Day by day
I am writing this during our 9-hour first-class train ride from Interlaken, Switzerland to Berlin, Germany. By some miracle, we don’t have any transfers on this trip (yay!) so I have lots of time for writing (double yay!).
Before I start, I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of day-by-day travelogues, but there’s just so much to talk about that I gave in and succumbed to order. Not much to be done, there.
Day 0, Pardon my French
The day before we left, I called into Paris to make a dinner reservation. I was really, really proud of my solid 30 seconds of talking in French, until the guy on the other end started talking a little too fast (presumably to confirm the reservation?). Who knows. After a minute or two of dead silence (ummmmmm, desole!) they found someone to assure me that I had in fact just made a reservation. Le sigh.
Day 1, A 7-hour plane ride and the City of Lights
We had a red-eye flight that left Atlanta at 11pm and got into Paris at about 1pm. After a bit of a delay at the airport due to some unattended baggage (we heard they blow them up wherever they are found, can this be true?), we hopped the metro to our “bed and breakfast” which was really “the spare bedroom in someone’s apartment”. This turned out to be the best thing ever, because our hosts, Marie and Jean, were incredibly helpful and welcoming. After settling in, we were off to dinner at “A la Biche au Bois” or “A doe in the woods”. This was our most formal eating while in France, the whole nine-yards with 4 courses (5 if you count the appertifs) and traditional French food. Wow, so much butter! I was most impressed by the cheese course – big surprise there – wherein our waiter brought out the cheese plate and we naively asked “how many?” and he waved his hand over the entire plate. Well, okay then, if you insist!!!
From dinner, we walked. And walked. And lost track of time and walked some more. We took some goofy pictures of the Seine, Notre Dame, the Bastille, and some dimly-lit streets that had all sorts of charm. It was a lot of fun and by the end we were crazy tired, so we tried to catch the metro back… oops, ferme. Closed. So there was a long tired walk at the end of the night (2am local? Damn how did it get so late?) but we got there!
Day #2, Perfume and pipi
After a fantastic and simple French breakfast, we started our day close to home base on the recommendation of Marie, at the Père Lachaise cemetery. We took too many pictures and stopped by Jim Morrison’s grave before heading to Sacre Coeur, not so much for the church itself as for the fantastic view of the city. Next we stopped at a brasserie on Rue Lepic for lunch, another recommendation from our wonderful hostess. Nick’s crepes were way better than my (rather odd) salad, but I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to a drunk, chain-smoking, bar-song-singing local (probably in his 60s). When Nick ordered an appertif and I requested water, he laughed a big belly laugh and exclaimed “Ohhh, le bebe!” before going back to his singing. It was awesome.
After lunch we hit the Arc de Triomphe and Le Tour Eiffel, before trying and failing to do a picnic at Jardin du Luxembourg. We had meant to go to a bunch of famous little shops, one for bread, one for cheese, etc that Nick had done some research on. But everything was closed. Instead, we stopped at the one place that was open (famous for its butter, but also a street cafe) and got some delicious but overpriced nouveau cuisine. The butter was ok, maybe they didn’t give us stupide americains the good stuff?
We routed our after-dinner stroll through the Louvre’s courtyard and admired all of the crazy, and intricate, sculpture adorning the building. Closer to the B&B, I witnessed something that explained a lot about this city: it was a local, peeing in the streets. That, and well I can only assume that “fresh lemony clean” doesn’t have a French translation…
Day 3, Tah-may-toh… Ta-mah-toh…
After breakfast, it hit us that we didn’t have any travel or lodging plans for the next week, and due to the upcoming Bastille Day (French day of Independence), it was going to be a busy travel week. So we meandered down to the train station to assure (at least) that we would be in Berlin in time for my conference. We also booked a trip from Paris to Chamonix (south of France, see day 4).
From the station we walked to and along the Viaduct de Arts, a collection of artist studios/galleries built into an old railway. On top is a beautiful park, lots of gardens etc that we were able to walk through and admire. After a morning of walking, we walked some more, this time implementing the plan of day 2: rounding up goodies for a picnic in Jardin du Luxembourg. At one of our many stops, I had an encounter with the stereotyped French/American friction, and the shopkeep refused to sell me a tomato. (I may have deserved that, but I swear I meant to say “Bonjour, Monsieur”… ).
After lunch we went for more sightseeing. This time we actually went inside the building we were looking at (gasp). Le Sainte-Chapelle was tres joli. Nick had thoughtfully brought along a walking-tour-on-tape that included this chapel, and the history was as interesting as the stained glass was impressive. We sat, we stared, and we eventually moved on, because, we were tired. Especially me. I was really, very tired. So we went back to the B&B and I was going to take a nap but Marie and Jean offered us some wine… and well, can you say no to French wine? We were recounting our day and my frustration with all the meat and delight at all the cheese on French menus when Marie exclaimed that she had just the souvenir for me: cheese plates. Hand-painted, darling little things that had (apparently) been sitting in her cupboard for 20 years. I will post pictures soon, but needless to say I went to bed happy.
Day 4, Nick gets déjà vu
We meant to wake up early and sneak out without a fuss, but Marie was one step ahead of us and made breakfast against our protests. In her words, “Sorry there isn’t any French bread, but the bakery isn’t open yet, you know.” So we sat and ate and enjoyed it too much because we missed our bus and had to power-walk to the train station, where we jumped on our train last-minute, like something out of a movie from the 60s. It was a relatively short train ride, but I loved every minute of it. Chamonix ended up being too touristy for Nick “It reminds me of Vail” but we were able to get a campsite far enough out of town that the beautiful mountains weren’t spoiled by, well, anything. As a bonus, Nick’s sister’s boyfriend, Paul, was in Chamonix by some crazy coincidence, and we got to meet up with him for an hour or two.
Day 5, 98% water
This was a hiking day. We hiked from Chamonix, in France, to a little town called Le Peuty, in Switzerland. Everything in between was amazing. I’ll have to let the photos do the talking for me, because I can’t do them justice. I will say that it was a strenuous hike. After about 15 minutes of walking (barely even uphill) I had to dump out all my water to lighten up my pack. But I manned up and we made our goal of reaching Le Peuty in good time, even if my hip bones looked like someone had punched them repeatedly (I guess backcountry packs aren’t made for skinny nerdy types). My favorite part of our trip so far was going to sleep that night. Totally exhausted, gazing at the mountains and the sky while being serenaded by the jingling cowbells from the pasture next to the campsite. It was surreal.
Day 6, I find a little piece of home in Switzerland
We woke up to cowbells and I had a really hard time convincing myself to leave (as many of you know, I’ve been a fan of cows since I was a kid). The day was a little muggy and our hike to Martigny (nearest train station) wasn’t nearly as pretty as the one of the day before. But we made it even though the trail signs disappeared halfway there and we had to catch a ride into town. Our original plan was to continue on to Zermatt that day, but plans change and we stayed in Martigny. The town has a few Roman ruins that were interesting but not so impressive. For example, the amphitheater has been turned into an outdoor movie theater. Nothing says ancient and awe-inspiring like plastic theater seating and projector equipment. I called this town the Kent,WA of Switzerland. Needless to say we didn’t stay more than one night.
Day 7, Bernese bears and more happy Swiss cows
We hopped a train early for Lauterbrunnen, which is in the Berner Oberland, a region of the Swiss Alps a little south of Interlaken. To get there, we took the “Golden Pass” train, which is a scenic route. Again, words won’t do this justice. So many adorable little farms with flowers in the windows and happy cows wearing bells. The mountains towering over them were unspeakably beautiful. On our way, we stopped briefly in Montreux (loved this city!) to see a castle (one of my check-list items for this trip: see some old stuff) called the Chateau de Chillon. The history is worth another 4 pages but I’ll spare you (for now, mwahaha) but to get an idea, the first written account of the castle was in the 11th century, and it’s been maintained ever since (never plundered or damaged in an attack). So, it was really fun to explore the dungeons, banquet halls and chapels etc, though we were halfway through the tour before someone told us that we could check our packs at the door (doh!).
Sore backs aside, this was a fantastic day and we got to Lauterbrunnen early enough to snag one of the best campsites ever.
Day 8, The price of beauty
Lauterbrunnen is in a deep valley with mountains on 3 sides. The two side walls are just that – walls of rock, steep cliffs with waterfalls everywhere. Our campsite was situated just out of town, with a fantastic up close view of the biggest waterfall. We’re going to guess between 1K-1.5K ft tall, but I’m not 100% on that. Anyway it was really a trip to wake up and have that staring you in the face. After much grumbling on my part (“buuut it’s so pretty here and my feet are tiiiired…”) Nick convinced me that we came here for a reason and we put our hiking boots back on. Holy happy cows, am I glad for that. We took a train up the left wall, which revealed more mountains on top of mountains, and caught a gondola when the train couldn’t take us further, to our final destination of Mannlichen. Here we had a 360 degree view of snow-capped peaks, rocky cliffs, rolling hills and I swear I heard a cowbell or two from the valleys below. We started our slow hike down the mountain by passing in front of the Eiger north face, which I hear is pretty famous. I can see why! It was incredible. We had a nice picnic lunch staring at it and a few other notable peaks (jungfrou, etc). I would recommend this hike to everyone I know, that is, if you can afford the ridiculous touristy train/gondola prices. I’d say it was worth every penny.
Day 9, and that brings us to…
Today! It has been the perfect day for traveling because we woke up to thunderstorms and it’s been raining ever since – thankfully, this is the first bad weather we have encountered all week. I have to say though, the thunder this morning was pretty fantastic due to the acoustics of the Lauterbrunnen valley, so awesome. Luckily, our neighbors in the campground (a lovely older couple from Belfast with endlessly entertaining accents and Irish slang) offered us a ride into town so we avoided the long walk in the rain. I have sore feet and a full belly and I am looking forward to more adventures in Berlin.
posted by Amber @ 4:25 AM
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