Go back to part 1 (a week in Paris).
Monday was our last day in Paris. We ate lunch again at the creperie around the corner from our hotel. I had a salad with bacon and potatoes because I didn't want anything heavy. The bacon was still mostly raw, but the potatoes were tasty. I ate all the potatoes, but left almost all the greens because they were greasy from all the bacon fat/butter on them.
After lunch we checked out of the hotel and tried to find the Avis car rental agency. I didn't, and couldn't, get directions to the car rental agency other than "Derriere Les Invalides" [rear of Les Invalides] so I figured that it must be easy to find. Wrong. We walked around the back of Les Invalides (or what I assumed to be the back since it didn't face the river, or have a sign saying "front of Les Invalides"), and we didn't see anything that resembled an Avis agency. We walked around to the front of Les Invalides in hopes of finding out that it was actually the rear, and I even asked a couple of security guards, but they only spoke French. Lynn annoyed the crap out of me because she wouldn't ask the security guards for me even though she's the only one who speaks French. We walked around and still didn't find the agency. There was another rental agency so I wanted to ask someone there, but they were closed. Some guy standing by the agency said something, and Lynn told him about our problem. He said the Avis was just down the road and to the left. We started down the road and to the left, but that took us back to where we started originally. I asked Lynn if she couldn't get more specific directions. Needless to say we didn't find Avis so we walked back to the hotel.
I asked Arnaud, the great front desk guy, if he knew where the Avis rental agency was located. He said it was at the Air France terminal at the front of Les Invalides. He tried to find their address in the phone book, but there wasn't one. He called them, but no one answered. It was extremely frustrating. He told us he was positive that it was located in the Air France terminal in front of Les Invalides so we walked there. I didn't realize that the Air France terminal was a bus terminal. There were a couple of rental car agencies located inside the terminal, but not an Avis. I was about to lose it because all I wanted to do was leave Paris, but we couldn't find the damn top secret Avis location! I couldn't understand how their business is to rent cars yet they didn't publish their street address, and didn't answer their phone. We were going to leave the terminal, and I was about to have a nervous breakdown, when Lynn spotted an Air France bus driver. Lynn asked him about the Avis agency, and he didn't know its location. He led us into the terminal while he looked it up in the phone book. It started exactly the same way as it did with Arnaud; he couldn't find their address, but he had a few different phone books to look through and eventually found it. Of course when he found the address I couldn't find the street (Bixio) on my street map. The bus driver had a special city map with all the streets on it, and it turned out that Bixio was indeed at the rear of Les Invalides. It was such a small street that it was only a block long! We both thanked the bus driver profusely because he didn't have to help us, but he went out of his way and saved my sanity.
We walked to the rear of Les Invalides, and the thing that really annoyed me was if we had followed the first guy's directions far enough we would have actually found the Avis agency. The agency was closed without explanation when we got there. That would explain why they didn't answer their phone. I thought our day had managed to actually get worse, but some old guy came by and said they'd be open in about 10 minutes. It turns out the agency was closed for the usual four hour French lunch, which irritated me since I had a reservation to pick the car up at one. Why would they let me make a reservation knowing that the agency would be closed at the time? Anyway, we eventually got to pick up the car. The Avis lady said that they were giving me a free upgrade so I got an Opel Vectra. I'd never heard of Opel so I didn't know what to expect. It was actually a nice little hatchback with an onboard computer (which didn't do a whole lot). It was also brand new; it had maybe 30 kilometers on the odometer.
I drove back to the hotel from the rental car agency, and tried to parallel park, but I couldn't figure out how to put the car in reverse. There was a car coming up behind me (this was a one way, one lane street like quite a few streets in Paris) so I dropped Lynn off (to see if Arnaud knew how to put the car into reverse), and drove off. The mass of one way streets combined with the fact that the French no parking sign looked like a sign that would say no entry had me driving a lot further out of my way than I needed to. The one good thing about all the walking around we did earlier was I knew the neighborhood fairly well, and didn't have a problem finding my way back to the hotel. Arnaud showed me how to put the car into reverse (by lifting up the plastic ring beneath the gear shift knob, and putting the car into first gear [very weird]), we loaded up the car, and we finally got to leave Paris at around five in the afternoon.
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After looking at the map, and after talking to Arnaud, I decided to take the road along the Seine to the ring road to get out of Paris. We started on the road by the Seine, but took the wrong road at an immediate fork (which didn't have a sign explaining where the two different roads were going), and we were lost. I wasn't worried because I knew that all roads eventually led to the outer ring road. It took us a while longer, but we eventually hit the huge park on the west side of Paris. There wasn't anywhere to go from there so I knew the only freeway we passed must have been the ring road, and we finally left Paris.
We were on one of the toll highways, and I was sure not to get into the speed pass lane at the toll booths. There were freeway signs for each town that we passed that had some sort of illustration highlighting the local attraction(s) (like a castle or cathedral). I thought it was great because it made every town a potential tourist attraction.
We got to Arnay-le-Duc around eight at night, and the town was quite tiny. Our hotel, Chez Camille, had a really cute lobby. Our room, which was spacious and quite nice, was located on the top floor. The bed was also very comfortable. The one thing I wasn't happy about was that I had to drag all four of our bags up a couple flights of stairs. That experience made me decide to repack the bags so we only needed our two carry on bags when we stayed at a hotel. Lynn didn't like the fact that there some paint fumes in our room (which must have been recently repainted). It was cold in the room, and outside, but we left a window open to let the fumes out. Of course I also left the radiators cranked up in the bedroom and the bathroom.
I got the demi-pension so dinner that night was at the hotel restaurant. We went downstairs, but they didn't have a free table at the restaurant. We sat in the lobby, and drank some Cremant (Burgundy sparkling wine) which was pretty good. We were also given a plate of little snacks before dinner. My favorite was the thin, raw beef on buttered toast with a small sweet pickle in the center. Lynn didn't like any of the snacks.
We were eventually seated in the restaurant, and we noticed that one of the waitresses was cute. It was weird because the only other cute chicks I'd seen in France were also waitresses. We were brought an amuse of a cream soup served in a miniature bowl that was tasty, but we couldn't figure out what it was. The menu was price fix style with a selection of items for us to choose from for each course.
Lynn had a lobster terrine, and I had deep fried snail balls with snail ravioli for our first course. I'd never had snails before so it was going to be an experience. My dish smelled amazing when it arrived, but it ended up smelling better than it tasted. The snail balls were pretty good, and the sauce that came with my dish was good with them. The ravioli were disappointing in flavor, and the sauce wasn't very good with them either. Overall I thought the dish was disappointing. I didn't like Lynn's dish either, but I'm not a big lobster fan. Lynn enjoyed it though.
For my entree I had rabbit three ways: rabbit meat in mustard sauce, gilled rabbit innards (yakitori style), rack of rabbit ribs, and sauteed mushrooms. Lynn had some sort of beef steak with candied potatoes. The rabbit in mustard sauce tasted very gamey so I didn't eat much of it. The ribs had a dijon mustard crust, and were very tasty, but rabbits don't have large racks of ribs so there wasn't much to eat. Even though I've never been a fan of innards I tried the liver, and it actually had a really good flavor. I couldn't forget that it was liver though so I couldn't bring myself to eat more than one or two pieces of it. I don't know what kind of mushrooms they served, but they were odd. Lynn liked her steak, but without whatever sauce they served it with. I tried the steak with, and without, the sauce, and both versions seemed pretty decent. Lynn was also worried that the steak wasn't steak.
Next was the cheese course. Lynn wasn't hungry so she only had some Parmesan. I had a chevre, a runny blue cheese (I was feeling adventurous), and Parmesan (in case the blue cheese proved too adventurous). The chevre was creamy and pretty good. The blue cheese was potent, but very good. It actually seemed to get less potent as the cheese got runnier. The Parmesan was as tasty as any good Parmesan.
Before dessert we were brought some almond cookies with caraway seed that were pretty decent, and reminded me of the fried thing with caraway seeds we get from Copper Kettle in Mesa. For dessert Lynn had the dessert sampler while I went for the fruit gratin. The fruit gratin was sliced fruit covered with some sort of white stuff that was browned on top. The stuff on top didn't add much to the flavor, and the fruit was way too tart for me. I tasted some of Lynn's desserts, and I didn't care for any of them. She liked some herb based ice cream, and some other thing that was perfumey from rose water. In addition to our desserts we also had some chocolates (two types) and cake. One of the chocolates was a bitter chocolate truffle with so much alcohol that it almost made me gag. The second chocolate was a regular chocolate, but it wasn't good either. The cake was a local speciality that I had read about. What I didn't know was that the cake would be candied and have too much orange flavor for me take.
I had heard all sorts of good things about the restaurant in Chez Camille from several sources (including Toni, our tour guide in Paris) so I was surprised that we didn't think it was a good restaurant at all.
We went back to our room, which was kind of cold from the open window despite the radiators. Before I went to sleep I turned on the tv, and found a porn channel. The sad part was that it was American porn dubbed French. (Do they really need "Yes, yes, yes!" dubbed as "Oui, oui, oui!"?). I went to sleep, and was woken up the sound of Lynn puking in the bathroom. Lynn said the combination of the paint fumes and "food poisoning" made her sick, but I suspected her food poisoning was more like hangover poisoning.
We got up, and got ready to leave for Beaune. As I dragged all four of our bags downstairs I was happy that we had redistributed everything so I wouldn't have to do it again. Our car was parked on a really steep hill, and there was a cop car parked directly behind me so I was worried that my car (which had a manual transmission) would roll back and hit his. It didn't, thereby saving me from having to make the choice between leaving a note about how to contact me in the US or committing a hit and run on a cop car.
We left Arnay-le-Duc and drove down a lot of "freeways" (really just small two lane country roads without signals) to Beaune. It was an easy drive. I wanted to take some pictures so I stopped at some really small town along the way. There were some cows that I wanted to take a picture of, but as soon as I peeked between the bushes they all started walking towards me. I figured they thought I had food so to keep from disappointing them I just backed away before I got a picture of them.
We reached Beaune, and drove around the ring road until we finally found the correct road into the tiny city. By sheer dumb luck we found our hotel, the Athanor Hotel, even though the sign said Tulip Inn. The hotel was fairly cheap, and our room was proportionately modest.
I was hungry so we tried to find someplace for lunch. We stopped at one cafe, but we were there for 10 minutes and never saw the waiter so we left. We went to another cafe with furniture that looked like it had seen better days. I ordered the beef bourguignonne with fries, and since Lynn still wasn't feeling well she only got vegetable soup (I thought it was bean soup, but who knew that legume meant vegetable in French?). The beef was tender and the sauce was hearty, rich, and tasty. The fries were close to absolutely perfect, and the sauce was so good that when I ate all the beef I dredged the fries through the sauce. I was ecstatic that I finally got an entree that simple and tasty. Lynn wasn't happy with her soup because it just tasted like vegetables, but it was vegetable soup. Lynn pointed out that guy sitting at the bar when we walked in was the chef. I thought he was just some truck driver who stopped in for a drink. He may not have looked like someone who knew how to cook, but I had to give him credit for some excellent food.
After lunch we went to Marché aux Vins [Market with Wines(?)] for some wine tasting even though Lynn didn't want to drink anything. You have to pay admission to tour the cellars and try the wines, but since Lynn wasn't drinking I asked the cashier if she needed to pay. The cashier said she did, but as soon as her supervisor walked away she let Lynn in without paying. I was given a tastevin, and we went into the cellar. There were stations with recorded messages in different languages, but the real reason for being there all the wine stations. I tried the whites, and didn't like most of them; there was one white I thought Lynn would like though. I had a much better time with the reds, where I liked at least one. There were about 18 wines in all, but I wimped out and stopped at about 14.
After we left Marché aux Vins we walked around the town a bit (it was very cute), and returned to the hotel so I could smoke a cigar in the hotel bar. I had my Punch "Punch" (10€), and wasn't impressed. It started pretty decent, but it snuffed itself out, and after I relit it it was only ok. I had it with a Coke, and the bartender asked me if I wanted it with lemon. I said sure, and wondered if that was a typical European thing (or at least French) since that was like the second time I was served Coke with a slice of lemon in it. It tasted pretty good until the end when it tasted like I was straining the Coke through the lemon. I asked the bartender if he knew of a simple restaurant and he recommended a place called Le Fleury.
We followed the bartender's recommendation and went to Le Fleury for dinner. Our meal started with an amuse of two profiteroles filled with something. I couldn't figure out what the filling was, but I had a dubious feeling about it. Lynn and I both bit into it simultaneously, and discovered the filling was foie gras. We had a difficult time keeping it down after our last experience with foie gras, but this foie gras wasn't nearly as gamey as the stuff at Les Elysées du Vernet. We didn't touch it again though. We were then brought another amuse of minced smoked fish with garlic. I dug it because it reminded me of the machaka fish at San Diego Bay in Guadalupe, but Lynn disliked it.
Lynn still wasn't feeling well so she only got an entree (stuffed chicken breast and vegetables) and dessert (peach with rose flavor two different ways: souffle and on a hard pastry shell). I got a three course set menu, and I think the table next to us was aghast that I was the only one eating a first course. If Lynn didn't mind then neither did I. My appetizer was asparagus two different ways, one set boiled and one set cooked some other way, presented with the asparagus radiating from the center. The regular asparagus was good, but the boiled ones had an odd flavor to them that I didn't like.
My entree was seafood quinelles with wild rice. The seafood quinelles reminded me of corndogs, but with a fake generic seafood flavor. They were also the perfect example of exactly what I didn't like about French food, which is it's too contrived. They take something perfect, like a fish filet, and blend it up to mix it with cream (fish mousse) or cornmeal (the seafood quinelles) and absolutely ruin it. I thought they couldn't mess up wild rice, but the wild rice had an odd flavor. I wasn't very happy with my entree, but there some sort of vegetable on my plate that tasted like sour cream(!) that I really liked. I wish I knew what it was. Lynn's chicken was a little tough and tasted of nutmeg, but the chicken skin was super tasty. I don't think I could ever get used to the flavor of nutmeg in non-dessert dishes.
My dessert was a chocolate fondant with red berry sauce. It was tasty and rich, and had a crunchy crust that was a real compliment. I thought the fondant was very well thought out. Lynn totally dug her dessert, especially the souffle. I found the rose flavor in Lynn's dessert odd until I figured out that it was rose, then it wasn't too bad. It was very distinctive though, and almost overwhelming. Dessert seemed to be the only good thing at Le Fleury.
I was very disappointed with the bartender because it was far from simple food! I couldn't wait to leave France and eat some good German cooking.
We woke up and our shower had excellent water pressure and temperature control. Lynn was happy. We then walked around the town a bit looking for some breakfast. There was a shop called Point Chaud [Hot Point] where we stopped for a couple of croissants and orange juice. I liked everything, but Lynn thought the croissants were overdone. We also looked for picnic supplies for our road trip. We got some bread from a bakery next to Point Chaud, and some sausage from a deli run by a lady who didn't look like someone I wanted handling my food. Finally we stopped at a fromagerie, my favorite type of shop, for some cheese. I didn't have any particular cheese in mind so we looked around and got things that looked interesting. The first cheese we picked out was a soft sheep milk cheese, that I believe was a Bourgogne speciality, shaped like a ball and coated in dijon mustard seeds. The second was a cheese that looked like Parmesan that I later found out was Comte. The last was a small rectangular cheese with a sprig of rosemary on top. The lady at the shop said something about "sec", and Lynn thought she was saying it was sweet. I knew the lady meant dry, but I also understood why Lynn thought she meant sweet. We're both familiar with demi-sec Champagnes, but while I knew it meant semi-dry Lynn only remembered it's sweet Champagne. With the cheese taken care of I was happy. We also stopped at a chocolate shop to hopefully make up for the bad French chocolate we had in Paris.
That Wednesday there was a tiny market set up in a square so I was curious to see what people sold there. It was mostly food products so I picked up some forest honey, and some other stuff. There was a guy there selling sausages, and he had an impressive selection. I was tempted to get his three sausages for X deal (basically buy two and get one free), but he gave me a piece of some sausage I didn't recognize, and I thought it was foul. I did resist the urge to spit it out though. I went for a chorizo since I figured all of his sausages couldn't taste as bad as his sample, but I knew if I bought one more sausage it'd be a waste of money. The best time we had was when we wanted to get some raspberry jam from a guy who sold jams. He asked Lynn if she spoke French, and when she said she spoke a little he broke into a five minute long sales pitch. After he was finished I asked Lynn what he said, and all she told me was, "It's all natural." We bought our jam, and while we were walking away from the guy he shouted something after us. I asked Lynn what he said that time and she said that the jam was in an easy to open bottle.
I felt bad that we were in the wine capital of the Burgundy region and I had tasted a lot of wines while Lynn had not. We tried to find someplace for Lynn to get a wine tasting, but other than Marché aux Vins we couldn't find a place that did wine tastings (although we did find a large number of wine merchants). I saw a dessert wine in one of the wine shops we went into, and couldn't resist buying it. I still haven't tried the wine yet, but I'm curious to see if it's like a Sauternes.
We were packed and ready to go, but this time Lynn got to drive. She had avoided it up to this point because I was being nice, but I wasn't going to be the only one driving through Europe. I had told Lynn we wanted the freeway entrance for Dijon, but she didn't listen to me. She asked me a couple more times, and I told her a couple more times. Right before we got onto the freeway she asked me if we wanted Lyon, and not listening to her I agreed. Two seconds after we got onto the freeway it dawned on me that we were going in the wrong direction. Naturally Lynn got mad at me because when she asked I told her the wrong way instead of taking credit for not listening the first three times I told her the correct way. She also gets anxious when she drives in strange places (this includes parts of Phoenix she's never been in before) so that wasn't helping her get over the situation. We had to go about 20 or 30 kilometers in the wrong direction before we could get off the freeway and turn around. It also cost me a couple of Euro because it was a toll freeway and I had to pay for the privilege of getting off of it. We got back on the freeway going in the correct direction, and Lynn eventually realized that going 20 km in the wrong direction wasn't the end of the world (which would come later for both of us on this trip).
When we got hungry we hit a rest stop and ate our picnic supplies. I brought my pocket knife with me in anticipation of picnics because it comes in real handy when you have to cut stuff up (like cheese). I started with the Comte because it seemed the most like something I was familiar with. It started out tasting good, but I could taste a hint of a sheep's ass. As I ate more of it the sheep's ass flavor increased into more than a hint. The sliced deli sausage was excellent. I tried the chorizo, and the initial flavor was good, but its finish tasted like a mix between a good pork sausage and a burnt tire. I spit it out (there wasn't any sausage vendors to offend at the rest stop). I unwrapped the hard cheese, and found out just how hard it was. It was as hard as a brick so being unable to cut off a piece of cheese I chipped off a piece. Lynn and I tried the cheese despite its dryness, and it was like eating hot goat's ass flavored hard candy. I would have thrown it into the forest if it was possible for anything to eat it. The Bourgogne cheese had a mild creamy sheep flavor, without a creamy texture, combined with a great mustard flavor. We both really liked the cheese. I dubbed it the "Bourgogne party cheese" because it looked like the type of cheese people buy when they need something to take to a dinner party at someone else's house.
We left the rest stop, and tried some of the chocolates we got in Beaune. I fillings were herby and odd like the stuff in Paris so I didn't like the chocolates. I gave one to Lynn while she was driving, and she spit it out. We were now 0 for 2 in French chocolate.
We arrived at the Swiss border where one of their border guards looked at our passports and asked us questions. The conversation went like this.
Swiss border guard: "Where are you going?"
Me (because Lynn had no clue as to our itinerary): "Bern."
Swiss border guard: "And then?"
Me: "Luzern."
Swiss border guard: "And then?"
Me: "Innsbruck."
Swiss border guard: "Ah."
After he determined that we weren't going to wander Switzerland aimlessly he told us about the windshield sticker necessary to drive on Swiss freeways (which I already knew that from my research). I paid the 30€ cost, which would have been cheaper if I was paying in Swiss Francs, but I couldn't complain because either way it was cheaper than the French toll freeways.
We were on our way and found ourselves with the option of going up an unmarked ramp or going into an unmarked tunnel. Lynn freaked out because she didn't know which way to go, and I didn't know either until we headed up the ramp (when I saw the 65km speed limit sign in front of the tunnel it was obvious which way we were supposed to go). We wound up in Basel not knowing how to get back to the freeway. Eventually we doubled back and discovered that if we circled the first roundabout we hit off the freeway we would have found the on ramp for the freeway. That was my mistake. Lynn was unhappy with Switzerland because of the lack of freeway signage, and she was unhappy with me because I didn't magically know my way around foreign cities.
I thought the scenery would be green, hilly, and have lots of cows (the typical Swiss scene right?), but the scenery between Basel and Bern were very industrial, and ugly.
Once we were back on the freeway it was an easy drive to Bern, but we missed the exit my directions said to take. We took the next exit and started back to hopefully where we should have gotten off. The funny thing was Lynn thought we were already on the road we were eventually supposed to be on (after its name had changed twice). I looked at the map and directions, and it turned out Lynn was right. Lynn was disturbed about driving in a country where she couldn't read the street signs (which were now in German), but she seemed to be doing pretty well. We drove back to the road we were on, and found our hotel, Pension Marthahaus. Our room was modest, but that was to be expected since I got the hotel because it was fairly cheap. At least the beds were comfortable and there was a stand up shower. Our neighborhood was quiet, but there was lots of graffiti on the walls. Lynn was both saddened and appalled by the amount of graffiti in Bern, but she never noticed it the graffiti in Paris. Odd.
I was dying for German food so I used my handy Switzerland Rough Guide to find something that fit the bill. We walked to Bern's old town and ate at the Restaurant Anker, a pub style German restaurant. I had the rosti (a Swiss dish of fried shredded potatoes) with pork chops, fried egg, and cooked herbed tomatoes while Lynn had the "student" rosti with hamburger, fried egg, bacon, sauteed onions, pickles, cheese, and tomato. Both dishes were great, although we both thought Lynn's was better (Lynn thought it was a lot better while I gave it the edge because the bacon, onions, and surprisingly good pickles). I had a beer with dinner that was pretty tasty while Lynn had bottled water (we had a hard time remembering the German phrase for tap water). It turned out that beer was cheaper than water. Dinner was great, and I was so happy not to have to eat French food for a while.
The cover of Restaurant Anker's menu was a picture of a statue of an ogre eating a baby, and since old town Bern had all sort of statues I knew it was one of the local ones. I decided to make a quest of finding the statue Thursday to see if I could take a good picture of it.
We walked back to our hotel to get some sleep. Lynn kept getting a "bad vibe" from the people in Bern so she decided she didn't like the place. I didn't get the same feeling. Before I went to bed I flipped through the tv channels and found that late night Swiss tv has a lot of half naked women. What was funny about it was that the nudie show might be on for five minutes, then there'd be about ten minutes worth of commercials for phone sex numbers.
We woke up to a lot of neighborhood noise; it sounded there was a plethora of construction going on. I was happy though because not only was the water pressure and temperature control great, but we had a stand up shower (which is so much easier to use than a hand shower).
I had talked up German breakfast to Lynn so I was disappointed by the selection of breakfast items. Sure it was orange juice, water, coffee, tea, bread, yogurt, cereal, jelly, jam, butter, honey, luncheon meat, and cheese, but it was only the most basic German breakfast.
After breakfast we walked to the old town. The entire town was green, and not a good shade of green either. Lynn thought it was ugly. We saw the Münster, a cathedral which had a depiction of heaven and hell above its door that was impressive. We went inside, and while the interior wasn't as cool as the thing above the door, it was still a nice church. We went looking for the bear pit (the bear is the symbol of Bern), but didn't find it. I'm guessing we didn't walk far enough past the bridge leading outside of the old town, but I figured a bear pit would be easy to spot, and we didn't see anything resembling a bit pit. After our search for the bear pit we wandered around the rest of the town aimlessly, and saw a lot of shops. I was also on the lookout for my ogre statue, and while there were plenty of other statues around, I didn't see the ogre statue.
I wasn't sure what I wanted for lunch, and neither did Lynn, so we went to MarktHalle (a mall entirely dedicated to food). There were many different types of restaurants in the mall, but the only one that looked good to the both of us was an Indian restaurant. The restaurant was almost full, but we found a free table. I tried to order something that was only on the dinner menu, which is one of the many disadvantages of not knowing the language. Lynn didn't like not knowing the language (German), but we always managed. The lamb curry was on the lunch menu so I had it with nan and nimbu pani [lemonade]. Lynn had chicken curry, nan, and nimbu pani. The lemonade was weak, which was a disappointment because I'd never had watered down nimbu pani before. The nan was decent, but I've been spoiled by the excellent nan at Copper Kettle in Mesa. The lamb in the lamb curry needed more cooking time to get tender, but the flavor of the curry was excellent, and more than made up for it. Naturally Lynn didn't like my curry. Lynn's chicken curry had a very light flavor that I didn't care for. During our meal the restaurant filled up, and since we were two people sitting at a table for four, another couple was seated at our table. It didn't bother either of us, but that sort of thing doesn't typically happen in Phoenix.
We saw a street market in the old town when we walked back to hotel, but it was cheap swap meet type stuff. When we got back to the room I smoked a Romeo y Julieta (11€). It had a good flavor, but it was harsher than the other Habanos I'd smoked. I had to reach for my Coke pretty quick, but it gave the Coke a great flavor. The cigar did ok; I was able to get halfway through it before it snuffed itself out. I hated how all the Cuban cigars I had smoked snuffed themselves out for no reason!
When I finished smoking my cigar we walked back into the old town to explore and eat dinner. When we passed Restaurant Anker I saw the ogre statue right in front of it! It's amazing how much I looked around that town only to miss something that obvious. We walked around and determined that the old town was like one big shopping mall. I'm not sure if that was a good or bad thing, but it made me glad we weren't spending too much time in Bern. While we were walking around we heard some guy singing while playing an odd wind up instrument that sounded sort of Irish. We both thought the sound of the instrument was cool, and Lynn ended up buying some cd he was selling. It's turns out the instrument was Hungarian, not Irish.
By this point I was hungry so I tried to find a particular German restaurant from the guidebook, but it wasn't in business anymore. We walked around town looking for German restaurants, but all we found were Italian restaurants! Bern was absolutely full of them. I finally conceded defeat and resorted back to my guidebook for a German restaurant. There was one called the Kornhauskeller located in the basement of the Kornhaus (keller means cellar or basement in German so the name was appropriate). We walked down a flight of stairs to go through a set of doors that opened to another flight of stairs. When we got to the second flight of stairs what we saw impressed us; there was a cavernous room lit with soft yellow light that complimented the warm dark tones of the interior. There were a couple of bars and tables on the top level along the walls, but they left most of the upper level open to really give the space impact. There was also some soft baseline heavy music playing that seemed to match the ambience. It was sophisticated and sexy, and the best looking restaurant that either Lynn or I had eaten in before. We both loved the look of the place, and I thought it looked like the type of restaurant the Merovingian (from "The Matrix Reloaded") would spend his time.
We were seated, and when we looked at the menu the food was Italian! Apparently a lot had changed in the year or two since that guidebook was published. Lynn tried her German to get some tap water, and we ended up with carbonated bottled water. I told her to just give it up, and accept the fact that we'd be drinking bottled water in German speaking countries for the rest of the trip. Lynn loves soup so she couldn't resist the tomato bread soup with basil when she saw it. It had an excellent hearty flavor. Lynn was in love, and she's been trying to duplicate it ever since (without any success). I had a glass of French Hermitage that turned out to be a perfect match for the soup.
Even though I wasn't in the mood for Italian I still found a dish that sounded absolutely perfect for me, the baked lamb with ratatouille [stewed tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and zucchini]. Lynn did something completely uncharacteristic and ordered the gorgonzola vegetable risotto. (The reason it's uncharacteristic is because Lynn generally dislikes blue cheese, and rarely finds one she likes, and now she suddenly decided to get a dish based on blue cheese.) My lamb was coated with bread crumbs, and damn tasty. I was amazed that I had really good lamb twice in the same day. The ratatouille was a perfect match, and excellent (I haven't had a better one since). As much as I loved my dish Lynn loved hers. I tried it and I was impressed by how tasty the gorgonzola was without being overpowering. It was also incredibly unique. The dish wasn't perfect though; there were some undercooked grains of rice in the dish, but not enough to ruin it.
Dinner was really good so I hoped to finish it well with dessert. I had the passion fruit crema catalana [a custard dessert] while Lynn had the apricot tiramisu. The custard part of the creme catalana tasted pretty decent, but the passion fruit part grossed me out. I didn't even attempt to finish the dessert. Lynn's dessert was pretty much the same story; the tiramisu was pretty good until we hit the apricot. We finished Lynn's tiramisu, but left the layer of apricot. The waitress noticed I hardly touched the creme catalana, and she took it off the bill. That was completely unexpected since I didn't think they did that sort of thing in Europe.
We walked back to the hotel and raved about dinner the whole time. Lynn still doesn't like Bern, but she said she'd be willing to go back there just to eat at Restaurant Anker and Kornhauskeller again.
We woke up, checked out of the hotel, I filled up the car's gas tank, and we were on our way to Luzern. The scenery on the way to Luzern was better than the scenery on the way to Bern (I'm not including the portion of the trip where we had to double back).
We entered a tunnel right before the Luzern exit, and I noticed the engine light was on. I just thought I didn't tighten the gas cap enough when I filled the tank (which causes the engine light on my car to light up every once in a while) so I didn't worry about it. We drove into downtown Luzern and were trying to figure out if we were supposed to turn left or go straight ahead (I'll write about the uselessness of driving directions in cities when I hit the section on Vienna) when the car stalled in the left turn lane of a busy intersection. I started the car again, but it would only run for about a second before it stalled again. This was probably the worst of one of Lynn's many travel nightmares. I didn't know what to do so I put on my hazard lights, and hoped someone would come by (like the cops) who could help us. After about five or ten minutes of a lot of honking someone walked up to my window to ask us if we were having car problems. I had a lot of sarcastic remarks I could of made, but I didn't want to do that to someone who was trying to be helpful. She called a tow truck company for us while we looked for our Avis paperwork. We eventually found the number to call in case the car was unable to move. The lady told us the tow truck would be around in about 30 minutes, but I was worried that Avis wouldn't cover the tow truck if we didn't go through them. I asked her if we could call Avis in France, but she said her cell phone could only make calls to Swiss numbers. Damn.
I decided to leave the car to find a pay phone so I could give Avis a call. I lucked out because there was a pay phone only about a hundred feet in front of the car by a taxi stand. That's when I learned another major disadvantage of not understanding the language; the pay phone directions were written in German. There wasn't even a coin slot so the directions would have been handy. I also realized I didn't know how to make a country to country call from America, much less Europe. I tried everything I could think of, but I couldn't get anything but a tone from the phone. I went back to the car and had Lynn try to make the call. Lynn couldn't figure it out either so she ended up asking a couple of taxi drivers at the taxi stand for help. They didn't speak much English so they called the cops to help us.
Two cops showed up before the tow truck did. Both the cops looked so young I thought they should have addressed me as "sir". They hardly spoke English though. Lynn tried French, and when one of the cops said he spoke a little French Lynn broke off into a long explanation in French about what happened. It was obvious from the glazed look in his eyes that he understood more English than French. They didn't have any problem understanding that the car wouldn't run, and told us they were going to get it out of the street. One cop jumped into the car, and in the one second it would run he would move it forward about five feet while the other cop walked across the street stopping traffic along the way. They then told us that a tow truck was on the way. I tried to tell them there was already one coming, but they didn't understand. I asked them if I could make a call to Avis, but they didn't understand that either. We all just waited for the tow truck.
A big yellow station wagon pulled up with an official looking guy in overalls. The cops talked to him for a minute, told us he would take care of us, then left. The guy in the yellow station wagon was a mobile mechanic! Of course he didn't speak any English so the only communication we had was through motions. He tried to start the car, and then plugged his laptop into the car's computer. Lynn thought the problem was that I filled the car up with the wrong kind of gas. Now that almost happened in France when I almost put leaded gas in my unleaded only car, but I didn't think that was the case since leaded didn't seem to be an option in Switzerland. Lynn wouldn't shut up about it though, and it irritated me because she didn't know what the problem was with the car. Eventually he lifted the hood of the car and smelled the gas, then unscrewed the gas cap and sniffed it. Lynn kept saying, "See, see, it was the gas!" The mechanic packed everything up, and got the car ready for towing (using a carabiner that screwed into a funky little port located in the front bumper). I took the steering wheel and kept the car from rear-ending his station wagon when we went downhill, and since we were in the Alps we went downhill a lot. The mechanic towed us back to the Opel dealership, and left the car right in the middle of the parking lot. He then pulled out an invoice and took an imprint of my credit card. I was worried that he was just going to drop us off there to fend for ourselves. Thankfully he went inside and explained everything to another guy who spoke English. After he finished explaining it they both laughed about something. Lynn was still convinced it was the wrong gas. She asked the guy about the problem, and he said it was the ignition system. The guy in the station wagon left, and we went inside with the Opel guy. The Opel guy called Avis for us, and said someone would be by to pick us up to take us to the local Avis to pick up a different car. A lady from Avis picked us up and replaced our car with the same model, but it wasn't as nice as the one we had. The new car was also a four door instead of a hatchback so we couldn't fit both of our big bags in the trunk.
Four hours after we broke down we were finally on our way. Lynn wanted to cry and go home during some of this incident, but I was proud that she kept herself composed. At least she learned that there are some nice people in Switzerland. Of course she thinks they're only in Luzern (and not Bern).
We followed the Avis lady's driving directions, and they took us back to the exact same intersection we started. Luckily the new car didn't break down, and we found a public garage to park. While parking the car I accidentally smashed the bumper of the car into a column while turning into a parking space. It figures that the first time I run into a stationary object it's in a rental car. I decided not to let it ruin my day.
We were in old town Luzern and I thought it'd be easy to find our hotel (it was the Hotel Pickwick, which is located on the river), but we couldn't see the river or the lake where we were. Lynn made a lucky guess which direction to go, and once I saw Stadtkeller I knew exactly where we were. We checked into our hotel, and our hotel room was really small and cheesy. I wasn't surprised since the rooms were located over a bar. (Of course I liked the idea having diverse hotel rooms so having a room above a bar balanced out having a room in an old French chateau.) The two beds were positioned lengthwise against a wall, and one of the beds folded up into a lockable box (I'm guessing that was to keep people who rented a single from sleeping two in the room). I'd never seen anything like that before. Our bathroom was completely enclosed in an aluminium box. It was an interesting solution to the problem of retrofitting hotel rooms with bathrooms. The room did have a balcony with a great view of the river and waterfront though.
I was starving because it was like 3 in the afternoon and we hadn't eaten anything. We walked around the old town looking for a place to eat, but most places were closed. One of the few places open was Movenpick, which looked like the Swiss version of Swenson's (family, food, and ice cream). We didn't want to get full before dinner so Lynn had the South American potato soup and the tandoori chicken salad, and I had a croque monsieur with fries. I thought Lynn's soup was excellent, but Lynn tasted some spice she didn't like in it so she let me eat most of the soup. The tandoori chicken salad wasn't bad either. My croque monsieur was terrible so I just ate the fries. I was satisfied having eaten something, but I couldn't leave without getting some ice cream. I had a sundae with caramel ice cream and maple-walnut ice cream. The caramel ice cream had chunks of semi-soft caramel in it that were nasty. The ice cream itself had a good flavor so I just spit out the pieces of caramel. The maple-walnut ice cream was a little too sweet for me. I was surprised we had as much decent food at Movenpick as we did.
We had time to kill so I wanted to show Lynn the Lion Monument. I didn't know exactly where it was located, but I knew the general area. Somewhere along the way I lost my way and decided to walk up a flight of stairs. We walked up the tallest flight of stairs I'd ever seen; there was even a bench about halfway up so you could rest. We didn't use it, but I took a long rest at the top of the stairs. Once there I knew it was the wrong place so we went back down and I found the Lion Monument. We were practically the only people there, and everything was quiet; it was amazingly serene. There were a couple of ducks swimming around in the pool in front of the monument. One of the ducks, the male, made cute little chattering sounds and kept trying to herd the female (he should have known better). Lynn and I found watching them highly entertaining. Then a group of Japanese tourists walked up and disturbed our solitude so we left. We walked around the old town and it was like going through a big shopping mall. We were both amazed how commercial Switzerland was.
I wanted our first dinner to be at Stadtkeller because it was one of my favorite experiences the last time I was in Europe. When we walked into the restaurant it was disturbingly empty; I felt sorry that they had to put on a show for only about a dozen people. We both wanted soup so I got the French onion and Lynn got the tomato soup. The French onion soup was hearty and tasted like it was made with beef broth. I would have enjoyed it if wasn't supposed to be French onion, or if they put actual chunks of beef in it. I knew Lynn was trying to recapture the flavor of the tomato bread soup in Bern so she was in for a disappointment, and she was disappointed. I ended up ordering the exact same pork cutlet with rosemary potatoes and creamed spinach that I had the last time I was at Stadtkeller, and Lynn had the smoked pork chop and sausage with sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. My cutlet was decent, but not as tasty as the first time I had it. At least the rosemary potatoes and creamed spinach were really good. There was something about Lynn's pork chop that didn't taste good to me, but her sausage was quite tasty. Overall I was disappointed in the quality of the food, but still had a fun time watching the show. This time I even went up on stage to attempt yodeling, and drank from the huge communal glass of beer they let everyone drink from for participating. Lynn enjoyed the music so much she bought their cd. Lynn was amassing quite a little collection of cds from our trip.
We had drawn the curtains to block out the sunlight from our room, but when I woke up the entire room was red (the color of the curtains). I took a shower in our aluminum box bathroom, and I have to give it credit for having amazing water pressure and copious amounts of hot water. We walked around the old town, and visited the Hofkirche, a church I didn't see the last time I was in Luzern. The interior was done in the Baroque style, and very impressive. While we were there were a couple of people practicing a piece with the pipe organ (which was naturally humongous), and the French horn. The music was very powerful, and almost convinced me to attend a church service the next day. After the church we wandered around the old town to see if I could find a cigar shop. All the cigar shops I had seem in France, and the one in Bern, basically had the exact same selection. I didn't find one. I did however find myself allergic to something in Luzern because my sinuses kept running.
Italian style pizza sounded good so we stopped at Grotto Pizzeria for lunch. I had the spinach, garlic, and mushroom pizza while Lynn had the pancetta [Italian bacon], onion, and black olive pizza. I was surprised the Lynn ordered a pizza with pancetta since she's not crazy about my favorite pizza topping combination, pepperoni and bacon. The crust was thin and crispy, and the tomato sauce tasted like it had olives in it. I hate olives so I thought the sauce was nasty, but I still thought my pizza tasted halfway decent though. I hated Lynn's pizza; it was far too salty for me to eat. It was then I noticed that I don't really like pancetta. The pizzas were larger than I expected and neither one of us could finish ours. We didn't bother taking the leftovers with us. I was disappointed with lunch and hoped dinner would be better.
One interesting quirk of the restaurant was the kitchen was located on the floor below the actual restaurant. When the food was ready for pick up a buzzer would sound so the waitress would know to go downstairs to get it.
We left the restaurant and were going to head across the river to the Franziskanerkirche, the church I had seen the first time around. While I was busy taking a picture Lynn saw some guy walking across the pedestrian bridge puke on the bridge without slowing down his pace. I wasn't sure I believed Lynn, but I had to avoid the fresh puke when we walked across the bridge. You would think that if you needed to throw up over a river you might actually puke into the river so there's no mess.
We saw the Franziskanerkirche, which was done in the Rococo style, but Lynn wasn't impressed by it. I was still amazed by it because it didn't look like any other church I'd ever seen. Afterwards we walked around the newer part of town, but we didn't see much. Right before we left town I did find a cigar shop. Their selection wasn't any different from any others, but they had a burl covered lighter not available in the United States so I was happy.
We returned back to our hotel and checked out. We went back to the parking garage, got in our car, and tried to leave, but we couldn't get out; we were supposed to pay our parking fee before we attempted to leave the garage! There were four cars lined up behind us so we couldn't back out. I didn't know what to do so I was very happy when an English speaking parking attendant quickly showed up. He took me to the automated cashier, and the fee was 71 Swiss Francs! I didn't have that kind of cash on me so we had to go one level down to find the automated cashier that accepted credit cards. There was someone using it so I had to wait for them to finish while I thought about the line of cars waiting for us. When I got back to the car there were about eight cars waiting behind ours. That was one of the more embarrassing moments of the trip. I still couldn't believe it cost CHF 71 for less than 24 hours of parking!
We could have taken the freeway to Brunnen, but there was a more scenic route around the lake so I took it. This was the sort of countryside I thought I'd see in Switzerland: rolling green hills, cows grazing, and cherry orchards (ok, the cherry orchards were unexpected). It was very beautiful so I didn't regret the extra time it took, but there wasn't anyplace for me to pull over to take a picture.
For once we didn't have a problem finding the hotel, but Brunnen was a really small town so it wasn't a surprise. We were staying and eating (I got the demi pension) at the Hotel Bellevue au lac, which was technically out of the way, because when I stayed there before I was impressed with the room, and the food from their hotel restaurant. I got a room with a view, and while the room was disappointingly corporate it did have a great view of the lake.
We walked around Brunnen, but it's a small town so we didn't see much. We did stop at a convenience store to pick up some snacks, and found one of Lynn's favorite Dominican cigars! I got her a few since they were in short supply in Phoenix.
We returned to the hotel and killed time until dinner. The demi pension included a four course dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was Thai. I wondered if we'd get Thai food for dinner, but it was Italian. The menu was written in three languages, and it appeared we had a choice of entree like some price fix menus. That would cause a problem later. The hotel manager asked if the menu was ok. The dessert was supposed to be rice pudding, and since I knew Lynn hates rice pudding I asked if she could have Thai coconut ice cream instead. The manager said that was alright and asked if that was all. I thought it was an odd response, but didn't think about it.
The first course was prosciutto wrapped melon. I know it's a classic combination, but I just didn't get it at all; the flavors of the two ingredients were distinctive, and not complimentary. Lynn liked it though. The second course was a cream of spinach soup. The cream of spinach soup Lynn had at City Tavern in Philadelphia was amazing, and the chef was German, so I hoped this one would be similar. It was decent, but nothing special. The third course was veal piccata, spaghetti, and ratatouille. This is where we had our misunderstanding; we thought we had a choice of one of the three. Lynn mentioned to the waitress that she wanted the spaghetti, not the veal. The waitress didn't understand so she left to send the manager over. While the waitress was away I figured out that we didn't have a choice, but were supposed to get all three. I told Lynn before the manager walked over so we he had to explain to him that it was our misunderstanding, and not really a problem. That's twice in one day I was embarrassed. The veal was sort of tasteless, but veal usually is to me. The spaghetti was tasty, and the ratatouille wasn't as good as the stuff I had in Bern. Lynn had the Thai coconut ice cream, and I had rice pudding with red currants. The ice cream was just as good as any Thai coconut ice cream I've had. A lot of the rice in my rice pudding wasn't cooked, and I didn't like the currants so I hardly ate any of the rice pudding.
I wasn't happy with our meal, and I made up my mind to stop doing demi pensions; I think letting a restaurant know they have a captive audience affects the quality of their food in a negative way.
We walked around the lake after dinner. It would have been romantic, but everyone seemed to have to same idea so it was crowded. We went back to our room, and while in the elevator I looked at the restaurant menu. I noticed that the Thai coconut ice cream normally comes with fried bananas. I wondered if that's why the manager asked me if that was all when I asked if Lynn could get the ice cream instead of the rice pudding. Fried bananas would have been cool.
We sat on our room balcony and smoked cigars. I smoked a Partagas "Presidente" (7,50€) while Lynn had a Drew Estate "Natural" that I bought her earlier that day. My cigar started with a draw problem that kept me from being able to get any smoke, but it went away after the first half inch. (That's an amazing coincidence since I had a Partagas the last time I was in Europe, and that one had problems too. I seem to hate that brand whether it's Cuban or Dominican.) The flavor was mild, creamy, and decent, but not great by any means.
While we were smoking our cigars Lynn noticed a blue light shining on the island not too far from our side of the lake. I didn't really think about it because I was too busy enjoying myself. Then we saw the light moving. I thought maybe someone on a boat was looking for something, but who knew. Eventually the people on the boat turned the light off, and we could hear the boat approaching. It pulled up by the dock, and turned their spotlights on a lakeside hotel. At first the light was pure white, but eventually they put transparencies in front of the lights. Some of them were of cartoon characters, and some of them appeared to be literature. Lynn and I were trying to figure out what the hell they were doing. It didn't seem like the sort of thing you get paid for so maybe it was some sort of art? The display went on for about 20 minutes, then they slowly puttered away. I guess it will forever remain a mystery to us as to what they were trying to accomplish.
We woke up and we had amazing water pressure and hot water. Breakfast still wasn't as big as I thought it was going to be, but there were about six different choices for cheese. The cheeses were tasty too.
We left the hotel and headed towards Innsbruck, but since we were a little off the beaten path we had to take country freeways back to the large freeways. We followed the signs, but we got lost in the Swiss countryside. It cost us about an hour, but we eventually found ourselves going in the right direction. The drive from Switzerland to Austria was odd because right before we entered Austria I had to get off the freeway and drive through a small town. Once in Austria I had to stop at a convenience store to by an Austrian freeway sticker (this one was only good for about four days compared to the Swiss one which was good for the calendar year). I noticed that as we entered Austria there was a sign that mentioned the sticker was required to drive on the freeways, but it was written in German which made it a lot more likely that only English and French speaking tourists would end up getting ticketed for not having one. Along the way we drove through what was probably the longest tunnel I've ever been through. At the end of the tunnel was a toll booth. They accepted Euro, Swiss Francs, credit cards, gas cards, and probably anything else that could possibly be considered money. Lynn wondered why they were so accepting, and I told her because if you couldn't pay they couldn't send you back through the tunnel so they'd just have to let you pass. The scenery in Austria was very nice, and there were castles all over the place. Lynn kept trying to take pictures of them through the car window. She actually wanted to open the car window and stick the camera out the window to take the picture, but anyone who already dropped the camera once while standing still wasn't going to get the opportunity to drop it at 85 miles per hour.
I was driving pretty fast on the freeway, but there was someone who kept passing me then slowing down to the point where I would have to pass them. We were coming through a tunnel when they suddenly slowed down and jumped in the right lane. I thought that would be the perfect opportunity to pass them, but when we came out of the tunnel there was an Austrian cop standing in the middle of the freeway motioning me to the shoulder. I hit a speed trap, and got busted! The cop walked up to the car and told me, in great English I might add, that I was speeding. He then walked around the (I was sure he was disappointed to see I had my autobahn sticker), and car wrote down the car's information. I thought he might let me go with a warning, but then he told me the fine was 29 Euros. I asked if I had to pay it immediately, and his response was, "We accept cash or credit card." Heh. He took my 29€, wrote me a receipt, and we were on our way. Lynn and I were both impressed at the police officer's complete faith that someone isn't going to run him over. Later I realized the police officers didn't have a car with them. I guess that's why one of the officers jumped into the freeway because what would they do if someone just ignored them and kept driving?
We drove to Innsbruck, and I was driving a little closer to the speed limit. We didn't have a problem finding our hotel, although we ran into problems with the directions as soon as we drove into town. We checked into the Hotel Goldene Krone, which I had also stayed at the last time I was in Europe. Unlike Hotel Bellevue we were staying there because it was fairly cheap while still being close to the city center. It was a typical hotel room, only without a minibar (not that we use them anyway). There was a Coke machine in the hallway if I needed something to drink with a cigar though.
We were both hungry, and went looking for lunch. We didn't get very far from the hotel before we found someplace that looked good to us. Theresien Brau had a good selection German food, and that's all we needed to know. We decided to sit at a table outside because it was a nice day. I thought it was ironic that we spent about ten days in France, a country well known for its sidewalk cafes, and the first place we sit outside was in Austria. Theresien Brau, as the name suggests, actually makes their own beer so we had two glasses of their hefeweizen. Hefeweizen is my favorite style of beer because it's flavorful, but mellow. Theresien Brau's hefeweizen was very mild, easy to drink, and an especially good beer for a warm day. Lynn liked it (and she typically doesn't like beer), but I found the flavor boring.
We both saw some soups we wanted to try even though we knew the entrees would probably be more than enough (in typical German fashion). I had some sort of Austrian soup with a bacon dumpling while Lynn had a tomato cream soup. My soup was light with a good flavor, and even though the dumpling was made with rye it was pretty good. The dumpling was also almost as large as the bowl so I wondered how large the bowl would be for the two dumpling order. Lynn's tomato cream soup had a straightforward flavor that I enjoyed. Our entrees were sauerkraut with rosti like potatoes and wurstel for me, and bratwurst with sauerkraut and potatoes with onions for Lynn. I ordered mine because I had no idea what wurstel was (from the name it sounded like a type of sausage), and I wanted to try it. The wurstel was in the dish in very small pieces, dark red, and didn't have a distinctive flavor. I couldn't figure out what the wurstel was, and I tried not to think about what it might have been made out of when I was eating it (my best guess at the time was that it was a blood sausage). I've looked it up and it seems to be a skinless pork sausage, but that's not what I was served so the Austrian version is probably different. Besides the mystery of the wurstel my dish tasted pretty decent. Lynn's, on the other hand, was delicious. The bratwurst were long and thin (not like the brats I'm used to seeing), and very tasty. The addition of onion to her dish also helped out the flavor a great deal.
Midway through our meal a German couple sat at our table since there wasn't a free one. I was impressed at the rate they could put away their large glasses of beer. There wasn't really anyone in the street so the best people watching was of the guy at the table in front of us. Since all conversations were in German I had to imagine the meanings of the various conversations this guy had with different people. He seemed like an old gay guy (his style of dress with black leather chaps seemed to suggest it), and I couldn't tell who started it, but the waiter and he seemed to have an obvious disdain for each other. The waiter seemed to egg him on by acting prissy or outright rude, and the old guy would provoke the waiter by asking him to get stuff for him that wasn't at the bar/restaurant. Eventually a young gay guy, who looked like a professional, sat at his table. We'll never know what happened, but even though Lynn and I never discussed what we had seen while we were at the table, we both had the exact same take on the situation when we talked about it when we walked away.
We walked around the old town a bit, and saw the Hofgarten. The public gardens I had seen in Salzburg were great formal productions so I thought this one might be similar. It turned out to be a basic park, which I found disappointing, but we still enjoyed walking around it.
That night we had dinner at Restaurant Goldener Adler. Lynn had a shrimp souffle with greens for an appetizer. The shrimp souffle sounded good to me (that's why Lynn ordered it), but it was creamy and tasted terrible; it reminded me of the seafood quinelles I had in Beaune. I started my meal with a mixed salad with balsamic vinaigrette while Lynn had a salad with some odd bits, like pickled onions, capers, and dill cucumbers. My salad was tasty. I admit I was trying to recreate the meal at the Kornhauskeller when I got the lamb chops with croquettes and ratatouille. The lamb chops were really good, and so were the croquettes. The ratatouille was disappointingly decent. I was amazed how I'd never had ratatouille before this trip, and now I'd had it three times. Lynn had penne pasta with a basil tomato sauce. Lynn said it tasted weird so I tried it. It had a strange floral flavor that was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Lynn eventually figured out that it was ground caraway seed. That was very different from any other tomato sauce we've had.
There was a dessert on the menu that was supposed to be a local speciality that served two, and had to be ordered in advance. That sounded like my kind of dessert. It was called nockerl, and it was red currants topped with meringue. When I ordered the nockerl the waiter looked concerned, and asked if we were very hungry. We both said sure, and that seemed to satisfy him. When it arrived it was served in a large dish that would have been big enough for three or four people. It smelled like what Lynn termed "dog spit". The entire dessert tasted weird to me, and I didn't like it. The red currants were too sweet, plus I discovered that I just don't like the flavor of red currants. The meringue also had a nasty flavor to it. Naturally Lynn liked the dessert.
The bathroom in our room was another aluminum box (although not as cheesy as the hotel in Bern), but the shower had great water pressure and temperature control. No matter how cheesy the bathroom looked, or how cheap the hotel was, I had better luck with showers in Europe than I do traveling in the US!
It was raining in the morning so I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted to. As luck would have it it rained for most of the day too. We did a lot of walking around the old town and shopped. Most of the souvenirs we got for people we bought that day. We also got ourselves a present in the form of Austrian ice wine. After we finished shopping we stopped at the Sacher Cafe. I was planning on visiting the one in Vienna, but since I found out there was one located in Innsbruck I thought, "Why not now?". The interior was classy and very old money. I dug it. The menus were made up like little newspapers complete with newspaper holders. It was cute. (Of course you could buy the menu with the newspaper holder which kind of ruined the classy feel.) We had hot tea, apple strudel, and a slice of Sacher torte. The tea was good, and the old money feel was still there with the tea presentation: a silver platter, tea pot, tea cup, saucer, spoon, cloth tea satchel, and dainty glass of water. The hot tea was perfect for a rainy day. The Sacher torte was very good, and not as sweet as you would expect. As good as it was we couldn't figure out why it's famous; I'd guess it was good marketing. The apple strudel was a lot of apple wrapped in dough that reminded me of tortilla. I figured that might be the case because that's how the German apple strudels were that I've had before. The strudel was good, but it definitely reminded me of the superiority of the phyllo dough version. I thought the entire Sacher Cafe experience (except trying to track down our waiter for the bill) was great, and I'd do it again (like in Vienna).
We left Innsbruck and headed for Salzburg. I was still impressed with how good the Austrian countryside looked. We pulled into Salzburg, and I picked up a town map from the tourist center. We headed towards the old town, and the parking garage was located inside a mountain. We left the parking garage, and I saw a Salzburg I was completely unfamiliar with. Apparently I had completely missed the old town when I was in Salzburg.
I wanted to find the guy's restaurant I ate at last time ("risotto with mushrooms from the forest"), but I didn't have a clue where we were, much less where to find his place. It was sprinkling and cold so I was more interested in finding someplace to eat than taking the time to find his place. We found an Italian restaurant named La Stella. I looked at the menu, and the mushroom ravioli in tomato sauce, and creamed spinach topped with Parmesan sounded far too good for me not to get for an appetizer. The ravioli sucked, but the tomato sauce was so good I sopped it up with the light bread they provided. The creamed spinach was excellent, and had a good Parmesan flavor. Lynn didn't like it. Lynn ordered the cream of tomato soup with basil. I don't know which I believed less, that all the restaurants we went to actually made some form of tomato soup or that Lynn ordered it at almost every restaurant we went to. I tasted beer in the soup, and didn't like the flavor, but Lynn dug the soup. (It's funny because I've had several tomato soups since then that've had that beer flavor, and I've liked them. Maybe I just had to acquire a taste for it?) My entree was pan fried monk fish with spinach pasta topped with crawfish sauce, and Lynn had a Margarita pizza. My monk fish with salt and lemon rocked! The crawfish sauce sucked so even though the spinach pasta actually tasted like spinach, and was quite tasty on its own, it was ruined by the sauce. I thought alfredo sauce would have been better a better choice to compliment the pasta. Lynn's pizza was very cheesy, and had oregano on it. Despite the odd addition of the oregano we both thought it was good.
We left La Stella satiated, and that seemed to make me feel warmer walking around. I had seen a public garden on the map so we crossed the river to go see it. It was Mirabellgarten, the same public garden I had seen the first time in Salzburg. Once I saw the garden I knew exactly where we were, and exactly where that guy's restaurant was located. Too bad we had already eaten lunch. We walked through the gardens, and they were beautiful. We took a decent amount of pictures despite the rain.
We left Salzburg, and I had to hit a gas station to fill the tank. While we were there I called the K&T Boardinghouse, the boarding house we were going to stay in in Vienna, to let them know we'd be late. I thought we'd hit Vienna by 9. (Phone numbers are odd in Austria, and some other countries, because they don't have a set number of digits, so a phone number might have six or seven digits.) The drive to Vienna was pretty crappy; we hit a freeway detour that took us about 20 miles out of our way, and 50 miles (not straight) of freeway construction.
It was dark, rainy, and 9:20 by the time we got into Vienna. Everything seemed to be going ok until we missed a turn. Maybe. It was difficult to tell since we couldn't read any of the street signs. We turned around to double back, but discovered that a lot of the streets didn't have signs, and the ones that did weren't lit so we couldn't read them on that dark and rainy night. We couldn't figure out if we missed the last turn, or missed the correct turn when we came into the city. All the great signage we had experienced throughout the rest of Austria was absent in Vienna. The more I drove around the more we got lost. One way streets abounded, and none of the streets actually went straight so it was confusing. There was a ring road around the city center, but I couldn't find it. Eventually I went the wrong way on a one way street, and I may have even driven in a lane reserved for the street cars. I was lucky I didn't kill anyone or ourselves. I did find myself on the ring road at one point, but it was headed in the wrong direction. I figured I could take it all the way around to hit the street I needed. Wrong. The ring road wasn't one road, but six or eight different roads; the road would turn 45 degrees and change names. That wouldn't have been bad, but once the road went along the river you had to make a right turn to get back onto the ring road, but I never saw the sign for the turn.
The only enjoyable thing about driving around Vienna that night was watching a speeder get pulled over by a cop standing on the sidewalk. All the cop did was point, and the guy pulled over. Hopefully those Austrian cops will never teach their pointing techniques to police in other countries.
I'd been driving around Vienna for over two hours, and was close to a nervous breakdown. I couldn't believe I couldn't find one of the major roads into the city center. Lynn wasn't helping either because this was probably number two on her big list of travel nightmares so she was just being a pain in the ass. We actually saw a cop, so I stopped and asked him for directions. He spoke very little English, but he spoke enough that we almost understood the directions he gave us. We weren't exactly sure if we were following them correctly, but his directions got us where we needed to be. The only problem is we couldn't find the damn major road leading to the city center we needed to turn on! We drove up and down the same one way streets trying to find our turn, and not having any luck. I finally decided to sleep somewhere else (knowing the K&T would charge me for the nights anyway), and save what was left of my sanity.
It was 11:40 when I pulled into the parking garage for the Ibis Wien Mariahilf. The lady at the front desk had a room available for one night, but not two. She said I should check back in the morning. Riiiiggghhhhttt. At this point I was ready to kill people, starting with some girl at the front desk person of some faceless corporate hotel telling me I should ask them in the morning if I could stay there another night. I was through with Vienna. It seemed to me that the city didn't want us there so I wasn't going to spend more time or money there than I had to. I decided to leave Vienna in the morning and go somewhere else.
The room was the usual bland room you find in corporate hotels. I called K&T from our room to cancel my reservation. The lady I was talking to asked why I didn't call earlier. I explained to her that I'd been driving around the city for over two hours unable to find her place, and called her as soon as I got to a phone. She told me she had to charge my credit card for the room anyway. I told her I knew that. She then went on about how I had inconvenienced her, and then said I was lying about not being able to find the hotel. What!? That got me extremely pissed because why would I lie about that? I almost started yelling at her when she quickly got off the phone. I had hoped she realized how rude she was, and there was nothing to gain by accusing me of lying. She could have just said thank you for telling me and take my money, but now I will forever despise K&T Boardinghouse and I won't be shy about telling people about it.
We didn't eat dinner that night because neither one of us was hungry.
Continue to part 3 (Germany, France, the "Best and Worst of the Trip", and afterthoughts).
The camera I used was a Canon Powershot G5 digital camera. Lynn was using my Powershot G2. Some minor touch ups were done in Photoshop. (I'm sure the touch ups could have been done better, but I still lack the patience to examine every photo, so you get what you get.)
Anyway, you know the rest: the pictures are copyright by me (or Lynn as the case may be), and unauthorized use is prohibited.
