Best of Europe: Italy and Switzerland

February 13, 2013.

We finally felt ready to start our Europe tourist circuits since our kids have grown enough to be able to sustain the walking around and making use of the full days you spend on this wonderful vacationing continent. Italy and Switzerland combination is what we picked — one country full of history, culture, art and character while the other is one of the most endowed places by nature gods. They are next to each other in Europe so no long intra-continent travel was involved. After much research we decided to drive around Italy and use the train system in Switzerland. I thought that was a great choice and would highly recommend doing that.

We have been doing a whole lot of trips in Asia and in the Americas and so making reservations and planning this trip to Europe was a new experience. Help of experienced friends, internet booking sites and plenty of travel tips from people on Trip advisor was a big help. Things like booking entry into the St Mark’s Basilica beforehand, the use of skip the line tour booking for Vatican, staying in Lauterbrunnen instead of Interlaken, car seat requirements in Europe, making sure about Air conditioning & parking spaces in hotels, keeping passports & cash safe, and second class Swiss pass is good enough (no need for first class) were some very useful tips. Our experience with Emirates for Flights, and Booking.com for booking hotels was very good. For planning our itinerary we used a combination of Frommer’s and Trip advisor write-ups. I also downloaded Rick Martin’s audio guides for Rome, Vatican and Venice — this helped me plan our days better.

Emirates flies 3 times a day from Hyderabad and connects very well to all locations in Europe. So we took nice and comfortable Emirates flights and landed in Rome on July 13th. The immigration process was the quickest I have seen — literally open the passport on visa page and stamp it. The Baggage area seemed old & run down as compared to all the new Indian airports and we had a broken wheel for our duffle bag — not the greatest start. But the airport pick up service we had booked from our hotel Fiume was good and the lady driver was friendly, took us through the Ancient Rome scenic drive — and we had our first breath taking view of the Colosseum — it was late evening so it was lighted up and looked majestic.

Although it was about 10pm by the time we were checked in and settled in the room, we wanted to just get started. So took a map and asked for basic directions from the hotel desk and walked through beutiful Rome streets to Spanish Steps. So one tip is to stay in the city boundary in Rome and second it is incredibly safe & the city is alive till quite late in the night, 1am or so. We clicked a few snaps and then took a rickshaw ride to Trevi Fountain, where we had our first pizza / pasta dinner. The fountain itself was a beautiful site in the night and we just sat on the steps with lot of people around till quite late.

July 14th we had a 10:30 am booking with “What A Life Tours” company for the guided tour of Vatican and Sistine Chapel. We used a taxi to make sure we reach on time and I was a little worked up about the dress code for the Vatican — but it seems people take it casually and you just need to tie a stole or something around bare shoulders for the Sistine Chapel. One thing though, Vatican is just too crowded and it was really hot on the outside at this time of the year — I would suggest winter time as a better time to visit Rome overall. Vatican is so full of the art treasures of the world, and it is so interesting to hear about how each Pope had a different approach to leaving their mark on the Vatican. Picture clicking were not allowed in Sistine Chapel but Michelangelo’s work is amazing with the imagination, the painting itself, the fact that this was done standing with utmost care using plaster art in 1508–12, simply awesome. And then St. Peter’s Basilica reminded of so many movies shot in this area both inside and the square outside — the shape of the church as a Cross, the holy Door, Michelangelo as an architect showing up strongly in the Dome and in his work Pieta (Mary with Jesus on her lap) were moving sites for me. The older walls, the air ducts, and the tombs underneath the basilica are a must see. Our guide Ana was great, energetic and interesting, in fact we paid extra to continue with her for the tour of the St. Peter’s Basilica. We had some really nice fresh pizza lunch sitting on a mat on the steps of the shop just outside Vatican and took a bus for Trastevere.

Trastevere is the areas south of the Vatican and means “beyond the Tiber” river. This is one of the most charming area of Rome with narrow medieval lanes, restaurants and just beautiful to walk around. Lot of picture perfect corners and buildings. We just strolled around the area and thoroughly enjoyed the leisurely time. We took a bus back to the hotel from across the river. But we were still not done — I read on the internet that night time Colosseum is beautiful so we took a bus to the ancient marvel of a building. It was nice, few pictures and sitting in the cool breeze for some time was good. This was a tough day for the kids because of all the walking in Vatican but they held well to my surprise, we did use stroller for the younger one.

Ancient Rome was the plan for the next day. We had breakfast at the hotel and reached Colosseum early at its opening time. The queues were already building up. One of the tips we had was to go the Forums first and buy the ticket there as it is the same ticket that is used for Colosseum. But we did not do it as I really wanted to get inside Colosseum early while it was not hot and spend time there — I will admit that I was mesmerized by this structure and that is why you can notice that I have already mentioned this building several times in this post. What we did was we took one audio / video guide for me, this was a separate line with almost zero waiting time to get in for this — this is probably the perfect way to beat the queue. I am a history enthusiast and to feel what it would have been inside this building 2000 years ago was breathtaking. In fact my wife and my elder daughter also enjoyed the structure as much as I did. For me, it was one of the high points of our trip and we did click a whole lot of pictures. From here, we went to the Forum’s where I used Rick Martin’s walking tour. It was really hot at this time and very tiring for the kids — so we rushed it a bit and focused only on some of the high point’s like the Arch of Constantine outside the forums, house of Vestal Virgins, Arch of Septimius Severus, place of Caesar’s murder. The view from the street of the Markets to Trajan was really nice. This part of Rome warranties a multi-day visit for a history student and perhaps in a cooler weather.

After lunch we walked to the Pantheon, another massive architectural marvel. From there onto the Piazza Navona. This is a beautiful square with lots of artists displaying their work, we bought some really nice paintings here and had one of the several rounds of gelato while in Italy. Rest a while in many of the beautiful squares, get water from the fountains, and walk the streets was the order of the day. We walked right up to Spanish mountains passing through the street with all the well-known big brand showrooms. We spent the evening at Villa Borghese park, a nice break from all the city walking for kids to have some fun. We rented a self-driven rickshaw type thing, rode a Segway for the first time, and dipped our feet in cool fountain water.

Next day started our road trip around Italy. We picked up our pre-booked car from Hertz on the train station. It took us almost 3 hours to pick up the car (frustrating), the GPS we took did not work, and consequently we got lost in Rome for couple of hours. Finally for rest of the trip the age old method of asking when lost and having printed directions is what we did to find our way around. We drove first to Sienna, and stayed in a beautiful chalet. The place we stayed in itself was a 2 floor room with a kitchenette, with olive garden setting and a small pool overlooking the hills. The COOP grocery store was nearby, so we went shopping there and that night cooked sumptuous rajma chawal with cherries to top it all. A nice glass of Chianti wine with the meal was a big plus. The town itself was a really beautiful little place with narrow walkways with incredible medieval buildings. The long combination escalator to go from the foot hills to the town was an experience in itself. The weather was a welcome cool one and we stayed till quite late in the town. The Piazza del Campo, site for annual horse racing event was impressive with lots of people just sitting and lying down in the square on its slating floors.

Our plan to drive through the Chianti area was another high point of the trip. We small winding roads, beautiful hills, occasional medieval time buildings atop the hills, farms around us were breathtaking. We stopped over in a village, Chianti village Castillina, which looked like right out of a movie set. We reached Pisa by the afternoon and here we stayed in a hotel right in the center of the town next to the leaning tower. So we got to spend our entire stay looking and walking around the famous monument. Overall, I thought Pisa was disappointing. The tower itself is not really impressive and the town itself is nothing to write home about. One could easily pass it without missing a bit of the Italy experience. We had decided to skip Florence this time because of kids. We saved it for our second Italy trip :-), maybe without the kids that time.

Drive to Venice was uneventful and efficient as i was quite use tod riving in Italy by now. Here there was another smart thing I learned from trip advisor write ups — we stayed in Mestre — better hotels, enough parking and literally 10 mins from Venice across the ocean bridge. I would say that is the smartest thing to do if you are driving and/ or are with kids and need more spacious room. Venice is romantic, enchanting and it did not feel like leaving the city even after just roaming around for 6–7 hours. The best things to do are to take the Grand Canal ride in vaporetto (water taxi) and then just get lost in the streets of Venice. The mask shops, the small bakeries, the gelato shops were all quite an experience. We had also happen to attend a fund raising music concert in one of the squares which was nice. The gondola ride is ridiculously expensive and a waste of time & money. The main tourist spot St. Mark’s square and Basilica are nice but very crowded until 5pm when the cruise ships leave. For the basilica, it is best to pre-book the entry time online. We were also told that the food here is bad and expensive, but we felt that if you do not want to get very fancy then it is not that bad. Overall, nothing compares to the unique experience of this city.

Onto to Switzerland. We were to spend 9 days in Switzerland and the plan was to start from Geneva with stays in Montreux, Interlaken and Lucerne; and fly out of Zurich. I did not get any good advice on how to get from Venice to Geneva / Montreux. The flights were expensive and not used normally, the direct train is no longer available and wastes a lot of time. I decided to drive the good 600 Kms and drop the car off at Geneva airport. I had lots of apprehensions about this long drive but it turned out to be a great decision. The Italy highway part was fast and then the drive through France, through Mt. Blanc area, was a beautiful drive. We dropped off the car at Geneva airport and took the train around Geneva Lake to Montreux. Before you start using the Swiss pass it needs to be validated at the station but after that it works like a charm. The SBB train system is great.

Montreux is a small city on the other side of Lake Geneva. The lake side walk, small sections for kids to play in the lake itself and view of the mountains is breathtaking. We had our taste of some decent middle eastern food also here. We slept early and next day morning on July 20th we had reservations for a whole day excursion on “Chocolate Train” from Golden Pass train system. I had done these booking on internet beforehand itself but the ticket seemed to be easily available. This tour had mixed reviews but we decided to do for kids, they can have fun as this included visits to a cheese factory and a chocolate factory. I would say that if you are spending enough time in Switzerland then it is not bad at all as one gets to experience internal Switzerland at leisure without too much planning. Kids were excited about the 2 factory visits with unlimited chocolate eating, and the village Gruyeres was postcard beautiful. One can smell the cows and the valley views were amazing. Evening we spent more time at the lake and got ready to leave early morning.

Montreux — Interlaken — Lucerne part is narrow gauge and serviced by golden pass trains. The Swiss pass works just fine, if you want you could do online reservations for extra money but we did not need it. Two tips — find out the time for the Panorama trains as they have the large glass windows for better views; and second not reserving is better as you can sit anywhere without looking for your reserved seats throughout the train. The train ride to Interlaken OST was beautiful and from there we took connecting 20 mins train to Lauterbrunnen. Here although the hotel was just a 3 mins walking distance, one thing we found out was that the shops closes down by 6ish, secondly we reached by 2 but our hotel reception was closed till 4 — now it may just be our hotel but this was indeed odd. Also, the hotel owner was a unco-operative guy and picked fights with lot of guests. Swiss hotels are expensive, with small rooms and limited service in general. We did find a restaurant next to our hotel though which served some great vegetarian food — homemade kind of burger, nice pizza and even had some Indian curry dishes. The information center was very very useful, answered all our questions, helped us plan our outings, gave us good weather information to decide where to go on which days.

Lauterbrunnen was like a “seven star hill station” in my wife’s words. Small village with one main street with all the hotels, view of the snowcapped Jungfrau ranges, waterfalls around the village were all beautiful site. It was a pleasantly cold here after the rather hot Italy weather. We hiked up one of the hills for a view from behind the waterfalls. It was raining for most of the evening and probably snowing up in the mountains. So we planned for Jungfrau the next day, as weather would be clearer and we might see some fresh snow. Now this one was another amazing experience — the train system itself is amazing going up such a height, the way the crowd is handled is efficient and the Jungfrau station set up is nicely organized. As expected there was nice fresh snow and kids had a blast playing in the snow — making snow man, and doing the tubing & sledging for more than 3 hours. We over packed our coats, it was not that cold — what is really needed is the right shoes, gloves, sunscreen of course sun glasses. The ice cave was nicely done too.

We spent 2 more days here in Lauterbrunnen and thoroughly enjoyed them with a great Alps experience. One day we took a cruise in Lake Thun, roamed around in Thun and Interlaken. Interlaken and in several places in Switzerland one can also do para gliding, we decided to skip it though. We were dying for Indian food and so this was the day we had a great meal at Taj Mahal restaurant in Interlaken. In Thun, we also discovered that McDonalds in Switzerland serves the Veggie burger similar to India — kids just loved that and that was our savior for kids over next few days in Switzerland. Second day we went to Mt. Murren and then to Grendelwald where we took the long cable car to First. Here the facilities for skiers in winters, and hikers in summers is great, we enjoyed some hiking, thoroughly soaked into the breath taking views of the valley and then kids had a great time in a play area at this high altitude. Another note on food — as our hotel did not serve breakfast — we used COOPS a lot. We bought nice bread, olives, dips, fruits & vegetables and made sandwiches which the kids loved. All of us were kind of getting bored of the regular breakfast items in restaurants so this was good change.

July 25th we reached Lucerne, which turned out to be a surprisingly large city. We stayed right at the edge of the “old city”. Walking around in this area was very enjoyable with lot of window and actual shopping. We visited the Natural History museum which was OK and the spent time around the canal which had beautiful flower arrangements on the 2 wooden bridges. It turned out that this was also the time for the annual “Blue Bells” music festival. The late evenings when the shops were closed the festival was at its full bloom with number of temporary street shops around the lake, live performances and just so many people having fun. There were very few kids as lot of smoking and drinking was going on. There were food stalls from every part of the world — people were just having a very good time. For our second day we took the train to Engelberg and went up the famous Mt Titlis. We wanted to make sure we did not miss it as this is part of the itinerary for all tours from India, though knowledgeable folks had told us that it would be same as Jungfrau. It was same — but only not as good. The glacier seems to be receding fast, the snow itself was not as pure and soft, the ice cave was a disappointment — but it did not stop the kids from having fun on the snow sledges and had couple of hours of good time. Engelberg on the foothills is a nice quite town and we spent some leisure time along the stream which seemed like a natural flow of water. On 27th, we took our direct train to Zurich airport and flew back to Hyderabad, completing a long awaited and incredibly enjoyable trip.

But before I finish I want to talk about a lot of interesting and delightful findings for us. No one told us about them, neither were they mentioned on the travel sites or books. For one, the ever running water fountains which had perfectly drinkable water was amazing. At first when we saw people filling their water bottles from the fountain at Spanish Steps in Rome we were surprised, and so we asked around and asked at our hotel, as well as the guide at the Vatican Museums to be doubly sure. After that we used it to the full — cool, clean water and free :-). Another very nice concept we saw especially in Switzerland was a COOP store outside of all the railway stations, easy to find and best place to get stuff for a quick snack or making your own sandwich or getting some nice fresh fruits to carry around for kids. Everyone must use them whenever they travel to this part of the world.

The way Swiss pass with a free family card worked for us was also beyond my expectations. Firstly the train network & punctuality in Switzerland is amazing and one needs to experience it to believe it. Lot of people told us about it but still i was positively surprised. Then the coverage on the pass with museums, buses, cruises, discounts on excursions — it was completely worth every penny.

I really should also mention the highways system between cities in Italy. It was again in some ways probably even better than what I saw in US. The “Autostrade” and the state highway network, Strade Statal, abbreviated SS, was great where one could drive at 130Km/h safely and without hassles. Trucks and slow moving vehicles stick to the right lane and if you do not then the guy wanting to overtake you would be touching you bumper at the back literally at that high speed :-), fairly effective system huh. What is more, never did I find a cop lurking around to catch you for smallest of violations. Italians are truly kings on the road :-).

And then the unique architectures. Italy had these medieval time cobble streets with vertical 3 or 4 floor or so buildings right next to each other in almost every city. The doors to these buildings would be massive wooden ones with big bolts and operated using electronic systems. We kept peeping into them and guessed about the insides of these buildings until finally we stayed in one such building in Pisa — our hotel was really an apartment in a building like this. Switzerland on the other had had these beautiful 2 floor buildings with hut shape tops. The Windows almost always had a false door of wood on the outside (or so it seemed), with a simple grill and flower arrangements on the ledge. It looked really pretty.

Now for the things that did not go so well. Firstly, the rental car process, things are really not as smooth or transparent as one would find in the US. It was not clear that if I picked up the car in Rome and dropped in Geneva, there would be about Euro 370 extra charges — that is quite a bit of money and I found out only after the charges showed up on my credit card. And then this was my first time driving in Europe and I was relying on my GPS to work, it just did not and it seems it is a routine issue as no one at the rental car company was surprised when I reported that. Also, they could not fix the problem when i visited the agency again. Then there was the issue of drive from Venice to Geneva I had to cross country borders twice, to pass through France, and that meant I had to pay the Euro 40 charges twice. It really should have something like a one day validity.

We are all vegetarians and were told horror stories of lack of food options for us. But we do love Italian food, Pizza and Pasta, so I was fairly confident that we would be fine. We carried some Indian spiced up snacks so we could take care of once in a while cravings and also carried few boxes of Cup-O-Noodles for kids just in case they did not get adjusted to the food types. But things worked out fine. There were enough vegetarian options on the typical roadside European restaurants and also Gelato was a of course a big hit. Towards the end of the trip we did start missing the Indian spices so we looked up Taj Mahal Restaurant in Interlaken as I already mentioned, and it was great. And once again doing groceries in COOP and then making our own Sandwiches was an option we used more than once, and loved it.

I would say a truly memorable vacation. Europe is beautiful, clean and very touristy as well as provides options to find your own style of spending your precious vacation time.