onto the gift shop where you can buy more… Chocolate!!!

Our final stop of the day was Bern, which apparently means “Everything in this city is bear-themed” in German. It was a very charming town with a beautiful clock tower and a camera shop where we could get the card reader that Rolf needed to download photos off his camera. So, in general, a great place.

After a long day on the road, we finally headed back to Geneva for some foodstuffs and drinks (7-up + beer = Heaven) before heading off to sleepy-bye for the night.

P.S. Somewhere in all of this we managed to pose with a statue of Freddie Mercury, because that’s how we roll in Switzerland.



-Rolf & Megan

Cheese and Chocolate and Really Big Mountains

We've had a great first couple days, seeing Geneva, Chillon, and Grandvillard. We're nearly officially in the Alps, as Rolf mentioned. I've got the lederhosen and cowbells ready and waiting for the moment when we get into the mountains-proper :) It's really, really beautiful here; at every turn, you are presented with another breathtaking view of alpine fields rising up to giant, sheer mountain faces. As Laura said today: "The view is unreal". Amen, sista!

We spent the night in the great little village of Grandvillard. The town is a very sweet, rural hamlet whose main industry appears to be the lumber mill located on the slopes of the hill above the main part of town. Grandvillard also has lots of cows and cats and a cute hedgehog that we made friends with on during our after-dinner walk with Loki (Lynn's dog, whom many mistake for a very fuzzy bear). I'm not sure that the hedgehog was as fond as Loki as we are - but I'd probably feel that way about a bear that outweighed me by a factor of 20, also.

Our stay at l'hotel Vanille-Noir was lovely. The proprietor, Luigio, was very welcoming and very gracious about entertaining my pidgin French. Dinner in the hotel's attached restaurant (Croque Monsieur, salad and beer) was excellent. And after a good night's sleep and a classic continental breakfast of croissants and yogurt, we're off to tour the cheese and chocolate factories in Gruyere. Life is rough when you have to spend every day looking at amazing scenery and eating out-of-this-world food! But somehow we'll make it through :)

Megan

These hills be all alive, yo

Heya Friends, Folks, Family, and Random Search Engine Visitors,

Day two of our trip (0-indexed since travel day isn't all that exciting) finds us sipping wine and beers in a small hotel located in the even smaller town of Grandvillard. Grandvillard is located in the pre-Alps, which is like a starter set of mountains for people who aren't quite ready for the full-on Alps yet.

For those of you who are wondering what happened to day one, be aware that this blog will be written in reverse chronological order, except in cases where it is in a forward order. Regardless, all times and dates will be scheduled against a non-linear time system, thus all days happened simeltanesouly but have not yet occured.

Moving on. What you may not know (because we have not mentioned previously) is that we are staying with our good friend Lynn, her cousin Laura, and Lynn's ginormous Alaskan Malamut Loki. There will at some point be pictures of said people. They're on the computer, but I will defer the editing and inserting of those pictures to Megan.

We started the day in the city of Geneva and spent the morning running some quick errands. Due to some languarge barriers and some missed information on our part, our plans to pick up a Eurorail ticket will not be panning out. Oh well, c'est la vie as they say. Or I think that's what they are saying. I don't speak a whole lot of French.

Heading out from Geneva, we headed up to a nearby castle called Chillon. The castle was, quite simply, amazing. First off, it's huge. We walked around the castle for at least an hour and didn't see even half of the more than 100 buildings that make up the structure.

The castle sits on one side of Lake Genevea and offers views of the surrounding countryside that really show off the majestic beauty of the landscape. It really is impossible to do them justice in descriptions, and I don't feel like posting pictures at the moment (just keeping it real for ya'll), so I will harness the power of Al Gore and present you with this link.

After the castle we got back into the car (side note: we rented a car) we headed down the road through the countryside and after some unplanned detours have arrived at our destination, the Hotel/Restaraunt/Bar Vanil-Noir.

On the agenda for tomorrow is a wine and cheese tour, more viewing of the pastoal countryside, and a triumphant return to Geneva. Tune in for the exciting details... coming soon!

Climb every mountain,
Rolf

We're offically on vacation!!!

Just a few hours until we leave; we're super excited! Can't wait to see Lynn and meet her cousin, Laura and see Switzerland.

We're really looking forward to getting away and exploring new places. We'll keep y'all posted!