Europe Week 1: London, Paris, Lucerne

After a month at home, and some much needed time to unwind, I'm now ready to share some of our European vacation. Here's the Cliffs Notes Version (with pics). Part 1 of many!

The night before we left, we washed the dogs and let them up on the couch (not a usual occurrence). Here they are spooning (we did not set them up like this):

Our flight left Wednesday, June 19 from SFO at 4:30 pm. We flew to LAX, then we had a lay-over in LAX and left at 8:30 pm for London. That put us in London at 12:30 pm London time. As soon as we got to Customs, one of the students (later nicknamed "49" for always being the second to last person on the bus) realized he didn't have his passport. He and Mike had to run through the airport back to the plane (about a mile away) and find their way back on - the guy had left his passport in the seat pocket on the plane. This was our first clue had how this guy would be...

Some highlights of our two days in London:

• Watching Euro 2008 "football," especially the Russia v. Holland game (our tour guide is Dutch, living in Moscow)


• Visiting and dining in Chinatown


• Our city tour of London - London has a very strict program (3 years) to become a city guide, so the guides are always fantastic. Our guide this year, Joel, was nothing less than wonderful and ended up being on old friend of Greg's (my father-in-law):



• Touring the Museum of Natural History (amazing hummingbird, dinosaur, and Darwin exhibits, to name a few). This is the entrance, which is just as beautiful as some of the churches we visited throughout Europe:
• Seeing Prince Charles drive by on his way to a parade (Greg and Monette later saw him in the parade, we went to the Museum)


• Trying to find Covent Garden and ending up in the Red Light district (figures that London's Red Light district would actually be clean and pretty nice!)

From London we took the Eurostar out of San Pacras station into Paris Nord. We arrived in Paris around noon and immediately headed to our hotel, which was south of the city, in Cachan (a very cute town). We planned on taking the Metro from Cachan to the Louvre for an afternoon tour. Well.... it was Sunday, and while the Metro was still running, there were no attendants, which meant you had to use coins to buy tickets. We had all just arrived from London, which has its own currency, and no one had Euros yet, so our tour director was hoping to buy all 51 tickets on a credit card. We ended up having to buy one ticket and go through the luggage entrance, holding the gate open so all 51 of us could run through. It was a little risky - if a policeman had stopped on the Metro to check tickets it would have been thousands of dollars in fines. When we reached the Louvre station in Paris, we had to repeat the whole situation, since you need to use a ticket to get out of the Metro - and this station is busy.

Some pics from inside the Louvre:

• The Mona Lisa (of course):


• Winged Victory:

• Venus de Milo


• Code of Hammurabi

That evening, we went to Montmartre, which is a hill on the northern side of Paris. It is an adorable area, with lots of cute shops, restaurants, and street vendors. It also has a very pretty church, Sacre Coeur, which is a catholic church built in the Moorish style, so it's very different from the gothlic churches that are so prevalent in Europe. To get to the top of the hill, you call either climb the very famous steps or take a monorail. We've always opted for the steps - a way to earn the great view you see at the top. From the top, you can see all of Paris and you also can get what is always my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. There are also steps leading up to the church which everyone sits on and visits. We were there on a Sunday night and two guys were playing music and dancing. Here are some pics:

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That night, we ate flam, which are really really good french "pizzas" with no sauce. They make them with fresh gruyere cheese and a variety of toppings, including chocolate chips or cinnamon apples for dessert. Trader Joe's makes a similar pizza in the frozen food section (but calls it something different). I'll have to live with that in between trips to Europe!

The next day, we took a bus tour of the city and visited Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. I think the pictures describe them better than my words can (you can thank me know for editing out the twenty pictures of birds and ducklings I took in the park adjacent to the Eiffel Tower):

I know this is a bit morbid, but I like the story of Saint Denis, the patron saint of France and the first bishop of Paris. According to legend, he was a martyr and was beheaded on Montmartre. From there, his decapitated body carried his head to the area northeast of Paris where the Benedictine abbey of St. Denis was founded. This is depicted at the entrance to Notre Dame.




Paris was having a military parade that evening and there were hundreds of policemen in full gear with large guns sleeping in vans lined up outside the park. It was a very funny site, to see them all dudded up and passed out!

The next day, we met our bus driver, Romano, and took off for the eight hour drive through the french countryside to Switzerland. Romano would be with us for the next week and a half, and we all grew to love him, such a character! He looked like Nicolas Sarkozy and acted like Joe Pesci. Halfway to Switzerland, we stopped in Boune, a small town in southeaster France. Many of the buildings have mosaic tiles for roofs - gorgeous!

We got to our hotel in Switzerland late that evening and stayed in for the night. We dined at our hotel, which had really good food. Much to the dismay of Romano, however, they would only give us five pieces of bread (for a table of eight). To an Italian, this is ludicrous (I happened to agree with him) and he got so angry! The waitress also didn't want to give him a glass of wine with dinner because he was the bus driver (even though he was in for the evening). No wine wiht dinner? What? Another blasphamy! It was this night that Romano began talking about Fiorentina, a large steak famous in the Tuscan region. That night, Mike and Romano decided they would find it, as soon as we got to Italy...

The next day, we visited downtown Lucerne, took a one hour boat ride across Lake Luzern and then took a cograil up to the top of Mount Pilatus, which is beautiful. Lucerne is lovely! The Swiss take great pride in the cities, and it shows!

The covered bridge:

Typical Lucern building:

Lake Luzern (a nice place to take the sailboat out, huh?)

Mike and a student, Robbie:
View from the cograil, on the way down: