Retirement Travel and a Weird Mix of Other Stuff
After a fabulous visit with Meghan, Brian, Marion and Betti in Zurich, we’re now in Belgium with Annelies and Yves. We had a VERY nice BBQ dinner with some of my co-workers last night and today will be touring Gent. I’ll write more later. I just wanted to let y’all know we are still around…
It’s been an amazing trip so far. From challenging passes to quaint medieval villages, we’ve seen and experienced a very wide variety of stuff.
As our tour guide Andy said, the weather in Austria has been very bad. It was still sort of wintry (very cold and rainy) until about two weeks ago. While Monday started out cloudy and wet, it cleared up by afternoon. And the weather has remained dry since then. Yesterday was actually a bit too hot as the region experienced higher than normal temperatures, but we made the best of it.
Our first stop was the Olympic Bobsled facility just outside of Innsbruck. Seeing that up close and in person was VERY cool. The picture shown immediately above shows me on the medal stand in gold medal position of course. Notice I wore my fancy assless chaps for the occasion?
After that, we visited Hall in Tirol, a medieval village also just outside of Innsbruck. We proceeded to Achenkirch (still in Austria) for the best lunch EVER (we ate lots of typical Tyrolean fare during this trip, which I will have to describe in a separate post).
After lunch, we headed into Germany for a bit then back to Seefeld in Tirol, Austria, where we’ve been staying.
Riding wise, yesterday was easy. We were all glad, too, because we’d had a very full week of challenging runs. We had to bid farewell to our tour guide, which was sad. Some members of our group had to leave very early this morning, but many will still be here for breakfast.
Speaking of breakfast, I need to end here and get ready. After we eat, we need to pack up our stuff and catch a train. We’re going to Zurich today, where we’ll be staying with the Swiss Family Mac. Hubby and I are both looking forward to seeing our old friends on their new turf!
Okay, I’m not REALLY sorry. Like I said, I’m having fun. And since that’s this week’s theme, here’s some snapshots for proof…
Passo dello Stelvio is in the Italian Alps, not very far from Switzerland and Austria. Actually, we’re staying near Innsbruck, so we rode through Austria into Italy specifically to traverse this pass. We did a little bit of riding in Switzerland on the way back, too.
There’s a ski resort at the top. There’s not much snow left, but there’s a glacier, and people are still skiing.
I was quite happy to reach the top of this very challenging pass in one piece and without dropping my bike or riding off the side of the mountain.
This was THE coolest riding day ever for both of us.
The road actually winds down the side of the mountain below where Hubby is standing.
This last shot is the only artsy one I took specifically for You Capture. If you want to see what other folks did for fun this week, be sure to visit Beth’s site.
Maybe it just hasn’t seemed real enough to get all excited about. We’ve been talking about and planning it for a couple of years now, so it’s always sort of been that thing we’re going to do. Even after booking the trip and buying the plane tickets, it still just didn’t seem real.
Now, however, it seems real. Look what we each received in the mail yesterday…
We got a map! I LOVE maps. And a list of all the other folks that are on the tour (13 including us). That Touring Center Alps booklet is our itinerary. We also got some stickers, and some luggage tags. Some anti-fog stuff for our visors. Oh yeah, and a booklet explaining what the road signs mean.
It’s getting real now. 🙂
And check this out…
This will be my ride. It’s just so, so sporty.
Okay, that’s not the actual bike. But it is the model we’ll be riding (we’ll each have our own). I’m not sure what color I’ll get. I don’t really care about the color anyway.
Check out this map…
This side of the map is sort of an artist’s rendition of where we’re going to be riding. The green at the top is Germany. The green area at the bottom is Italy. The red check mark (which you’ll see better if you click on the image) shows the valley where we’ll be staying (Seefeld in Tirol, Austria). Switzerland is at the far left.
Oh yeah, I got the name of the hotel, too: Hotel Central Seefeld.
The wonderful trip coordinator, Doris, who said to me way back in November, “I am there for you!” has totally been there for me. She’s been extremely helpful. So much so that she even arranged train tickets for us, which she did not have to do (as in, that’s not her job). But I’m so glad she did, ’cause let me tell you, that train stuff is confusing for this ignorant American used to dealing with ONE train company… AMTRAK. There are lots of train companies in Europe with different routes, different connections, different purchase plans. Most of which are described in a language other than English.
We just happened to get our train tickets by e-mail yesterday, too. (Of course, they’re in German, so I just have to trust that they are the right thing!).
An entire week in the Alps. Awesome, eh? And while that’s good, that’s not the best part. The best part will be the second week of the trip when we get to visit with our friends in Switzerland and Belgium.
We’re getting excited now. Now, it’s starting to feel real. So real, in fact, that I need to start shopping for my own pair of ass-less leather chaps. Not like THOSE though (I couldn’t resist).
Like these… it’s a safety thing.
Here’s another very odd fact… according to the American Battle Monuments Commission, there are twenty cemeteries in Europe where American soldiers are buried. Twenty.
They are not small cemeteries either. At the 90-acre Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium, there are 5,329 Americans buried. They lost their lives in the 1944 Battle of the Bulge.
In Luxembourg, there’s another cemetery. At 50 acres, it is much smaller, but there are 5,076 Americans buried there, most of whom also lost their lives during the Battle of the Bulge.
The Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial, which is also in Belgium, “possesses great military historic significance as it holds fallen Americans of two major efforts, one covering the U.S. First Army’s drive in September 1944 through northern France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg into Germany, the second covering the Battle of the Bulge.” It covers 57 acres and holds 7,992 of our military dead.
In case you haven’t been doing the math, those three cemeteries alone house the remains of almost 19,000 fallen Americans. Nineteen THOUSAND.
And that’s not all. A fourth, the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial, in the Netherlands, has 8,301 graves. All of the cemeteries also have monuments upon which are inscribed the names of thousands of missing soldiers.
Here’s the odd part. I bought Eyewitness Travel Guides for Europe and Belgium/Luxembourg. Neither of them mention these American cemeteries. One says something to the effect of the Ardennes salient is littered with war cemeteries.
It isn’t just American cemeteries that are not mentioned either. There are many, many Canadian and German Cemeteries, too. Probably cemeteries from other nations, as well.
Now, I’m no history buff, but World War II was a pretty significant event in Europe’s history. One would think these cemeteries and memorials would be mentioned.
What about World War I? I think Flanders Field in Belgium got a brief mention. But that’s it.
Any idea why these cemeteries don’t warrant mention? Is it a phenomenon with Eyewitness Travel Guides only? I guess I’ll have to check out some other travel guides to see.
A day or so later, Amy said something like, “So, I guess your talking about the price of airplane tickets to Switzerland and Belgium means you’re going to Switzerland and Belgium?” She was right.
Hubby and I had been contemplating this trip for a while. He’s known about a company called Edelweiss Bike Travel for quite a few years. They have organized motorcycle tours at various locations around the world.
I’m not a huge fan of marathon motorcycle rides. When he first mentioned a bike tour of Europe to me about a year ago, I said, “Okay, I’ll go. If I can ride with you for a couple of days then scoot over to Belgium to visit Annelies while you complete the trip.”
That was before he met Annelies and her boyfriend Yves.
You see Hubby is quite shy. If I’d said to him a year ago, “Okay, if WE can scoot over to Belgium to visit with Annelies,” he would’ve said, “But I don’t even know those people.”
Hubby is not very adventurous when it comes to social engagements. He’d much rather eat snails raw than interact with strangers.
But now that he’s met the two of them, and he really likes them, he’s all like, “Hey, now we can go on the tour and visit with Annelies and Yves.”
I was quite hesitant to book the trip because the tour isn’t exactly cheap. And in these economic times, there’s no guarantee I’ll still have a job tomorrow. But, like Shannon said, if we don’t do it now when we have the money put aside, we’ll always regret it. Never mind that the money we have put aside is our layoff cushion.
Plus, Annelies was anxious to submit a vacation request before the slave drivers we work for have a chance to say, “Nope, sorry. Someone else is already off that week.” (We don’t really work for slave drivers. We have wonderful bosses.)
So I finally booked the tour. Hubby didn’t even balk when I said, “By the way, when we’re in Belgium, we’re going to spend an entire evening with my other coworkers in Belgium, too.” Yep, other people he has never met.
Being a regional employee has its plusses and minuses. There are many, many people I work with on a regular basis who I have never met face-to-face. But even over the phone, I can tell whether I’d like a person socially or not. I’ve met Annelies, of course. I have also met her boss, Leo, who is not only a nice, fun, friendly guy, but he’s great at selecting the right wine to go with dinner. (We had a sales meeting in London a few years back and Leo always seemed to be in charge of selecting the wine.) And then there’s Bruni, who I have not met, but Annelies always sings her praises, so I’m sure we will get along fabulously. We may need to do a girls’ night out during this trip. 🙂
Anyway… here’s the vacation plan. There are quite a few details to work out, but so far we know this…
We will be leaving on a Friday, flying from BWI to Zurich, Switzerland. It’s an overnight flight, so we won’t arrive in Zurich until Saturday. Then we will hop on a train to Seefeld, Austria, just outside of Innsbruck, which will serve as the base for the bike tour, which begins on Sunday.
As you can see from the map, we’ll be riding in Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The following Saturday, we’ll hop a train back to Zurich so we can visit with the lovely McDonald family and see a bit of their temporary country. On Tuesday, we’ll fly from Zurich to Brussels, Belgium, where we’ll meet up with Annelies and Yves for a whirlwind tour of their home country and surroundings. Then, on the following Saturday, we’ll fly back home.
It should be lots of fun. We’re both looking very forward to it.
There’s a lot of planning to do between now and then, but at least I’ll have help (from Annelies, not Hubby).