Europe by Ray…part 2 of 2

We travelled from Madrid to Paris on an overnight train where we were lucky enough to pick up a special including sleeper with ensuite (if you can call it that) and dinner with wine plus breakfast. The ‘cabin’ was a miracle of micro-design but we both enjoyed the experience immensely                        .

Our hotel in Paris for 3 days was, well, Parisian. The reception cubicle was on the first floor which was reached via a very narrow corkscrew staircase (wonderful for carrying up large suitcases) and, as with many older hotels in Europe, the room was very small and overlooked one of the main streets of the Latin Quarter.   It was clean and the windows were reasonably soundproof when closed, which happily was possible as the weather was cool. I shudder to think how we would have slept in hotter weather as only the newer hotels in Europe appear to have air-conditioning. The real bonus with our hotel was its position in the Latin Quarter, only 200 metres from the Seine and within easy walking distance of most of the touristy things which we boldly attempted to cover.  We soaked up the ambience by walking and walking.

Our tour of Provence and Tuscany started in Paris with another fast train experience to Avignon. We stayed in Villeneuve for 4 nights at a wonderful hotel and used this as a base to explore various areas in Provence including the walled city of Avignon the beautiful seaside town of Sainte Maries-de-la-Mer and Marseilles where we took a ferry to the island of ‘If’ to visit the horrendous gaol made famous in Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo.

The next stop was Nice for 3 nights where we toured the Cote d’Azur to places like St Tropez, Cannes (which was inundated with workmen pulling down all the paraphernalia from the recently held Film Festival) and the city of Monte Carlo overlooking the beautiful bay of Monaco. Sadly, Caroline was not at home when I called.

It was then on to Tuscany for 4 nights. Our hotel was at Montacatini Terme from where we went to Pisa, Florence and the amazing Cinque Terre (five unspoiled fishing villages that cling to cliffs overlooking the sea) in addition to countless hilltop villages straight out of a picture postcard.

Spoleto in Umbria was next. Highlights around there were Siena (where they hold the Palio horse race) and Assisi (including the Basilica of St Frances) although I have to say that Umbria was a glorious region – beautiful, unspoiled, relatively tourist free and very welcoming- and many on the trip found ourselves pricing real estate (even with the Euro quite reasonable by our standards).

The tour finished in Rome where we viewed the usual and finally got to the Trevi Fountain.  Next stop was Zurich with a side trip to Lucerne for a couple of days. Whilst expensive I do like Switzerland. It is so clean and well organised. A highlight was a trip to Mount Pilatus where they have organised a round trip using a local bus, gondolar and cablecar to go up one way and then coming down via the worlds steepest cogwheel railway (up to 47 degrees incline) and back to Lucerne with a 90 min. boat trip. My wife doesn’t like heights but felt much better when a fellow traveller in our gondola was so frightened he sat on the floor.

We had a day in Singapore on the way back but slept for half of it, since our hotel was right at the airport, we did take advantage of the free bus tour later in the day.

We are now looking forward to our next ‘trip of a lifetime’.