Euro Christmas Trip 2010 (part 2)

One of the good things about visiting places in the winter is that tourist traffic is way down. The downside, though, is that many things aren't open or have weird hours.

On Christmas Eve day, pretty much everything we tried to visit was closed. Families in Europe usually get together for their holiday dinner on 12/24. After driving around for most of the day, we got back to Brugge and had dinner at a Thai restaurant. Nothing too exciting.

Christmas was the day of this trip we were probably looking most forward to. It was the day we'd be going back to our favorite cafe and I'll save that for a separate post.

We got back into Brugge after dinner on Christmas and went out to bar with a huge beer list - Cambrinus. You have to love it when you go to a place in Belgium and the beer menu is an inch thick book. While we were sitting there, the couple from Naples came in too. We found out we were all going to be in Brussels for New Years, so we tentatively planned to meet up.

On the 26th, we headed south with the ultimate goal of making it to Luzern Switzerland and visit with a friend from our recent raft trip. Along the way, we decided to swing through Westvletern. Thankfully they were open and we got to enjoy all three of their beers: 12, 8, and blond. So good. While we were still finishing our beers, I went to the gift shop and picked up a couple 6-packs. You're allowed a max of 24 per person, but I thought I'd try to be conservative and same some space in the luggage. Christine talked me into picking up an additional 12. :)

We continued on south to Paris. We decided to try and go to Christine's favorite boulangerie (which ended up being closed) and then stay in Dijon. As you'd expect, we got into Paris and hit traffic. It was my first time driving in Paris though, so that was fun. I love driving in Europe. It's aggressive, and in the city you zig-zag through lanes as you see fit. On the highway, the left lane is used for passing. It's an amazing concept.

We thought about just staying in Paris for the night, but eventually decided to carry on to Dijon. In retrospect, we should have just stayed in Paris. There was an hour long traffic jam on the way to Dijon which meant that we were going to get there too late to go out and grab a nice dinner. We ended up just eating at a pizza joint across from the hotel. It was a bummer to be driving out there in the dark too, because we didn't get to see the countryside. Although, it had been overcast and foggy in Europe since we arrived, so even in the daylight we wouldn't be able to see much.

The next morning in Dijon we went to the bakery near our hotel and they had surprisingly good croissants and pain au chocolate. I wish we would have picked up more. It was another dreary day, so we could even see any of the mountains as we made our way into Switzerland. In Luzern, we set up at a nice hotel downtown. Christine had some work to do, so I walked around town and did some shopping.

In the evening, we went out to dinner with our friend, Petra, who we met on our Grand Canyon raft trip. We went out to dinner at a local brew-pub with good beer and Petra gave us the scoop on some things to do around Luzern. After dinner, we walked around and then went for drinks at a bar top floor of a nearby hotel with a nice view of the city.

We were ready to see the sights the next morning, but it was another foggy day. It would have been nice to ride gondolas up to the nearby mountains, but there wouldn't have been much of a view. If we had brought some outdoor attire, we could have played in the snow. Instead we walked around the city some more and decided that we should maybe head out the next morning if it wasn't clear out.

That evening, Petra invited us over for a Swiss dish called raclette. It involves melting cheese under a tabletop grill with some onions and bacon and then pouring it over potatoes. So yeah, it was pretty good.