Europe trip – Conclusion

(Previous days)

Day 7: Pisa and journey along the Mediterranean coast to Monte Carlo.

Checked out of the Hotel in Florence around 9:45am after breakfast. In Italy, they serve a hot drink which looks like coffee with Barley and I liked it. I loved the checkout gift as well from Hotel Roma, a box of indigenous soaps!  I came to the station and bought tickets at the kiosk for the 10:28 regional train which took us to Pisa by 11:30. It left from Platform 3 which starts a bit further from the station. Barely made it to the train on time.

We had about 2 hours as our tickets were pre-booked for the 13:42 train to Genoa and onward to Nice. There were no taxi’s available at the train station even though there was a long line. The city should do something about making more taxi’s available. Neither was Uber available. We waited half an hour for a bus (or a taxi).  Eventually, the bus came but was crowded, and we got to the Torre (Leaning tower) by about 12:30. There were huge crowds, people everywhere, we did not even attempt to get tickets to go up the tower, just walked around and took pictures. With great difficulty found a taxi to return. The two vegan restaurants we searched up in Pisa were closed for August.  (Did I mention Italians take vacation the whole month of August?) So we had to make do with some snacks and yogurt for lunch. The backup we were carrying (Poha and pickle) finally came in handy.

Trenitalia’s first class was good with 3 +3 seat cabins with doors. Unlike other trains that had a 2+1 configuration, this had 3 seats in a cabin with the passage on the side so one could sleep across these 3 seats as they were contiguous and the hand rests can be folded up. Ours was the last car of the train so we had a good view from the back vestibule door.

The journey from Pisa to Genoa was along the Mediterranean sea with fantastic views from the train. However, it slipped into tunnels for long durations as the track runs along the Cinque Terre hills that abuts the sea in the La Spezia area of Italy. The frustrating part was that by the time we position the camera for a good shot we go into yet another tunnel. Small coastal towns like Monterosso have that old world charm, no automobiles and yet reachable (only) by train.

Changed trains in Genoa, got some snacks and boarded the Thello train to Nice. This segment also hugged along the sea with fantastic views of the hills and sea on either side. At Ventimiglia(-Italian) or Ventimille (-french), the border police combed through the train and off boarded an immigrant who was trying to sneak into France. A gentleman from Milan who frequently visits New York explained to me the problem of migrants from Northern Africa trying to get into France has been a serious one and neither France wants them nor Italy is taking strong steps to deport them because their lives are in danger as they flee war struck countries like Libya. Sad state of affairs.

Reached MonteCarlo around 7:45pm. Took a taxi to the Marriott hotel to check into a beach-view room. We headed out for dinner to Eqvita, the vegeterian restaurant of Novak Djokovic in Monte Carlo. Got ourselves seated outdoors. On our way, we saw the Casino and series of luxury cars parked around.  Upon return, we walked around the marina looking at the luxury yachts. Retired to the room by around 11pm.

Day 8: Monte Carlo, Nice, and Paris along the French Rivera

Teja and I spent some time on the beach next to the hotel in the morning. Came back to the hotel and spent more time in the pool. Visited the Castle (from the outside- we missed the change of guard which happened earlier). Drove around on the middle road and reached the station to buy a ticket to Nice. The train to Nice was really crowded. Our original plan was to stay in Nice but changed it after the recent sad incident. We already bought the tickets to Paris on the TGV leaving Nice at 3:02 pm.  Had an hour at the  Nice station, so I found an Indian restaurant nearby and got some vegetarian dishes packed for the journey.  They run two TGV trains attached to each other, the regular TGV and the IdTGV (the best source for info on European trains is seat61.com) The TGV runs at low speed continuing the journey over the French Riviera coastline onto Antibes, Cannes,  Marseilles, and Avignon. From there it goes non-stop picking up its famous 320 kmph speed. Reached Paris Gare de Lyon on time at 8:40 pm, had dinner at an Indian vegetarian restaurant near Gare de Nord and checked-in to the Marriott Rive Gauche hotel.

Day 9: Paris

Booked the Louvre tickets for 9 am the previous night and printed them at the hotel. Also booked the Eiffel tower tickets earlier for a 2:30pm appointment. Headed to Louvre around 9am and got in without much wait. We had a list of top 10 things to see at the Louvre, obviously starting with the Monalisa, the Hammurabi, Venus, etc. and covered those in the next 1.5 hours. After lunch at another Vegetarian restaurant in little India (or should I say little Tamilnadu/ Sri Lanka because even the signboards are in Tamil) near the Gare de Nord station, we headed back to the Eiffel tower seeing Notredame along the way. Even with the pre-bought tickets, it took an hour to reach the summit. We debated going to Versailles but were too exhausted.  Leisurely came down and spent the evening shopping at the Galerie Lafayettes on Hausmann. Had dinner at yet another vegetarian restaurant. Our plan was to take the night river cruise from the Eiffel tower. We went back to the tower again, saw the last part of the sparkling of the tower (was it fireworks?) at 10:05pm and tried looking for a cruise which was covered. (It was a bit cold  and we were not dressed for that weather). It was getting too late so we dropped the idea and headed back to the hotel.

Day 10: Back home

Checked out of the Marriott after breakfast at around 9am and headed to the airport. Took a taxi to CDG, arrived more than 2 hours before the flight time and checked-in bags. However, we barely made it to the flight after a long line at the Immigration as well as security. And the flight was delayed by 15 minutes as well. The Paris CDG administrators are not realizing the revenue lost from shoppers as they keep all the (NON-EU) passengers waiting in lines.  They could instead employ a few more agents during rush hours and let passengers spend their time (and money) in the airport stores. We also made the mistake of not transferring the chocolate jams (different flavors) that we bought the previous day in Maxim to a checked-in bag and the security guys trashed all 4 jars. Alas, we did not even get to taste them.

The flight was further delayed due to bad weather in Washington DC and we ran out of fuel so we were re-routed and landed first in Richmond for refueling followed by a technical snag and then arrived 4 hours late in IAD. At first, some idiot in United booked us for the flight the next day afternoon (even though seats were available for sale on the 10:15pm flight that night) and after waiting on their phones for over an hour they added us to the 10:15pm flight to Houston, which was delayed too. We eventually reached Houston IAH at 3am in the morning (instead of 7:56pm) and thanks to the booking for the next day, our bags did not arrive. The silver lining is that they sent those the next day night to our home – all intact. Thus ended our 11-day trip.

Planning and preparation

Over a few months of planning went into this trip, from making several bookings, to buying stuff. I want to emphasize that the more you plan and the earlier, the better off and inexpensive your trip will be. Do not short change or outsource this important activity. No external “travel professional” knows your needs and tastes better than you. Do take their advice but do the key planning yourself. Also, involve your family members (kids especially) as they will learn a lot about the places they are visiting. That makes them enjoy places even more. In fact, the excitement and fun of the travel begins with the planning itself. Ask them to come up with a list of places they would like to see in each destination on your itinerary. Make them prioritize as you will only have so much time.

First, decide which countries and places you absolutely have to visit. If visas are an issue for you, figure that out first. The general advice is to stay at least 2 nights in each place, but it depends on your style. If you are a ‘taster’ like us on this trip, we wanted to cover the most ground in the minimal time, just going thru the highlights. We are not always in the  ‘taster’ mode, for example, a few years ago we just went to the Cayman Islands and stay put in the same condo on a beach for 5 nights. So decide your mood and mode. Then a key expense is the airfare (especially if you are family of 4) so find out which of these places can get you a cheaper fare. Especially for Europe, you don’t want to travel into and out of the same location. It will cut into your time (and believe me, you will always be short of it). I used google flights which showed the options available on a map with fares, so I could choose the inbound city which had the least fare. Originally I was eyeing a 10% sale airfare on British Airways into Vienna (at 2:30pm) but by the time I figured out all the other logistics that fare was gone. In hindsight, the itinerary we ended up on Swiss Air/United was much better as we landed into Zurich at 6:30am and we got a lot accomplished that first day. Otherwise, we would pretty much have to waste our first day arriving, so it was worth the additional $500. Don’t book the tickets right away without figuring out the rest of the trip. Use tools like https://www.routeperfect.com/trip-planner/ to help arrange the order of the cities. If you are traveling by train, seat61.com is your best friend. even if you don’t intend to travel by train just take a look at the site and you might change your mind.

I initially made all my hotel bookings with the cancel option (slightly expensive) but allowed me to change /cancel without any penalties. Ensured the office /leave situation and then came back and booked the air tickets because they were non-refundable.

To ensure we have internet and phone, we bought a SIM card from Orange for $58 on amazon.com which had 1 GB of internet and 200 minutes of phone. It worked well in spite of the bad reviews. I just inserted it in the phone in Zurich Airport when we landed and it took a few minutes but it worked like a charm.

We heeded to the advice of Rick Steves and many others and packed our lightest. In hindsight we could have gone even lighter, will definitely try on our next trip. I already mentioned how important the neck pouch was. I would never travel overseas without it. I can’t even begin to imagine what happens if I lose my passport in an unknown land. We bought a pair of cycle chain locks thinking we might have to tie them to the luggage racks, but never had to use it. I also ordered a couple of no-foreign transaction fee credit cards, one of which I lost in the wallet. “Chase Sapphire preferred” used the same card number for both me and my wife, (unlike American Express) so when I lost mine and canceled it, her card became useless. So keep that in mind when planning your backups. Decide what is your budget and after counting all the planned expenses, assume you anyway go over by at least 30%.

Advantages of going as a party of four

Most travel sites advise you to take public transportation to save money. But if you are a party of 4, the bus /metro fares are at least 1.50 euros per person, which adds up to 6 or 8 euros. Since most of these European cities (except Paris) are pretty compact, we could go by taxi within 10-15 euros. That not only saves time and energy, it also protects us from pickpockets on public transportation.