Travel to England

A couple of weeks ago I left poor Roy to fend for himself for five days. I went on an adventure to England to visit some family. The flight itself is a speedy hour and thirty minutes or so but tack on all of the other travel it makes the trip a fairly long one indeed.

To start with I had to catch the train from Martigny to Geneva Airport which takes about one hour and forty minutes. Add on the recommended two hours before the flight, the hour and a half on the plane, plus about an hour to cover the faffing about that happens on a plane at both ends. Then, if you're lucky to make it onto a bus soon after you arrive at the airport you can cut out a bit of time but, unfortunately for me there was about an hour and half between my flight arriving and the bus to Oxford. The bus to Oxford takes about two hours. Half an hour to get to the train station at Oxford and then another twenty minutes on the train to Banbury. Add all of that together and you get.. hang on, just counting... a grand TEN and a half HOURS.

I consulted google maps and figured out - to drive to Banbury from Martigny (taking a car train through the tunnel to get across the Channel) would take a mere two hours and twenty-one minutes extra. Wow! That's a lot of travelling. But, it was well worth it!

I quite enjoy the whole travelling thing. Airports no longer frustrate me (accept for the two US airports I have been in). It excites me to catch trains, planes and buses. I make sure that I have a book, music or my iPad to entertain me along the way. I have the security process down pat - making sure I have everything I need in accessible places and making sure as to not take anything that could be contraband.

The trip to Geneva airport is beautiful! I never tire of looking at the spectacular mountains that crowd around the lake and the magnificent vineyards at arms reach of the train. I also love the landscape as I travel from Luton to Oxford - particularly at this time of year with the canola fields creating an iridescent, yellow carpet contrasted by the bright, green, lushness of the surrounding shrubs and trees.

Travelling to England - although not my homeland, relaxes my brain compared to the foreign customs and language of Switzerland. I can walk around England at ease knowing that I will be able to communicate with anyone that comes my way. It's rather stressful and embarrassing having to explain to people in Switzerland that I don't really understand them and sometimes when I do actually understand them, I don't have the language skills to respond correctly.

Another thing that I LOVE about England is the food. I think I've raved on here about the food before but it excites me to no end just perusing the aisles of the supermarkets. Everything is labelled extremely well and there is ALWAYS something for this vegetarian to eat and it's usually something that I'm very happy or excited to eat. England realises that vegetarians don't just eat salad. Don't get me started on my love for Pret a Manger and Veggie Percy's from Mark's and Spencer.

I arrived at my sister-in-law's place and they had most of my favourite things to eat. People can always win me over with my favourite foods. They made sure I had my favourite breakfast - Irish potato farls and my favourite sweet - Veggie Percy's and we visited Pret, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and many other places that I love to walk around - mostly with my mouth agape. I've only been to their new house twice now but each time I've felt so at home. I'm quite content on a holiday to England just hanging out, drinking some local brews, eating (of course), catching up with family and the many, many snuggles with Lily the dog.

Driving back from Innsbruck

The drive back to Martigny from Innsbruck took us through some very different looking landscapes. From lush, green forests to snowy covered hills and summer-like lakes with scuba divers popping up out of the water every so often.

We stopped in at Lucerne for lunch. I'd wanted to visit Lucerne for a long time since it's probably one of the more touristic cities, so I wanted to see what the hype was about. We walked along the famous Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge) and admired the city around us. It was a nice city to wander around.

Easter

I'm playing a bit of catch up again with posts. On the long weekend at Easter time Roy and I went on a road trip. I've already talked about our trip to Liechtenstein and the fairytale, Neuschwanstein Castle so now I will talk about our time in Innsbruck, Austria. We arrived in the afternoon after our visit to Neuschwanstein and checked into our modest hotel room before heading out for a walk into town. It was a fairly quiet walk into the centre but once we got there there were lots of restaurants and cafes filled with people.

Excuse the photos, they were taken on my phone.

Easter Sunday the streets were also quiet as we walked into town but in the centre was an Easter Market which was bustling with people perusing the stalls of hand-crafted knick knacks. There was even an easter bunny hopping around posing with people in photos and handing out things to children. One thing that made it quite special and a huge novelty was the fact that it started SNOWING! It was our first experience of a white easter. I had kind of said goodbye to winter for the year but winter wasn't quite ready to leave just yet. Something we've come to expect in Europe is that everything's closed on a Sunday but to our delight there was a chocolate shop open - of course.. it was EASTER! Needless to say we bought a bunch of tasty treats to enjoy as we walked around the small markets.

We then checked out the museum in the Golden Roof which, if I'm to be honest was quite boring.

Then we wandered all around the city looking for nice things to explore.

There was a giant easter egg hunt scattered throughout the whole city.

Playing on the playground.

These toy machines were everywhere.

View from our hotel.

Innsbruck from up a hill.

Neuschwanstein Castle

Ever since my friend told me about a beautiful castle in Germany that inspired the Sleeping Beauty castle from Disney I've been wanting to go and see it. Roy and I had been umming and aahhing about where to go for our long weekend at Easter (a bit of a luxury umming and aahhing over where to go in Europe) so a few days before the weekend arrived I decided that I wanted to go and finally see it. We also hadn't been over that side of the country, nor had we been to Austria (we can now say that we have been to all of the countries that surround Switzerland).

After spending a night in Liechtenstein we drove a few hours to Hohenschwangau, Germany passing through Switzerland and Austria along the way (we went through four countries in a matter of 2-3 hours). The route took us through beautiful landscapes of snow-capped mountains, rolling green hills and lush, green forests.

We eagerly peered out of the car windows waiting to spot the castle perched atop a mountain. While I thought at the time that the weather wasn't all that nice, I think that it added a certain charm and mystery to the surrounds. It was cold but we were prepared and it was drizzling with rain but the forest on the mountains was shrouded in mist and clouds. Very beautiful!

The Neuschwanstein castle in part was covered with scaffolding for refurbishments that have been going on for many years but it was still very beautiful to see. Something that I didn't know before we went was that there is also another castle in the village of Hohenschwangau which was also very grand and beautiful.

Hohenschwangau Castle 

Neuschwanstein Castle 

We lined up to buy tickets to go inside of Neuschwanstein and soon realised that in order to go inside we had to be guided and since it was a rather busy weekend the tours were booked up for many hours ahead. In hindsight we should have done a bit of research and perhaps pre-booked our tickets. I wasn't too disappointed that we couldn't go in. I was quite happy admiring it from the outside. The castle is a fair way away from where you need to park your car so there are walking paths, buses and even horse and cart to add to the fairytale feeling. Roy and I opted to walk up since it wasn't that far and got a ride down on the horse and cart because my silly knee was playing up.

Sufficiently Disney-like.

In the courtyard of the castle. We didn't need a ticket to get in here.

After we checked out the castle we stopped in at a cafe nearby which sold these really tasty donuty things. They were called some name in German, which I neglected to memorise but they also had an english name for us plebs which was 'Bavarian Snowballs'. They were deep fried and covered in powdered sugar. I expected them to be oily and fairly dense like Dutch Oliebollen but when you bite into them they fall apart in your mouth and are so incredibly light and delicious. Naturally we went back for more.

Our lovely ride - Susie and Yuli (spelling?)

Very close to the castles and tourist town of Hohenschwangau is a beautiful lake called Alpsee where Roy and I ate our picnic lunch. I can imagine that it would be a really nice spot for a sunny day picnic.

Despite the weather and opting to not go inside we had a really nice time admiring this fairytale-like castle and it's surrounds.