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Europe 2015

Instead of exchanging Christmas and Birthday gifts, we travel. This year, we celebrated our 50th birthdays. We decided to do something big and go to Europe. We flew into London and had one day there before four days in Paris, four days in Switzerland, a day in Austria and 3 days in Germany. We traveled from city to city by train.

London

: 7/10/15 – Okay, this is hard to explain. I love a British TV show from the late 80’s called The Secret Life of Machines. The creator of the show, Tim Hunkin created an arcade near his home in Suffolk on the coast. No way we’d have time to visit there. Amazingly (for me) he opened another arcade in London earlier this year.

: AND it was walking distance from our hotel. www.novelty-automation.com

: His arcade games manage to be both clever and hilarious. This one surprised the hell out of me. I won’t give away the surprise.

: The “Autofrisk” also gave me quite a surprise.

: The Chiropodist was featured on his show in the 80’s. I was thrilled to see her – and stick my foot in the machine.

: We put our hotel key in the machine. It was declared “Art.”

: Our lamb was a pet. Whew.

: This one was fun and took a long time. I was getting pretty good at handling uranium.

: This is one of his newest machines. It’s called the Small Hadron Collider.

: I was awarded a Nobel Prize

: Wonderful silliness.

: For lunch, we went to ye olde Cheshire Cheese. It was rebuilt after the fire of 1667.

: Shepard’s Pie. Good.

: Trafalgar Square

: Trafalgar Square with Parliament in the distance.

: 10 Downing Street

: Parliament

: Big Ben

: Big Ben and the London Eye

: Big Ben

: Westminster Bridge

: Tower Bridge

: The Shard

: The Globe Theatre

: The play they performed was “As You Like It.” This was just simply amazing. One of the best parts of the trip.

Paris

: 7/11/15 – In Paris, we stayed in an Air BnB. We had a great place a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower.

: It had a patio.

: This is the view right out the front door.

: For lunch, we ate here. (I tookthe picture later the next night.) Les Cocottes de Christian Constant was one of the best of many great meals of the trip.

: Cold Poached Salmon.

: Kathleen’s Caesar Salad

: Roast Chicken with Wild Mushroom Gravy.

: We spent some time here in the park and watched peopele.

: We had dinner at Le Royal. It was a couple blocks from our apartment.

: Duck Confit

: 7/12/15 – The next morning, we went to Notre Dame

: Since we were there on a Sunday, they were having mass. The tourists walk around the perimeter while the parisioners sit in the pews.

: We had lunch at Le Notre Dame. Naturally, it was a touristy place but we were treated politely and had a pleasant bite there.

: Simple but delicious.

: The view at lunch.

: Next, we went to Musee de Orsay.

: View from our street.

: 7/13/15 – We went to the Lourvre.

: Venus de Milo

: Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave

: The Coronation of Napoleon

: Mona Lisa

: Nike of Samothrace

: Chick holding a dude’s head?

: 7/14/15 – We had breakfast here one morning. It was about 50 yards from our apartment.

: Le Comptoir du Relais.

: I had the terrine de poularde et foie gras (chicken terrine and foie gras). It was amazing.

: This was a petit pois (small peas) salad and it was great. But my lack of French made me miss the bone marrow.

: For dinner that night, we had reservations at 58 Tour Eiffel. It is on the 1st level of the Eiffel Tower.

: Salmon three ways. Fancy and delicious.

: We stayed up in the tower for a few hours and watched the sunset.

: The counter weights for the elevators.

: At 10pm, strobe lights over the tower make it sparkle.

: We had dinner at Cafe Le Dome near the Eiffel Tower.

: This was our view during dinner.

: Escargot.

: Kathleen had the Boeuf Bourguignon. I had Carpaccio. Both Great.

: Kathleen had Creme Brulee. I had an Apple Tart.

: We took a boat tour on the Seine that night. Very few pictures turned out.

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

: Lake Thunersee is the lake just west of Interlaken, Switzerland.

: It was a long day to get to Lauterbrunnen. We took four trains from Paris to get here.

: Hotel Staubbach

: This is the view from our balcony.

: The view from our bed. How great is that?

: They mowed the hay on the field just across the street.

: After our long day of travel, this is a view of where we went for dinner that first night.

: The Hotel Jungfrau has two menus: Swiss and Chinese. Obviously, we did the Swiss. But their Chinese food looked good. Kathleen looks a little tired.:)

: Rösti. Some Swiss consider this their national dish. Grated potatoes pressed into a pan and cooked in butter. This was one of the best dishes of the trip. This one had pears, brie and bacon. Holy crap. Good.

: This was the Hotel Jungfau’s specialty. I forget what it was called but it was a marinated steak served with herbed butter. It was good but not as good as the Rösti.

: I loved the sundial on the church. The church’s bell rang every 15 minutes right outside our room. I loved it.

: Lauterbrunnen River in the foreground is gray from all the rock it is washing from the mountains. Staubbachfalls in the distance.

: We took a day trip out of the valley up into the mountains. We rode the gondola into Grütschalp and the train into Mürren.

: There are trails all around these towns. These signs show you walking times between towns.

: Church in Mürren

: From Mürren, we took one gondola to Birg and another to the top of the Schilthorn Mountain. This is the view from Birg.

: This is the view of Schilthorn from Birg.

: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau

: We had a picnic on the top of Schilthorn – including a couple beer.

: Plz Gloria is the restaurant at the top of the mountain. This was the villian’s lair in the Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

: Besides a rotating restaurant, there’s a James Bond Museum.

: From the top of the mountain, you can hike down. The sign says it will take 3 hours to get back down to Mürren. I’d love to do that some time. (You can hike up too, if you’d like.)

: The trails down.

: In Birg, they had glass floors on the overhang.

: From Mürren, we took another gondola down to Gimmelwald. This is downtown Gimmelwald.

: Gimmelwald was beautiful.

: We had a couple beers here in the Pension Gimmelwald. Besides the biergarten, there’s a hiker’s hostel and restaurant.

: This is one of my happy places. We sat here for a couple hours and watched the parasailers and base jumpers. We could see the torrents running down the mountain on the other side of the valley.

: I took this picture through the telescope on the patio.

: The gondola in Gimmewald back to the valley.

: The view of Stechelberg as we descend out of Gimmelwald.

: The view north in Lauterbrunnen.

: For dinner that night, I had raclette. It’s melted cheese with boiled potatoes. Great. I was hoping to find a running raclette grill but this was the closest I could find.

: Back in our room. Wow. Just wow.

: The mow almost all grass for hay for the cows. This was right outside our hotel window.

: At least a dozen parasailors.

: The next day, we went to Trümmelbach Falls. We rode up this elevator carved into the mountain.

: Trümmelbach Falls cuts through the mountain.

: These pictures just don’t do it justice.

: Kathleen on the patio outside our room.

: Last night in Switzerland. We had to have fondue. This was fine. My sister’s fondue is better. And the raclette was better too.

: We had another Rösti.

: Sausage Shop. Earlier that day, they had grills out front selling sandwiches. Delicious.

: This is the train station in Lauterbrunnen. But you can see the gondola going up to Grütschalp.

: One morning, we were awakened by cowbells. They were moving the cows to another pasture.

: We walked up to Staubbachfalls.

: We didn’t realize it when we started the hike but the trail is actually carved into the stone behind the falls.

: Lauterbrunnen from Staubbachfalls.

: One last look from our room.

Innsbruck, Austria

: Cafe Central was attached to Hotel Central. This is where we stayed in Innsbruck, Austria.

: I had a great sauerbraten with polenta. Kathleen had a perfectly respectable hamburger.

: We stopped in Innsbruck to break up the travel from Switzerland to Munich.

: The Golden Roof is considered the main site in Innsbruck.

: Austria is famous for their speck – a cured ham.

: Speck everywhere.

: Almdudler is the “national drink of Austria.” It’s a soft drink “flavoured with herbal extracts. Its flavour is similar to ginger ale or elderflower cordial, but with a somewhat fruitier and more bitter flavour.” Can you tell by my face that I didn’t love it?

: We had a nice respite in Innsbruck. I’d love to return in the winter to go skiing.

Munich, Germany

: Hofbräuhaus am Platzl.

: Inside the Hofbräuhaus

: The Hofbräuhaus bier garten.

: A “Dunkel Maß” (a liter of dunkel beer) Oh, this is one of my favorties. This was not the only one of these I had.

: Kathleen had a half liter of their original. This might be one of my favorite pictures of Kathleen. This is near the end of a great trip. We were in a great place and we were having a great time. Very happy.

: Kathleen tried my dunkel.

: wurstsalad and a pretzel

: My Schweinshaxe (pork knuckle) and dumpling.

: Pouring beer

: This busker was an amazingly talented classical violinist.

: Downtown Munich

: The Munich glockenspiel

: This is the street where Hitler led a group during the Beer Hall Putsch when they were attempting to overthrow the German government in 1923.

: After the Nazis came to power. People were forced to give the nazi salute whenever they walked past the Feldherrnhalle . This alley allowed people who refused to give the salute to bypass it. The gold cobblestones commemorate that.

: The Feldherrnhalle on the Odeonsplatz. This is where the battle that ended the Beer Hall Putsch.

: Hofgarten is a huge and beautiful public garden.

: Maypole on Viktualienmarkt

: The Viktualienmarkt is the market near the center of Munich.

: Since it was Sunday, the shops were all closed.

: But the biergarten was open.

: From here, we were figuratively heading home. We went to the hotel where we left our bags and moved to the hotel at the airport and flew home the next day. I did not want to leave and we stayed here for about four hours. Fun.