Journey to the Alps

For the final part of our European adventure, we took the scenic Golden Pass train to the land of mountains and lakes in Switzerland. From Avignon, we headed to Geneva and transfered to the Golden Pass line to a small town called Lauterbrunnen.
Lauterbrunnen Train Station
This little town served as our springboard for trains, gondolas, cable cars, and hiking trails into the alps. After gathering some supplies at the local Co-Op grocery store, we went to bed early to get an early start on hiking the next day.


The forecast for our first full day in Lauterbrunnen was mostly cloudy, something that was unfortunately common given the fantastic views. In the morning, we strategized a bit and watched the local weather channel with live web cams from several mountains and saw a clearing on the top of the Schilthorn. That was enough for us to change our plans and start with a journey to the top. This involved taking a gondola to a train, to two more gondolas through a lot of clouds and fog. Eventually, we pierced throug the clouds at 10,000 feet and had some great views at the top of the Alps with the clouds finally below us. Fun fact: the Schiltorn was featured in the James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." The chief villian's layer was actually the building at the top of the mountain.

View from the Schilthorn
More of the Alps
View from the Birg Gondola Station

Later that morning we headed down to lower (and cloudier) territory to take the North Face trail through a series of small Swiss Alp towns and farms. It took us a little bit to find the trailhead, mainly because there were three cows standing smack in the middle of it. Although the clouds were obstructing the higher mountains, we had a nice view of the valley as we winded through swiss farms. We had some excellent super fresh cheese along the way and even almost got hit by some wood being thrown to a wood pile.
Hiking Through the Cows

After eating a quick lunch with some food from the local Co-Op, we headed to another hike on the other side of the mountain (toward Jungfrau). Unfortunately, the clouds descended again and what was supposed to be one of the most scenic hikes was mainly spent in the clouds and fog. We returned tired and hungry for a traditional Swiss dinner. The cheese fondue was yummy, but it was odd that it only came with apple dippers and we were charged a dollar for each shot of tap water I drank.

French Wine Country - The Rhone Valley

Our second day in wine country was spent in the Provence region in the Chotes de Rhone wine appellation with our home base in the city of Avignon. Since we were traveling by train, we decided to splurge and take a guided minivan tour of the region. Englishman Oliver Hickman (who now lives in France to grow his own wine) whisked us around the region to taste 18 different wines at three different estates in the region and teach us a bit about the different wine-making regions.

It was right in the middle of the fall harvest and a great time to taste some wine. The region is known for the reds, and we tasted some great and relatively cheap reds (finding those cheap reds in the U.S has proven more difficult).

We went to one winery in Vacqueyras in the morning where we got Olivier all to ourselves for our tasting. He was very knowledgeable, teaching us about the characteristics of the wine and providing lots of specifics on each wine we tasted. He was also very affable, very English, and just a fun guy to hang out with tasting wine all day.

At Vacqueyras Vineyard

After lunch we saw two more vineyards in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region. The wines here have been famous ever since the Pope moved from Rome to Avignon in the 14th century and instilled wine-making in the region. Due to the interesting "terrior" which consists of vines growing through a meter of large stones with grenache grapes and 700 years of good marketing, it's the most famous wine in the region. Their reds have a nice blend of smoothness, with hints of fruit and spice; I highly recommend them. We shared the afternoon tour with three other slightly older couples (even one from Charlottesville), which was also surprisingly fun; after we were left alone after a tasting, they were the ones to start helping themselves to more samples for us all!

The Grapes and Stones of Châteauneuf-du-Pape

After getting back from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, we toured the city of Avignon, from its Palace of the Popes, the temporary Papacy in the 14th century, to the bridge to nowhere. All in all, one of our favorite days!

French Wine Country - Beaune

Our first stop in the French Wine Country was in Beaune, the major city in the Burgundy region and not unexpectantly a town centered around wine. We arrived late in Beaune and started off by having dinner at a wine bar complete with Escargot. Sarah was pretty cautious about trying one of the region's signature foods, but I was able to finally convince her to try one. Everything cooked in a pesto garlic butter sauce will taste good.

As you might expect, our day in Beaune was centered around the region’s wine. That morning we took a short class on the essentials of understanding the labeling, production, and tasting of Burgundy wine. The upshot is that Burgundy wine is bottled and labeled by the area in which the grapes are grown. The more specific the area, the better winemaking conditions for the terrior (soil, drainage, micro-climate) and therefore, of course, the more expensive the wine. So for example, a Burgundy regional wine (with grapes from anywhere in the region) is less selective than a particular village "Gran Cru" with grapes only from the upper slopes of the area.

The Town of Beaune

Later, we did a tasting and tour the Bouchard Aine cellar estate. Our tour guide gave the tour in both French and English for us, and promised that her English got better the more wine she drank! The estate grows and bottles several red and white wines, although Burgundy is more known for their whites than their reds. It was fun and I was particularly impressed that they tasted their premier “Grand Cru” wine, made mainly from Pinot Noir. It was a very, very good wine, but it cost 70 Euros for a bottle so we reluctantly passed.

Tasting on the Cellar Tour

Adventure in Europe: Part Four

On Monday we took the Metro straight to the Louvre to spend several hours touring one of the world’s largest museums. We had been warned by several sources that the Louvre can go on forever. Instead of trying to see absolutely everything, we decided to take a more targeted tour of the highlights of the museum. Thanks to a Rick Steves audio guide, we had some guidance on where to go. We saw the biggies: the Venus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace, the Mona Lisa, parts of the Parthenon, as well as the Italian Renaissance and large format French paintings. There was still tons of stuff to see, so after a lunch break, we spent a few hours walking through the German/Dutch painting wings, as well as the Roman, Egyptian, Greek areas. We had heard from guidebooks and others that Mona Lisa is soooooooo small that by the time we got to it, I was practically expecting a postcard. Our expectations were so low, we thought it was a fairly standard sized portrait.
Outside the Louvre
Next we headed across the city to the Arc de Triumph. Since we had the Paris pass, we trudged up the stairs to the top to see the 12 streets that converge into one big traffic circle. Not surprisingly, Sarah even witnessed an accident amongst the chaotic merging of traffic!

The Arc is bigger than Mike Diehl
From there we relaxed a bit at our hotel, and then ate a nice dinner sitting outside at a Parisian café at Le Soufflot Café near the Pantheon. One of the last Parisian sites we saw was the Eiffel Tower that evening. Our wave of crime almost continued when we almost jumped the Metro gate when a ticket machine broke down, but we decided to find a working ticket machine instead to finally end our criminal lives. At night, the Eiffel Tower is well lit with a sparkling light display at the top of every hour. We rode up to the second level (the top level was closed and supposedly didn’t have any better views anyway) and soaked in the Parisian landscape at night.


On our final morning in Paris, we headed to the last of the must-see sights on our list: the Orsay museum. In a manner of speaking, the Orsey museum picks up where the Louvre leaves off, with the rise of Impressionism in art. Sarah and I’s focus was here, as Sarah got to see several paintings she had studied in college by Monet, Renoir, Whistler, Degas, and Van Gough. That afternoon we said au revoir to Paris, and headed by train to French wine country.

Adventure in Europe: Part Trois

On Sunday, we spent the majority of the day touring Versaille, one of Europe’s best palaces. We started by touring the vast Gardens and fortunately it was on a weekend the fountains were running full blast for a good part of the day.



After that, we soaked in the opulence of the Chateau and were glad that we had a pass which lead us straight to the museum without having to wait in a long ticket line. We also took advantage of the free Rick Steve’s audio-tour that I had downloaded to our MP3 players as we toured the spectacular rooms. We especially liked his insightful, but to-the-point commentary; plus it was free. After that, we took another short walk back through some of the gardens we had missed and then took the train back to Paris.




That evening we saw the very scenic Sainte Chapelle church. It’s not really a large or famous cathedral, but it has amazing stained glass windows that surround the entire sanctuary. It’s hard to capture on film (or a memory card), but it was impressive and definitely worth a visit.



That evening we got to see a whole different side of Paris. In a strange coincidence, Sarah had recently worked with an intern at Deltek who happens to live in Paris and before she left she invited us over one night to eat dinner with her family. They lived in a nice apartment on the North East side of town. It was hard to believe how narrow the street was to their complex, it was sized for at most a Mini Cooper. Aminata's family is Sengali, so we were treated to both traditional Parisian and Sengali dishes. Everything was yummy!

Adventure in Europe: Part Deux

Our next day in Paris, we weren't actually in Paris very much. We took a day trip to the Loire Valley to see its famous Chateaus. Since we were traveling by train, we took the train in the morning to the small city of Amboise and did some wandering around their local Chateau and Leonardo Da Vinci’s final home.
City of Amboise
For the afternoon we arranged a minivan tour to two major Chateaus. The first, Chenonceau, was the most scenic. It had beautiful gardens and was actually built partially over the river.

Chenonceau Chateau

The second, Chambord, was huge and the area’s largest. It was sparsely decorated, but the guards were strict. Sarah was spied sitting on a ledge for a picture from afar, and we were actually scolded five minutes later in another room (our second “illegal” act in France if you're keeping track).
Chambord Chateau
Sarah illegally sitting on the wall

We had a nice four course dinner at L’Epicerie, which included something every meal should have, a cheese course. After dinner we had another fun moment. For some reason, I thought our train back to Paris left at 9:21 PM (I blame the 24 hour system that listed the time as 21:07), instead of 9:07 PM. I discovered this as we paid our bill just before 9:00 PM. I told Sarah to pretend that we were on the Amazing Race, so with ridiculously full stomachs we ran to the train station (there were no taxis around) a little over a mile away. Luckily we made it with two minutes to spare, and realized that it was the last train to Paris that evening!

Adventure in Europe Part I

For the next several blog posts, I'm writing up our recent trip to France and Switzerland in travelogue style. Part I starts here:

Our trip actually started by visiting Madrid, the Madrid airport anyway. Our flight was on Iberia and we actually changed planes in Madrid in route to Paris’s smaller airport called Orly. After arriving in Paris, we decided to take care of some practicalities like getting Euros, picking up our pre-ordered train tickets, and buying a Paris museum pass. According to our guidebook (Rick Steves), a shuttle bus service called Jetbus was available to take us from the Orly airport to the Paris Metro closest to our Hotel. Even though it was still listed on the web, the Tourist desk at the airport told us that the shuttle was no longer running. Eventually they told us of a regular French bus that would run to the same metro station. We followed a circuitous route through a series of tunnels until we reached a door with partially shattered glass. This lead to a highway under an overpass with fast moving traffic. After we got to the highway, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a bus coming with the name of our Metro stop. Sarah and I sprinted the 25 yards (with all our luggage of course) and barely made the bus. Regrettably, we hadn’t read the section on how the buses work, so we were caught staring blankly at a stone-face French bus driver who obviously spoke no English. As we searched for money to pay (we had no coins anyway), the bus driver pulled on without giving us a second look. As we observed people boarding the bus, almost all already had a bus ticket which they validated/scanned against a ticket machine. Either the bus driver thought that in all our fumbling we were searching for our ticket, or he just didn’t care. Regardless, we left the bus quickly when it got to our stop and were thankful for the free transportation. Only one hour in France and we committed our first illegal act!

After our initial adventure, we didn’t have much time for sightseeing after checking into our hotel. We walked to Notre Dame and did the free tour inside. It was definitely worth it, but fairly typical for a European cathedral. For as famous as it is, I was expecting something more grandiose on the inside. We had some yummy Crepes that evening at a restaurant called La Crepe Rit du Clown as we struggled to stay awake until normal bed time.

View of Notre Dame