Day 8 Running round in Switzerland
Early in the morning, we packed and left our awesome hotel room and headed off for our walking tour around Switzerland.First off, we headed of the Lion monument which a famous landmark in Lucerne. The monument we visited is a replica of the original which is really really small. The monument is carved out by the side of a huge rocky cliff. It commemorates the Swiss guards massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution.
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| With my kind MOOOOOOOO |
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| Lion Monument |
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| The sad little lion |
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| One of the random buildings near the monument |
Next, we went to the Chapel Bridge which is another famous landmark in Lucerne
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| Chapel Bridge (from the bus) |
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| The Bridge |
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| The cute little tree |
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| Scenic view |
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| People photography (Along the streets) |
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| Cute little doggy |
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| Check my boot out |
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| Walk next to me? |
After a long long time at the watch shop, we headed off towards Berne. We drove for quite a distance before arriving at our first stop, the bear pit in Berne. There was suppose to be 6 bears there but after a long search we only managed to find one lonely bear eating grass on the side of the area.
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| Cause there is no real bear to take pictures with |
After looking at that cute little bear, we went off for lunch. Shared half a chicken with my mum (bought it at the super market where we bought our chocolates) It tasted quite good for "cheap" food in Europe
Our tour group literally swiped all the chocolate off the shelves. I bought a little, the rest really bought A LOT!! Giotto is like one of the best chocolates there that we could find. It's something like ferro rochette but just without the nut inside and it's like filled with the same thing as kinder bueno. Tastes awesome
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| CHOCOLATE |
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| GIOTTO |
After the shopping break, we continued on our journey to Dijon, France. It took us 4 hours to reach and by the time we were there, it was already dark.
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| Along the road |
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| Road trip |
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| Clouds |
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| Random road trip selfie |
Along the way, Karlina showed us a movie (at the request of my dad LOL) it is Taken. (I believe it was to scare us) It's a story about 2 teenage girls going to Paris to follow their idols and they ended up being kidnapped and sold off as prostitutes. It's really scary especially if you're like going to Paris the next day. FREAKY MUCH!!!
After being on the road for so damn long, we finally arrived in Dijon! It was already dark since the sun sets early during Winter and we had our dinner at the hotel. The hotel that we were staying in is like a small inn. There is a play area with and Xbox360 and many other stuff for kids to play with and most importantly , there was wifi. The hotel is only 2 stories tall and our room is right at the end of the block on the ground floor. Having the corner unit is not always a good thing, our room is right at the end and beyond that is forested area, there are no lights, nor wee there any bright lamps nearby (it's kinda creepy and dangerous actually) After dinner, we had our own free time and my family went out to play with the laser that we brought along from Singapore. We could see the laser beam and that shows how dark the area was (and how creepy it is)
Off to Day 9 in PARIS
Labels: Berne, Curry?, Dijon, Europe, Foodie, France, fun, holiday, Lucerne, Swiss, Switzerland
Day 7 ❅ Snowy Germany ❅
After a good night's sleep at the hotel (Did I mention that our hotel was awesome, cause it is a corner room it's like HUGE and really cool), we headed out to Titisee, Germany. [This is actually an optional tour that is not included and we paid for it, it's not mentioned in our list of tours as well so...]
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| My sofa pull out bed |
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| The "Queen" sized joint bed |
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| Really cool bathroom |
We drove from Switzerland all the way through towards Germany. It wasn't a short journey for sure. When we arrived at the custom to go to Germany we realised that it was SNOWING!!!! Everyone got off the bus to go to the wash room and ended up taking pictures as well (When will you find snow in a warm Europe during winter. It wasn't even like winter when we were there)
Colmar had really nice architectural and all but... the toilets *Shakes head*
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| Public toilets ?! |
There were many people walking their dogs on the streets as we strolled along. We went to a Christmas market and had some chocolate waffles. Compared to Singapore's waffles (those from bakeries that I've eaten at), the waffles there was just AWESOME! The owner was very kind and gave us a lot of chocolate and it tasted really nice.
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| "没有眼看" |
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| "Oh boy!" |
After spending a short while walking around the Christmas market, we had to gather to head back to Switzerland for our own dinner.
We went back to out hotel room, had a little rest and went down for dinner. My dad decided on a MacDonald's dinner since we were all too tired and lazy to go out for better food. I have say that food in Europe is really expensive, we had 3 meals (one each with one upsize) and it costs us 35 Francs (about S$50) They even charged up 20 cents for ketchup sauce (WTF?!)
Day 7 was really a fun day because there was snow in Germany. I managed to make the sequel to my "chicken炖冬菇" series which started in Korea way back in 2009. Though our main purpose to visit Germany was to look at the lake but it seemed like the main purpose of our tour there shifted to shopping. We were given WAY WAY WAY tooooooo much time to shop in that ONE shop and the rest of the time was just squeezed out and answered with an excuse of "no time". I guess at least there was snow and it really didn't really feel that bad. If there weren't snow I guess everyone would make noise since the selling point was the lake and NOT the shopping.
Labels: Black forest, Colmar, Europe, France, fun, Germany, holiday, Snow, Titisee
Day 6 MOUNTAIN "Climbing"
*Side note: Sorry for the super duper late update, haven't found the motivation to continue writing my 14-day travel log. I don't know if anyone is still reading this but today I finally decided to continue (haha)
And so the journey continues...
It's Christmas day!!!
Since it's a holiday, most of the shopping area is closed so Karlina swapped our itinerary, instead of the pre-planned free time we were suppose to have, we went to Mt. Titlis. We drove for a long while before we finally arrived at the foot of the mountain (it was really cool to see the mountain up close) We waited for a while while Karlina went to sort out the tickets for the cable car ride up the mountain. We took 3 cable cars before we reached the peek (10,000 feet above sea level)
The area was really crowded and we had to squeeze with all the other tourists who were there as well. The boarding area for the first cable car was super noisy (cause there were like a ton of people)
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| At the foot of the mountain |
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| View from the first cable car |
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| Family shot in the cable car |
The first cable car was quite small (4-6 adults) We shared it with another family and took many pictures all the way up. It took us around 10-20 minutes to reach the next station where we were suppose to be able to play with the snow (Y)
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| At the second station |
1st stop
We carried on an queued for the second and third cable car. The second cable car was like a little bus like thing that brought us further up and the the third cable car was the coolest. It's a revolving cable car and it allowed us to have a 360 view of the surroundings. It was a really foggy day so everything around us was just white but we had fun drawing pictures and writing on the windows (hehe)
Once we reached the final stop (SUPER HIGH UP) Karlina brought us to the ice caves. It's like really cool because we were walking on (or do you call it 'in') the ice.
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| Touristy shot in the ice cave |
After which, we braved the 80kmph winds and literally "chiong sua" out into the open area where we were 10,000 feet above sea level. The wind was super strong and we didn't really expect that it would be that cold and didn't wear our ski gloves. We were all shivering while we tried to keep our smiles for the pictures. (After smiling in the cold wind, my face was like stuck in the smiling position cause it was just so cold)
It was quite a pity that the sky walk wasn't open since it was so windy and it's not really safe for us to be walking on the cliff. We quickly took our picture and ran back into the cover for shelter.
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| Finally at the peek |
We gathered and Karlina arranged for a gathering time and location before we split up for our lunch and shopping. After lunch, I decided to "chiong sua" again and we braved the cold to go out once more for more pictures. It was a really cool (literally...) experience. Lunch was quite expensive and it was nothing really special.
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| Menu for lunch |
I didn't get a chance to go to the second station to play snow because we heard the gathering timing wrongly and thought that we'd be late if we went, in the end, everyone else went and we were early (HAHAHA... *creis* ) While the rest were playing with snow up at the second level, we were being weird at the car park.
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| Being weird waiting for the rest |
Day 6 was really tiring though we only went to one place. The cold really took a lot of energy from me.So this sums up the mountain climbing experience in the Swiss Alps.
That night we had our Swiss fondue which was suppose to be a traditional dinner. (but it turned out otherwise...) It was a really fun dinner. Since the meat took long to cook everyone invented their own way of cooking and it was HILARIOUS! We were all cooking the "Singaporean" way (LAZY way). The staff were all laughing but they couldn't stop us so they just left us to be (we were in our own private room thank goodness, or else we'd be making a fool out of ourselves)
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| The Cheese |
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| Cooking the meat |
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| Funny sauce which tasted nice |
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| Chocolate Fondue for dessert |
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| White wine |
Off to snowy Germany ...
Labels: Christmas day, Europe, fun, holiday, Late post, Mountain, Mt. Titlis, Snow, White Christmas
