Comparison of Accomodations

Today we’ve moved on to Bruges (also spelt Brugge if you go by the Dutch version), a medieval city in the northwest region of Belgium. We’re staying at a hostel called Lybeer Travellers, and my main thought is “thank God we’re only here for two nights!”  Apart from the fact that we’re in a dorm room with two other guys who don’t seem to understand the common courtesy of coming and going quietly when you’re staying in a dorm room, the hostel itself is in bad need of repair and the bathrooms are horrendous.  I tried taking a shower and the water went from freezing cold to scorching hot every five minutes so I had keep waiting for that brief moment when the water would start changing temperatures to splash myself with a bit of normal temperature water!  It was not a fun experience… (more…)

Train Travel In Europe

After travelling by train in Portugal, Spain, France and Switzerland, I thought it might be informative to put up some information about stuff like ticket checks, etc.

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Last Day In Switzerland

Today is our last day in Switzerland, and our last day together for a few days since Paul has to fly home for some business, so we allowed ourselves some time to sleep in and relax before heading out to do our sightseeing.  Lucerne is a pretty small city so unless you want to go to the nearby Alps, you don’t need much time to see the major sights and attractions. (more…)

Picture Perfect Lucerne

Today we’ve moved to our last city in Switzerland,  Lucerne, and it is soooooo pretty, I wish we were here for more than two days!  This is the first time I’ve travelled anywhere that looks exactly like the postcard pictures of it – I mean, everywhere we’ve been so far has been nice, but usually the postcard is the best picture possible, not the ordinary! (more…)

Cost of Living Comparison

We find our cost of living slowly but surely creeping upwards as we travel from Portugal to Switzerland, so I thought it might be informative to create a table to compare some basic costs for anyone reading this blog and/or planning a trip to Europe.  This table shows average prices of the places we’ve shopped/eaten at – obviously smaller supermarkets are more expensive that large ones and the “fanciness” of the restaurant has varied, but we’ve stuck to mostly average places. In some cities I didn’t buy or look at certain things, so I’ve labeled them “Didn’t see.”  Also, because the notebook I had initially been using to keep track of expenditures was stolen in Madrid, the costs listed for Lisbon, Porto, and Madrid are to the best of my memory, but they are fairly accurate. (more…)

Maah Burgers and Bears In Bern

Today with our new friend Jason, we headed out to explore Bern by walking throughout old town, across the bridge to their “Grand Casino”, and then finally back through old town to cross a different bridge to get to a bear pit called Bärengraben. (more…)

Bern Switzerland

This morning we headed to Bern, a small city on a steep-sided peninsula in a crook of the River Aare in central Switzerland.  Our train brought us here at about one o’clock, but I had misread the check-in info from our hostel, the Hotel Glocke, and didn’t realize you can’t check in until three o’clock because their reception is closed between twelve and three!  The funny thing was the reception girl was there to open the door and tell us we couldn’t check in until three, and she offered to let us put our luggage in the storage area next to the reception desk.  I don’t really understand why they bother to close the reception if the girl is going to be there letting people into the storage area anyways! (more…)

Easter Monday In Geneva

Having finished most of the sightseeing yesterday, today we headed to the suburbs of Geneva in search of an area called Carouge.  I had read online that this was a neat area because of it’s unique architecture and it’s “checkerboard layout,” so I figured it was worth a visit, especially since we had free use of public transportation. (more…)

Ethiopain/Indian Food In Geneva

Because there isn’t a whole lot of “Swiss” food around (apart from cheese fondue but I hate cheese so we’re probably going to pass on fondue), we’re left with a lot of ethnic cuisine choices such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Italian, and, of course, sushi!  While I miss sushi like crazy, I can’t bring myself to pay 49 francs for a plate of questionable quality, so we decided to try an Ethiopian/Indian restaurant nearby our hostel. (more…)

Easter Sunday In Geneva

Because yesterday was mainly just a travel/work day, we headed out to do a bunch of sightseeing today and have decided that, for the most part, Geneva could have been a one day trip as well!  However, from what we’ve seen, Switzerland is so scenic and nice that it would be a shame to just have a really short stop here and the other two towns we will visit (Bern and Lucerne) are even smaller than Geneva so it made sense for us to spend a few days here. (more…)