china

Pictures from this day can be found here.

We woke up very early this morning (around 5:45 am) and then checked out of our hotel as the sun was starting to rise. The clerk was very nice and apologized for not having breakfast ready – she offered coffee, but we had limited time to get to the station to catch our train. I would have liked one more cup of that coffee – good stuff.

At the station I bought a ticket for the train for both of us. The total was 30 Swiss francs, so I put in a 50 franc bill. Unfortunately all I got back was an IC card that was charged with the balance. Not very useful – so I have a 20 franc souvenir. Kuniko and I laughed at that for a long time – live and learn, I guess. Our train took us to Chateau St. Denis, and there a nice passenger told us that we had to catch a bus because of some construction, so we managed to get on board a bus to Palevieux, and then we caught a high-speed train to Geneva through Lucerne. We had just enough time to buy tickets at the station before the train came. There were a lot of people on the platform going to work, so we bought first class tickets this time hoping that there would be less people. As it turned out first class was far, far away from our position on the platform, so we had to hustle down the platform a ways, and then get on the train and keep walking through the train to find our section. It was pretty full, though – we managed to get a couple of seats next to a sleeping businessman.

Once we reached Lucerne many people got off, so we got some seats to ourselves for the last leg to Geneva. Arrival in Geneva was at 9 am, and there was some light rain and clouds. We went looking for our hotel, and I led us in the wrong direction. By the time I figured out that I had screwed up we were near a department store/restaurant that we had seen before in Zurich, so we went in to get breakfast and plan our next move. I was hoping for some hot eggs for breakfast, but unfortunately the server said that breakfast wasn’t served until eleven o’clock. Hmm… we settled for a sandwich and a chocolate-filled croissant.

After breakfast we looked around the store for some souvenirs. We got some good ideas, but didn’t buy anything yet – we had all day to shop, so no rush. Finally, we found our hotel back near the station. We were even able to check in early – they had plenty of rooms, so we put our stuff away, emptied out one of the backpacks, and took it with us out for some shopping and sightseeing.

The first priority for me was to get some business shoes that fit. Shoes are a big challenge in Japan, so I was hoping to get a couple of pairs of decent shoes, as that is pretty much all I wear at work. We scored twice in two different stores, and then we went out to see the Jet L’eau – a huge stream of water sprayed straight up in the air. At the time it was still cloudy and a little rainy, so it wasn’t very impressive.

We walked around town looking at buildings, churches and cathedrals, and finally decided to sit down at a cafÃ© for coffee. The owner kicked us out, however, because she said we needed to buy food. We ended up walking across the street to Starbucks, of all places, just to get something hot to drink without any hassle. I wonder how much money the owner has lost to Starbucks this way…

Finally we did some souvenir shopping and loaded up on stuff to bring back to Japan. Chocolate is big in Switzerland, so that was the natural choice. We’ll have to be careful to stay in air-conditioned environments on the way home, though. Along the way I made a reservation at Alliance Gourmand, a restaurant that was recommended in one of our guidebooks. They were open for lunch, but a 6:30 dinner reservation was pretty early for them, and it took some convincing for them to agree to it.

Back at the hotel we stayed out of the drizzle – I took a nap and Kuniko sat around doing sudoku, and when I woke up outside was sunny and beautiful. It was our chance to do some more sightseeing in a better environment, so we hiked out to the United Nations building. The neighborhoods around the UN were filled with dormitories and pre-fab houses. It seemed to me that there were more than a few refugees living in the area, but it could have been my imagination. In front of the building was a huge crowd of Sri Lankans protesting, and it didn’t seem like a good place for us to hang out too long. We left and went back to the lakeside, and the scenery was much more beautiful.

After killing time at the lake we went out for a couple of beers sitting out front of a Middle Eastern restaurant called EGE restaurant. There were really a lot of ethnic restaurants in Geneva. Just about any country you could think of had a restaurant there – talk about a city with a lot of choices. I saw Libyan, Mexican, Iranian and even a Nigerian restaurant while we were walking around. The beer went down very well in the increasingly warm temperatures, and afterwards we slowly walked to Alliance Gourmand for dinner.

The place was in principle a Spanish restaurant, but the menu was more a combination of European flavors – almost California style. The waitress that took my reservation at lunch translated our orders for the owner of the restaurant, who went back to prepare everything. The waitress was really nice – she was apparently the only worker there who spoke English. Unfortunately nobody spoke Spanish or else I could have taken care of the ordering myself.

Due to the French menu what Kuniko thought was foie gras ended up being pork with a foie gras sauce. It was good, but not quite what she had expected. I had two beef filets with a delicious risotto, and we polished off a Spanish wine with our meal.

Afterwards we went back to our hotel to pack everything up and get ready for our departure the next day. The return trip was pretty uneventful – we just slept now and then, and I read two Lee Child books on the way back. Our first flight was a short one from Geneva back to Frankfurt, and in Frankfurt I waited in line for 40 minutes at Burger King to get a double Whopper. That’s how much I miss Burger King, I guess – it hasn’t come to western Japan yet.

On the next leg from Frankfurt to Beijing the guy sitting behind me snored big time. More than annoying – it was like he had some serious medical condition. Other people kept looking over, and Kuniko and I were exchanging laughs the whole way back.

In Beijing we had a little misunderstanding with the procedure for international transfer passengers. Although the instructional video on the plane gave us one procedure, the actual procedure was completely different, which was a little frustrating. The officials at the airport were not helpful at all, and gave us a bad impression of the airport. We’ve been through Beijing airport before, and although it is quite beautiful on the surface, the workers there have a long way to go in the hospitality department.

Anyway, finally we pulled into Osaka, flew through customs without a hitch, and managed to get our chocolate back unmelted to our home. Everything was in order back at the homestead, and it was nice to sleep in our own bed after so many hotels.

Pictures from this day can be found here.

Our holiday started with a meet-up in Kobe after Kuniko finished a half day of work. We met in Motomachi, and then went to a restaurant that served yo-shoku, supposedly “western” food like omu-rice, fried shrimp and hamburg. It was pretty good and there was a short wait because it was so popular at lunch hour. From there we went on to Kansai airport and caught a flight to Shanghai shortly thereafter.

We arrived in Shanghai at around 6:30 with about five hours to kill, and a new airport to explore. It started off innocently enough, with a margarita and a do-it-yourself vodka tonic at a nearby bar. Actually there were several similar bars located throughout the airport, but they staggered their closing times, with the central bar (we found out later) open 24 hours.

We walked around looking for an open restaurant, but it seemed like everything was closing around 8 pm. With a departure from the airport schedule for 11:55 pm, we had lots of extra time, so we ended up finding one last open restaurant to have a Chinese feast. The food turned out to be pretty good, but the restaurant was overstaffed, and with just a few customers in a giant restaurant, it was a little unnerving to eat with so many staff standing around watching you (and they did watch you carefully). Also I accidentally over-ordered, so we could finish only about 60% of the meal. Luckily, the food was very cheap thanks to the exchange rate, and so overall it was a marginal success. The staff all tried to speak to Kuniko in Chinese, a fact that was increasingly amusing to me (not to her, though) the longer we were at the airport.

Only after we finished dinner did we realize that there were some other shopping areas and restaurants around, so we ended up having more choices than we knew about. Oh, well. After dinner we had a lot of time to kill, so we walked around the huge airport, and we even had the option to leave and come back – thanks to a strange international transfer system. Normally I need to pay big money for a travel visa because I am an American, but they let me out into the real world, so with a little planning next time we could take the train into town and have some local food. By the end of our stay in the airport we were pretty exhausted, so we were half asleep as we boarded the plane to Frankfurt at midnight.

We flew on China Eastern airlines, which was almost the cheapest flight (only Aeroflot was less) and had a reasonably positive experience. Mainly we slept. The flight lasted about 11 hours, and I slept through five of them, so that was a new personal record for me. The highlight of the trip was the cabin attendants leading group exercises during the last hour of flight. Good idea, interestingly implemented.

Upon touching down at Frankfurt airport we looked out the window and saw rainy conditions, and so that had me a little worried. The first day called for a day on the river cruising and tasting wine, and doing it in the rain didn’t look like fun. Immigration was surprisingly easy – no forms to fill out, just a passport check, a stamp, and then we were in.

We caught a bus from the terminal we were in to the other terminal that had a train station connected, and then found the intercity trains. This was the first time in a long time that we had used European trains, so we were a little confused about the process, and it was a bit stressful finding the right train and the right platform. Looking back at it now we did almost all the right things, but at the time we were feeling a little stress about it, despite all my planning and some support documents that I had brought along.

We ended up on the S9 to the town of Mainz (pronounced Mine-z) but we noticed that the train bypassed our station completely and went to another terminal station. We got out, looked around the station, and realized that we should be back on the same train we came in on. Rushed back to the train and took two stops to the Mainz station. Not sure if we were supposed to do it that way or not, but it only took a few minutes and a little bit of confusion before we got back on the right path. I would suck at the Amazing Race, that’s for sure.

At the station we stopped into the local convenience store to buy “Troy the Sixth” the latest in a long line of small folding umbrellas that we have bought while traveling overseas. Troy the Sixth did a great job, and earned a trip home with us to Japan – a solid purchase. He certainly lasted longer than Troy the Second who died a quick death in Dijon, France.

From the station Kuniko navigated us on foot through the quiet town of Mainz. It was Sunday morning around 8 a.m., so most people were at home sleeping, and almost every shop was closed. Our destination was the Rhine river at the edge of town, and while walking there the rain got heavier and heavier. When we arrived we saw our ship waiting for us – the KD cruise line – and we rushed to catch it just in time. We set up inside in the cafÃ©/restaurant and had some hot coffee to warm us up, and soon after the ship departed and started cruising down the river.

The scenery was really quite nice – the Rhine is quite a large river and there was plenty of traffic going both ways. There was lots of shipping up and down the river, so it was much busier than I expected. After cruising for about 15 minutes the rain let up, and we went upstairs to enjoy the view from on top of the cruise ship just as blue sky started appearing. By the time we started seeing vineyards, it was sunshine and blue skies, and our spirits rose accordingly. After consulting our guidebooks and some timetables we decided to make a stop at the wine town of Rudelsheim.

Rudelsheim at first glance is a touristy town on the edge of the river surrounded by vineyards and wineries. There was plenty to do while we were there – we tasted wine at several places (and bought a bottle of wine at each place to take with us because the prices were so much lower than what we are used to) – and we also took a gondola up the hillside to enjoy some spectacular views of the river and the wine region. At the top of the hill there was even an old organ grinder guy with a fake monkey. Like I said, it was touristy there. Since we had three hours to kill before the next boat we also enjoyed some (giant) beers at a cafÃ©, did some shopping and had some delicious sandwiches at a bakery.

The sandwiches looked delicious in the shop window and tasted even better. German bread turned out to be one of the big surprises of the trip – every time we had German bread we were impressed at how delicious it was. Some had dark grain, some had olives or nuts, but all were consistently good wherever we were in Germany.

We were really enjoying taking in the town – interesting architecture, easy to travel by foot, and plenty of surprises around every corner. Eventually we figured it was time to go, so we caught the next boat down the river and continued our journey.

We procured some good seats on the roof of the boat, and continued to enjoy the sunny weather. Our energy level was still high despite being awake for such a long time – which was good because there were still several hours ahead on the boat before we reached our destination.

The next stretch of the river had lots of castles mixed in with all the steep hillside vineyards, and it was interesting to turn the next bend and see another dramatic old castle perched on the mountains. It was a great way to see everything at a slow pace. By late afternoon the day started catching up us, however, and we retired to the restaurant downstairs to enjoy the view through the windows instead of being in the weather. As it turns out it was a good idea – a squall came throw soon after we took a table downstairs, and suddenly the tables around us filled up completely as people came out of the rain.

Finally we reached our destination about halfway down the river to Cologne at a mid-sized town called Koblenz. The boat stopped at the Deutsch Eck, a waterside area that was under some construction when we arrived. From there we walked across town through a large street festival to find our hotel. It was a simple, clean business hotel and it was nice to unload our backpacks (finally) after carrying them around all day. I guess it didn’t help that we bought a couple of bottles of wine during the day – those are heavy.

After dropping off our gear and cleaning up a bit we asked our hotel clerk for restaurant recommendations, and she suggested a great local restaurant called Alt Koblenz. It was just down the street in the corner of a city square, and they served lots of local specialties. We had some local wine by the glass and our first dinner in Germany: Kuniko had the weinerschnitzel with egg on top as a variation, and I had “Deutsch Eck Toast” – grilled pork with mushrooms served over toast with coleslaw. Very delicious, and after a failed search for an open supermarket we retired to bed to get some much-needed rest.

Geneva and Home

Shanghai, The Rhine River, Koblenz