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Mozart, Vodka, & Sonic Screwdrivers - Europe 08/09
Too lazy to write another recount of the past couple of days, I have pasted below the email sent to family:
Hi all! Time for another travel update. Last time I wrote we'd just had our second day in Paris. Day three in Paris we woke up relatively late and didn't actually get anywhere until midday. We went back to the Eiffel Tower and went up to the middle floor. The tower was still covered in fog so they weren't letting people up to the top floor and you couldn't even see it from the middle of the tower. From there we wandered through the gardens opposite and the palace type structure that was there as well. From there we went and saw the Rodin museum. Rodin was a French sculptor who was responsible for "The Thinker". I quite liked this museum as I like French sculptures a lot. From there we split up, Sarah going to see the Musee D'Orsay and myself going to see the Pantheon along with the crypts housing half of France's most famous people. We met back at the hotel afterwards and got dressed up to go to the Moulin Rouge. All I can say about the Moulin Rouge is that it was the best show I have ever seen in my life, but then I do particularly like musical song and dance type shows. If any of you happen to be in Paris I recommend you go and see it. 99 Euros per person, but you get a free half bottle of champagne per person (I drank most of our bottle...). The fourth day we were in Paris we were unfortunately reasonably ill (I think it was the crepes before Moulin Rouge...). My stomach was barely able to fight it but poor Sarah was so ill she had to stay in bed all day. I wandered out and saw Sacre Coeur, the giant cathedral on top of the highest hill in Paris. I went up to the dome on the top to see the city views but just my luck it was raining all day and foggy as well, so you couldn't see anything. On the fifth day we were to leave Paris bound for Switzerland, however Sarah was still very ill and decided to go and recover with her aunt in Southampton in England. She insisted that I continue with our plans, so I made my way to Geneva by myself. The following day in Geneva I went to see the main Cathedral, but it was closed for unknown reasons. I then made my way to the United Nations complex and had a look around the Red Cross/Crescent Museum, which detailed the founding of the Red Cross/Crescent and the major works throughout it's history. At midday I hopped on a train to Bern, arriving there about 2:30pm. After checking into my hotel a fellow traveller informed me that there was pretty much nothing to see in Bern. He was pretty much right. The only reasonably interesting thing I found there was the Einstein museum, which looked at Einstein's history and works. The only problem was that the whole overview was very brief and didn't tell me much, and the explanations of the General Theory of Relativity were so dumbed down I couldn't really make sense of them... The next day was the most uneventful since the plane ride over. I got on a train to Basel and when I got there immediately got on a train to Brussels. That's it. 9 hours later I checked into a hostel and immediately went to bed. This morning I woke up early and hopped on a train to Brugge, which was only an hour away. Brugge is a very funny city. It has the architecture and infrastructure of an old town (cobblestone roads, no modern buildings, etc.) yet it was literally crawling with people. I'm pretty sure they were all tourists, yet I couldn't work out what they were all coming to see, or for that matter what I should be going to see. There wasn't much here either, except for the chocolate museum. I got to sample chocolate, walk through the history of chocolate and chocolate making, sample chocolate, watch a chocolate making demonstration and sample more chocolate! Too bad it's so long before I get back otherwise I'd bring some home for you all to try. At midday I trained back to Brussels and walked around. They have a beautiful grand square here that is completely surrounded by Gothic style buildings and it looks absolutely amazing. I also saw what are apparently the two Belgium national icons: the Atomium from the 1958 World Fair and a statue of a little boy peeing into a fountain... Yeah I thought the same thing too... After the Atomium I went to the small amusement park next door called Little Europe, which has miniature scale models of 50-something monuments from all around Europe. Of course, I took photos of all of them. The ones of monuments I'd actually seen did look amazing accurate. So that's about all that's happened over the last week or so. Tomorrow I get up early and head to Amsterdam for one night before heading to the Sowter's place in London for Christmas. Unfortunately Sarah won't be able to join us because she will be with her aunt now for Christmas, but we will meet in London afterwards to catch the plane to Rome for our Italy tour. Until next time! Scott.- comments