Europe Trip 2013

The trip to Europe was replete with nitty gritty details and a lot of pictures. The company of a few good, interesting and virtuous people made this trip a memorable experience. They came from different parts of India, Gujarati’s from Surat, Kannadiga’s from Bangalore and Jamkhandi, Marathi’s from Mumbai and Telugu’s (my husband and I) from Bangalore. I got a flavor of the Indian culture as well.

In Europe trip, our tour manager, Vinay from Cox and Kings promised us the glimpses of Europe. Indeed, we did get a glimpse of everything, with just enough time to pose, take a picture and rush to the next place. We traveled 4240 km in 12 days. It would have been an ideal tour for my father, who always likes to squeeze as many places possible, in a 2-3 hour sightseeing program.  After a certain point of time, the fellow tourists re-named our tour from European Anubhav Yatra to Bus Yatra. We were fugitive tourists on the run to get our money’s worth.

We have seen the house of the Queen. Unfortunately she was too busy with her great-grandson to invite us to an afternoon tea at her residence (The Buckingham Palace). The place was so grand that even the lamp posts had crowns on top of their heads.

The magnificent Eiffel tower robbed the glory of the twinkling stars, by sparkling on a grand scale. An American woman was so fascinated by the beauty of the tower that she married it, just like our Aishwarya Rai, who married the tree.

The little naked kid in the Belgium city center has not stopped pissing since 1619.

The people had so much cheese in Amsterdam that they had to cycle to burn it all off and they did have  bicycle lanes on the road for exercise. 

 The drive through Switzerland was very scenic. The cows greeted us with their tinkling bells, as they grazed mutely on the green pastures on the mountains. Sometimes, I wondered how they got up there. That must have been quite a trek for the cows.

Lucerne was a place out of the fairy tales, with mountains surrounding the lake. We saw a few swans in the lake, may be they were transformed princes under the curse of some magician.

We had the opportunity to stay in a wooden hotel in Les Diablerets. From the balcony of our room, we had the view of the mountains, which turned golden yellow during sun rise and sunset.

In Venice, we went through the narrow lanes lined by shops with cryptic masks. The masks invited us to solve the mystery behind their vacant eyes. Our only disappointment was that our gondola driver did not sing for us, as he did for Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman in the movie, The Great Gambler. We even asked our guy, ‘Do you know how to sing?’ With a coyish smile he replied, ‘No’. May be he also knows about the movie.

In Pisa, we saw so many people stopping the tower from falling down by posing in front of it. Without the tower in the background these poses look ridiculous.

In Florence, we saw the private parts of Michelangelo’s David being glorified throughout the city’s souvenirs, on shorts, on T-shirts and as fridge magnets etc. (I cannot post in the blog due to censorship issues). Florence is a city that is proud of it’s museums and art.

In Rome, the pope did not appear through his famous window to tell hello to us. Our visit to Tirupathi and Vatican is complete; we have yet to visit the Mecca.

The Trevi fountain in Rome was magnificent. We dropped 50 pence in the fountain. Whoever drops a pence in the fountain, while leaving the fountain gets to visit Rome again. We were a bit cheap. My hubby and I held one coin and threw it into the fountain.  Who among us, do you think will get to visit Rome again?

There are a lot more stories to share, so read on next week.

To be continued …