Bonjour! It's another travel day as we leave Paris, France, via the railway; change trains in Zurich, Switzerland; and arrive in Bregenz, Austria, that evening to meet up with Gate 1 Travel for their "Romantic Germany" tour. Busy, busy! But first, breakfast ...
Unfortunately, it seems I didn't take any photos of the breakfast buffets themselves. Dang. When I'm on a trip, I FEEL like I'm photographing everything, but when I get home and do any kind of project like this, there's always something I wish I had taken. But we'll do what we can! (And who knows what I'll find when I've actually gone through ALL the photos.)
Anyway, these were some cool things I found at our hotel breakfast in Paris! There was a real honeycomb that you could grab a piece of (I didn't). And then a mini-pancake maker! How cool. You just press the button and it drops two circles of batter on the conveyor belt inside and by the time it drops them out the end, they're perfectly cooked! I did have to try this, and yes, cool contraption and tasty cakes! One thing that may not have caught your eye in this photo, but I've enlarged for you here ....
The bacon. Oh boy. The bacon was a topic of conversation on the whole tour. Personally I (and other American folks too apparently) prefer cooked fried bacon. I'm on the side for CRISPY bacon myself. This was the limpest, barely cooked, probably baked, bacon I'd ever seen. And it was everywhere during the trip. I managed to eat some of it for two mornings, but no more. Yuck. Jim didn't even care for it and he's not a crispy bacon eater.
Breakfast was a struggle for me. The cereal options were very plain bran flakes and two other very plain ones. Eggs were runny scrambled eggs, or too-soft cooked eggs, or hard-boiled eggs (my choice). There were lots of sliced deli meat and cheese choices. Lots of fruit choices. And lots of bread choices. Also a full salad bar, which we thought was weird. And then sometimes potatoes, mushrooms (both pictured above with the bacon), cooked beans, tomatoes, etc. So maybe I was just a picky breakfast eater? I dunno. But I made up for it at lunch and dinner. haha!
These photos are prettier, right? ha! After breakfast, we only had to take our luggage and walk about a block to the train station at Gare de Lyon. Again, I don't know what my problem is with this lack of photography, but the train station had some really pretty, ornate parts to it. Another thing it had was a LOT of bakeries. They were all over the place. I thought this one above was unique with its huge chandelier! We just walked through and didn't purchase anything actually, except that I got a bottle of water. We had over an hour before boarding our train, so we just found a semi-comfortable place to sit and wait.
This was our train (Lyria #9211), which left about 10:30 am. This particular photo of the train itself was one I had taken after we got to our destination, but that doesn't matter. Jim had gotten some upgraded seats for us and they were the best train seats we had the whole vacation! They were really nice, soft to sit on, very clean. I had a window seat again. And best of all, our seats were facing FORWARD this time!! Yay!! (The photo at the top of the post is of us on this particular train.)
It was a 4-hour trip to our layover stop in Zurich, during which they brought us a full lunch. For those interested in exactly what this is (pictured above), I've copied the menu items here for you:
Starter (bottom left of photo): Quinoa salad with pink radish, peas, chickpeas, mango, and mint dressing.
Main Course: Slow-cooked veal with gremolata, sautéed gnocchi with tomato confit,
and rosemary-roasted artichokes
and rosemary-roasted artichokes
Cheese dish: Mottin Charentais & Swiss Emmental, strawberry chutney and butter medallion
Dessert: Peach and verbena shortbread
It was actually all pretty tasty overall. I'd give it a solid B+ for train food. Jim was a little more picky about it and didn't like his artichoke at all. He opted to play around with that part and added "eyes" to it, to make it look like a critter. When I got home, I asked Chat GPT what that artichoke critter resembled and it immediately came back with Oscar the Grouch! Haha!! That's pretty dang accurate I'd say!
Another highlight of that train ride, was a little gift pouch that was in each of our seats when we boarded. It's a little travel kit, which was unnecessary, but definitely a treat to find. I should send a photo of this back to Amtrak and give them some pointers. haha!
Arriving in Zurich, Switzerland, we had about an hour and a half layover, which goes pretty quick when you're trying to figure out tickets, and trains, and where to be.
Jim had purchased tickets online and the two options it gave were to pick up the tickets at the station, or print a pdf. I think we must have had a reason when we were back at home, but we thought it'd be easier to just pick them up at the train station. It wasn't.
This is the only photo I took at the Zurich train station. According to Google, it's name is "L‘ange protecteur" by artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002).
She is a gigantic "Nana" in the shape of a guardian angel who watches over travelers as they pass through the main concourse of the Zurich train station. She is 36 ft. tall and weighs 1.3 tons, and is carefully dusted every three months. Initially laughed at for her colorful "Nanas", the French artist soon became famous all over the world. Her voluptuous Nana figures represent joyful, liberated, and self-assured women.
And if anything was gonna help us out at that moment, maybe the Nana was it!
First we went to a self-serve kiosk thinking that we could print out our tickets for the next train (from Zurich to Bregenz, Austria). But we couldn't figure out how to get it in English and nothing was working right. We're trying to use Google translator to help us out, but still it didn't seem like we could find the right place to put in our info and find the tickets.
We asked a janitor, I think he was, and he couldn't understand much what we were saying, but he pointed us towards the Information Center. We found a helpful person there, thankfully, and she told us that we could only print out the tickets from Austria. ?? That didn't make sense. But she said we could click for the pdf instead and the photo of it on our phone, would be sufficient. Whew.
So out we went to find where our train would be. Well the digital "departing" signs were listing trains in order of their departure and our 15:32 pm (3:32 pm) train wasn't on the list yet. We had just a few minutes to go. So we were feeling more in control, and waited.
But then, when we saw 15:32, it was for a different city. Not for Bregenz. So we're having a moment again, trying to figure it out. A random woman, who spoke English, apparently saw our struggle and said, "You have luggage ... your train is going to be at the airport. You need to go to the airport." ??? Well we knew that was wrong. Huh? She herself didn't have any luggage. But she then proceeded to ask us for money. Oh boy. So we skedaddled outta there and decided to go to the platform listed for the 15:32 train, even though our destination city wasn't on the sign.
Once down the escalators and on the train platform underground, I decided there HAS to be someone down there who spoke English. So I just started going to random folks ... "English?", "English?", "English?"
And then, in a group of 3-4 young women, there was one, visibly pregnant, who said, "Yes, English." She helped us out; assured us we were at the right platform; and directed us to go down just a ways so we'd be in the right place for the second train car, which would be ours. We thanked her so much for the help!
The digital signs down there were wider, and those in fact DID list Bregenz as the destination. This train apparently would stop at a few stations before then, which is what we saw on the sign upstairs. All was good! Hallelujah!
"Thanks, big blue Nana!" ;-)
The train ride itself was fine. It felt more like a short commuter train and we were only on there for an hour and a half, but we had some incredible views! Jim and I had facing seats, both at the window, with a small table between us. (He thankfully agreed to sit in the seat that was traveling backwards.) This photo above is one that Jim took from the train of some of the lower Swiss Alps in the distance.
When we got off of the train, it was an incredibly easy walk over to the Grand Hotel where we'd be staying for two nights. We had no problems getting our room. Our names were obviously on the Gate 1 list of reservations. And we had about an hour before our scheduled meet-up time, where we'd finally get to greet our other travel companions and Tour Director for the Gate 1 portion of our trip through Germany. Very exciting!!
"Horse of Freedom" in the Grand Hotel lobby, by Jürgen Lingl Artist
This was my third Gate 1 Travel tour, and Jim's first one. From my past experiences (to Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands, and then to Kenya and Tanzania in Africa), I knew this would be another fantastic tour. I didn't have any doubt! And (spoiler alert) ... it really, really was!!
This particular tour "Romantic Germany" was one of Gate 1's "Discovery Tours" which are smaller group tours having a max of 22 people (compared to the regular classic tours with up to 42 people).
Meeting our group for the first time, there were only five other tourists at the table. Jim and I were number six and seven! Talk about a small group!! Haha! Our Tour Director, Farid, introduced himself and told us that two others would be joining us tomorrow. Because of a canceled flight, unfortunately they would be missing the first full day of the tour.
So along with Jim and I, our fellow travelers were one other couple, a husband & wife, who lived in California; two good friends who had left their husbands back at home in Texas; one recently retired woman who was on her own and ready to explore the world; and a grandmother with her 20-year-old granddaughter who was in college and pursuing a minor in German. We were a fantastic group from all over the USA, and over the next ten days, they felt like friends for sure, making it harder to say goodbye at the end.
Our first meal together was pretty good! We learned fast that Germans LOVE meat, potatoes, and red cabbage though. haha! Gate 1 tours typically include some provided meals, like this one, and your choice of beverage (beer/wine also); and some other meals are "on your own" that you pay for at your choice of restaurants. So there's a good mix of group and solo meals.
Since the next post will be about our first day of touring, I'll tell you a little bit about the tour itself.
It's labeled as "11 Day Romantic Germany", but it's actually 9 nights (with 8 days of sightseeing). You have two and a half days on the schedule of just travel to get there and back home again.
And it's not a tour just for lovers, as the name "Romantic" might lead you to think. A portion of the tour followed part of the "Romantic Road" in Germany. According to Google, the route was established in 1950 by the German Tourist Board and travel agents. After the devastation of World War II, the goal was to rebuild tourism by showing visitors a beautiful, historical, and peaceful side of Germany. Spanning 220 miles, the road links a series of impressive fortresses, palaces, and castles and winds through rolling vineyards, medieval walled towns, and dramatic alpine scenery.
This Gate 1 tour would feature some of that, but would start where we were in Bregenz, travel up through the Black Forest, and circle through a portion of the Romantic Road, ending with our flights home from Munich. Here is the map of our route from the Gate 1 website. The circled numbers represented how many nights we'd stay in each place.
If you just want to read about the tour itself, without waiting on me to go through it day by day (haha), click here for the link to the itinerary on the Gate 1 website.
And if you want to hear about my previous two Gate 1 trips, you can watch the video from my Galapagos Islands trip I did on Youtube by clicking here (or use the viewer below).
And for my Africa trip with Gate 1, I posted a "Top 10" summary and photos on my Facebook page, which you can find by clicking here (or below).