A tour of Brussels - Swiss - Paris

Adding to series of my travel posts, here is post that covers my recent Best of Europe trip. As a nature lover, first thing I should say, Europe is scenic beauty. It is also famous for its historic monuments and places. It is a vast continent to cover. My trip was a 6 day tour arranged by Star Tours. This specific trip is named by them as "Best of Europe in 6 days including Disney Land Paris". All the tour itinerary is available here, so I am not going to re-write the same. Few people have already asked me why this particular tour operator was chosen for the trip. It is a matter of choice and comfort for 4 (My wife, daughter, son & self) people, especially being Indian vegans travelling to places where egg and fish are considered to be vegeterain. At the time of writing this post, we are living in London which is also one of the primary reasons for selecting this tour operator. We went to this trip in the month of August. This would be a lengthy post compared to others as I planned to cover all the 6 days in a single post. For saving some text space, I have hyperlinked certain places to their respective Wiki articles to give more information about that location.

Inside a train in Euro tunnel

Day 1 was when we started early in the morning, picked up by the coach and reached Dover near London to cross the English Channel. This was the first interesting part of the journey. So, to reach the main land of Europe towards France from the UK, Dover is a point of exit. Two ways of crossing the English channel are through Ferry (that carries all the road transport to cross the channel) and a train which goes in a "Euro" tunnel, constructed on the sea bed. All the carrier road vehicles would go into the train, and the train crosses the channel in the tunnel. The immigration checks were done before crossing the English channel. So as the train reached Calais, France, the coach came out of the train and continued our journey towards Brussels. It was a long drive. On reaching Brussels, we went to The Grand Place, which has a history. It is at the city center of Brussels. Once a market place and a king's palace, it is a collection of buildings which include the Town Hall and various museums like Beer Museum which has around 800 varieties of beer, The Brussels City Museum etc. We went on to visit the 24' tall Mannekin Pis statue which had several funny and serious legends associated with it. The one currently seen is a replica, while the original is kept in the museum of Brussels at The Grand Place. Leaving this place, we proceeded to see the Atomium,which is a stainless steel made structure representing an atom of Iron. A single unit atom of Iron metal magnified 165 billion times is seen as the Atomium. Currently, it is a museum with  escalators that can take you from one sphere to another. The trams are interesting part of the city and is also famous for Waffles, beer and Diamonds. This concluded our Brussels city tour. We entered into French territory again, checked into a hotel in the night after a very good dinner. 

Black Forest drive and Cuckoo clock

Day 2, we started moving towards the Black Forest Germany via Strasbourg. Starting that day, till the end of trip, both sides of the coach were full of beautiful landscapes. Windmills, country houses, farms, sunflowers, hills, mountains, valleys, lakes..wow. As we entered Germany, our guide gave a quick intro of Germany, their HISTORY and how marveled in automotive industry.It is also famous for Cuckoo clocks and Glass. Black Forest is a mountain region and is the birth place of the Black Forest Cake. It is also the birth place of the Cuckoo clock. The original Cuckoo clocks were to see and costly to buy (Sigh!). The tour operators arranged Lunch there with yummy Black Forest cake(eggless) and we started our travel to Switzerland. On entering Switzerland, the first place we visited was the Rhine falls of the Rhine river. These are the Europe's largest plain waterfalls. The Rhine river splits into 2 falls with a land mass in the middle open for tourists. A boat takes us to the center of the falls which is the plain rock structure between the two sister falls. The tourists can climb to the top of the small cliff to see both the falls from the center.

Rhine Falls

By the way, the scenic and landscape beauty doubled as we entered Switzerland. It was a feast for eyes and the canvas. Swiss is famous for watches, knives, chocolate, cows & milk. After getting back to the coach, we proceeded to Lucerne where we saw Lake Lucerne, the Chapal bridge which the oldest wooden bridge in the world and the Lion monument which is a rock carving to symbolize the Swiss martyrs of the French revolution. For the first time, I had seen electric buses which draw power from over head electric wires just like a regular electric train engine. It was then I understood Swiss had taken strong measures to curb pollution that can destroy its scenic places.

Lion Monument and Chapal Bridge	Lake Lucerne

 We went to Engelberg for the night halt and trust me, every nature lover should be here at least once in their life time. Engelberg - Town of Angels.

Day 3, it was rainy and cold. We started little late to ascend Mt. Titlis, one of the highest mountain points in the Alps. It stands above 10000 ft and the easiest way to reach the top is a cable car. The travel from Engelberg to summit of Mt. Titlis by cable car takes around 30min. Majority of the distance is covered  by a normal cable car. The remaining distance is covered by a rotating cable car which is world's first of its kind. If the weather is pleasant, the rotating cable car will let us see some breathtaking views of the mountain ranges. Although it was not sunny on the day we went, we could see the valleys when the clouds gave an opportunity for few seconds. Since it was raining in Engelberg, there was a heavy snowfall on the mountain along with thunderstorms. We played in the snow, did the cliff walk on the highest suspension bridge in Europe. The Ice flyer on the summit was another attraction on top of Titlis which was not operational due to bad weather. There is a Glacier cave which is totally an Ice cave in which we went from one end to other walking carefully on the slippery icy floor. We descended down from Mt.Titlis after spending couple of hours there.

Mt Titlis - Snow, cable car and Glacier cave

We started our journey towards Interlaken after having lunch in Engelberg. It is approximately a 2.5 hour journey to Interlaken amidst of mountains, valleys, small rivers, waterfalls,tunnels and lakes. It was such a picturesque travel that I could not close my eyes even for a minute although I was totally tired. Cameras were not enough to capture the sceneries. The naked eye was not enough. A life time will probably not be enough. Probably for the people staying there, its normal. For a visitor, it is heavenly. The time given for roaming around in Interlaken was around 1.5 hours. It was not raining but cloudy. We could see Mt. Jungfrau from a distance. Travel to Mt. Jungfrau was not part of itinerary but I heard it is also something that should not be missed as a visitor. We spent around the Victoria Hotel taking pictures of the beautiful mountains all round us. Switzerland made Yash Chopra as an ambassador for their country and installed a bronze statue for him in the Interlaken. We started our travel to Geneva from Interlaken on the same day and went on a city tour seeing various United Nations buildings like UNICEF, UNESCO etc. We had a stop over at the Broken Chair monument and the United Nations building in Geneva, post which we went to Lake Geneva for some clicks. From here, we started towards France and had a night stay in a hotel after entering the French territory.

Interlaken - Scenaries and Mt. Jungfrau (bottom right)	Geneva - United Nations Building, Lake Geneva and the Broken chair

Day 4, is mostly travel till the evening to Paris. We reached Paris in the evening and went on a boat cruise on River Sienne. The good thing about France is that they retained their rich monuments and heritage as well as the beautiful architectures of various monuments. On the cruise, we were able to see the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame cathedral, Musee d'Orsay etc.

River Sienne Cruise Trip - Oldest bridge on River Sienne
Statue of Liberty, National Assembly, Eiffel Tower,
Notre Dame Cathedral

After the cruise, we went on a night tour of Paris city in the bus with 4 stops at important places for clicks. Special mention to the night time illumination of the Eiffel tower with its hourly glitters. We had stop overs at the Eiffel tower, Arc de triumph, Place De La Concorde, Musee De'Armee, Les Invalides (where Napoleon was buried) and the Opera buildings while we had seen few other buildings like the Louvre museum, the other Statue of Liberty, Princess Diana's death tunnel etc from the bus. Interesting things that we learnt were that the National assembly building, which had 54 pillars around it in Greek style indicating the number of weeks of a calendar year, is an exact mirror image of the Royal Palace in the Place De La Concorde on the other side of River Sienne. Also the number of classical street lights in Place De La Concorde are 365 indicating the 365 days of the year. Adding to that the Les Invaldes monument, the Place De La Concorde and the Arch De Triumph are all in a single line of sight. It seems the earlier emperors wanted to have a clear line of sight in front of their palace, hence the architecture. We had our dinner before the night tour and we went to our hotel for a good sleep after the night tour.

Paris Night Tour - Arch De Triumph, Les Ivalides, Eiffel Tower, Concorde, Opera

Disney Land Paris

Day 5, the entire day was dedicated to Disney Land Paris. We had visited Disney Land Orlando in USA earlier. But my daughter was small at that time, although she was aware of the characters. This time, my daughter needed no introduction to any of the Disney Characters. Thanks to her, my son was also aware of lot of characters. So it was worth of the journey as they enjoyed in the park whole day. It is important to be pre-planned about the places you want to visit inside Disney Land.
This saves a lot of time and energy. The parade in the evening was what all the people would be waiting for and it was pretty creative and energetic. The tour managers did not plan for the illuminations and fire works show in the night in the itinerary but it would also be worth watching.

Day 6, Eiffel Tower. It is important to start early in the morning to Eiffel tower. Heavy rush to visit the monument can take your total day. Joining early in the queue will give time to spend on the top deck of Eiffel tower. It reminded us of our top deck visit to the Empire State building in New York as written in my earlier blog post.  We could see the various places that we visited the other day from the top view. The city of Paris, both old and modern, were visible from the top deck. We, then went on to middle deck and then came back to the ground floor. Interested people will take the steps to the top deck but many would prefer the elevators. Interesting to see the architecture of such a huge monument.

Eiffel Tower - Top view of Paris City from Eiffel Tower, Paris Sky line, Mr. Eiffel's statue

We started our journey back to London after having lunch. We reached the Calais port by evening. This port was from which the coach we roamed all these days enters a ferry. We disembarked the coach and reached the top deck of the ferry, took some rest. It was a 90 minute journey on the ferry to cross the English Channel and we reached Dover Port on the UK side. The immigration was done on the French side. We reached home by 9 PM in London and a wonderful tour came to end.


Lots of memories and experiences!!