Yes, I am back, travel worn, jet lagged but hopefully compos mente. Hubs and I did a huge circuit, starting in London with the Blogger’s Bash (amazing), then the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, and France before returning to Schiphol for the flight to Heathrow and home. I’ll be posting on all the things we did and saw over the next few weeks, but first…
My ten reasons for not choosing the summer to tour Europe
- People – hordes and hordes and hordes of people, many of them clustered in crowds around someone holding a flag. Masses moving like lemmings.
- Long lines to get in to see various things – wait time so long we sometimes gave up (coupled with #5).
- Two lane roads.
- Two lane roads with huge trucks. So much merchandise moves by truck in Europe. The only fun was guessing the origination of the truck (hint: there is a one or two letter designation on the license).
- Heat. We had more than a week of heat in the 90s. Ennervating.
- Hotel rooms with no A/C. I slept sans clothes that whole week. One night it was so bad we considered sleeping in the car, which did have A/C.
- BMW drivers. Good grief, they never drove by us at a speed any less than 20 km over the limit, and we stuck to the speed limit. Plus they were rude, flashing their lights and beeping their horns and moving in and out of traffic. (Sorry to any of you who drive a BMW – I’m sure this is not you!)
- Road construction on long stretches of major highways, with the attendant parking lots.
- Incredibly sticky insects. Our windshield was a testimony to their lives and required a lot of elbow grease each time we stopped for gas.
- Countries which are part of the EU but don’t use Euros (England, the Czech Republic, and Austria), necessitating changing money.
We’ve decided that the best time to tackle our next adventure in Europe will be November or March. The downside is you have to bring warm clothes. And the roads could have snow.
Did we have fun? YES. and stay tuned for that!
I hate to tell you this, but June isn’t summer. Summer season starts July – and it’s even worse, because the schools are out, and Europe is on vacation. The big thing was, you got our heatwave. It’s not usually like that. Didn’t you see how much we complained? We’re back to normal this week – 65 ish. 🙂 Mind you, climate change means we get stranger weather every year.
I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Next time, come and visit.
PS no.10 is an all year round thing 😉 so is 8… 7… 6…(you can find them, though — use a chain like Premier Inn) 4… 3… (glad you didn’t stick to the autoroutes/ autobahns/motorways, they are boring)
Whoops! I guess it is to us because schools are out. Will come and visit next time – will stay in the UK.
We did do a lot of autobahn – highway driving, mainly because we only stayed in one place for 2 days. Stay tuned for the entire saga!
Noelle, if you didn’t like Europe and Britain in what was an unusually hot at early summer you will hate it even much more in the winter, snow rain ice gales. Everything in Britain,roads,railways airports all grind to a halt!! But I hope you come back for next year’s Bash! 😊💜💙💗
Actually, Willow, I love Europe at any time, but I’ve been there in March, and I liked that weather, better! Probably because my son was doing the driving!
💜💙 Europe yes but the daft old UK is another kettle of fish, I admit it is and I live here!!😊🙃
🙂 🙂
April was lovely and you still get the new blooms. Just be sure you avoid Easter since you have school holidays again.
We actually were in Germany in March last year and it wasn’t too cold – just a little gray and not overrun with tourists.
Yay for back and double YAY for fun! 🙂 The heat there is so much more oppressive without AC. I remember one trip to Scotland and a hotel window that only opened three inches. I liked to have died.
The fun I’ll get to soon – bo,y the heat really did us in. I was actually sick with it one night., Killed my appetite for a week!
What’s air conditioning?
Only joking I’ve had it in hotels 😄
You should have my room in student halls, the windows only open a few cms.
I went up to Glasgow during the heatwave and had to get my coat out, Scotland is much quieter in June bar Edinburgh City Centre on a Saturday.
I had a room like that in a dorm in Fargo, ND, one summer. I went to a hardware store to get a fan and was told no fans until the NEXT summer. They sold out of them in June. Scotland is always cool – but the weather changes every 5 min or so!
So true ☀️🌤⛅️☁️🌧⛈ in the same day even 😁.
I gave in and got a fan and the weather turned the next day hehe
This is so interesting (and amusing in parts!) to an English person!!!! Yep, we don’t have the space you chaps have, so people everywhere…. look at Europe versus the US on the map, with special regard to England, ha ha!!!! As for aircon in hotels, etc – it’s not something that would ever occur to me. I think we just go with the weather! I know I spent a whole, horrible week in Turkey one summer having showers every half hour because it was the only way to keep cool! (btw we’re not in the EU anymore. You’ve heard of all the Brexit stuff? BIG thing!!).
As for waiting in queues…. it’s what Europeans do. Must be a race memory from WW2, I suppose – Mum once told me that in those days, if you saw a queue, you joined it…!
.Must be because we are older now and live in A/C in the South for half the year! When we lived in Prague in the 1970s and saw a queue from the tram, you immediately got off and joined the line. It meant something rare was being sold, like oranges or veggies from Bulgaria!
Oh, that IS like in the war, just as mum said! Yes, from what I have heard about the southern US, you’ve gotta have that AC. In England, we prefer to moan about the weather. There, that’s an English culture snippet for you!
We used to moan about the weather in New England in the winter! Living in Prague under Communist rule was quite the adventure.
Living in Prague sounds amazing. Have you written any posts about it? I loved reading Milan Kunderra novels back when I was at university. Such a thinker! I didn’t get to Prague but I did live in Germany in 1992 and did get to see Leipzig before it had been spruced up after years of communist rule.
I was trying to explain the cold war to my kids the other day. My grandmother was a concert pianist and she performed in Russia in 1977 and I still remember it was such a big deal and she brought me back a Russian doll and some coins.
xx Rowena
We loved living there and the experience was one of a lifetime. I did write about it:
https://saylingaway.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2880&action=edit
https://saylingaway.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2882&action=edit
I’ll have more to say as I work through our 3 weeks in Europe!
Queues and England… it is like heritage and has to be done the etiquette must be adhered to though. No longer part of Europe we can separate mentally from the aautobans . Because we are small we are very full, so people are everywhere all year round. It was late spring when you came as Summer begins in July now that is busy. Air con… you mean that fridge the one I make restruaunts turn off as it gives a nasty draft. Haha! Each to their own, you packed in a huge amount, but I for one was pleased you fit us in. *waves* happy summer Noelle.
We;ve been in Europe in the late fall and very early spring and a lot of the crowds were absent, which was nice. Of course the scenery was spare, but the Alps were gorgeous. The A/C need comes from the fact we live in A/C for about half the year since it is so HOT here! We’ve become rather heat intolerant.
I am pleased you enjoyed it despite the lack of aircon.
So much of this is very true Noelle – haha! We just don’t have the space you have out there in the States. But I would always recommend people to visit here (Britain) in the Spring or Autumn – my favourite seasons. No need for A/C then, though you’ll probably need a woolly jumper, or two!
We spent ten days in Germany in March, and it was the perfect time for traveling. Not green but not crowded!
Air Condtioning is one of the things I noticed on my many trips to the US that ‘divide’ us.
I used to check the temperatures for a given destination and packed accordingly, only to find myself freezing in the hotel when it was hot outside because the air conditioning was centrally adjusted and on in full swing. When I tempered with the pre-set low temperatures they often reversed back to cold after a while or became too hot.
I’m glad you had a good time, though! Prague is wonderful
Have to agree with you about the A/C here – but we couldn’t live without it in NC. Some friends of mine tried it, and ended up with mold everywhere, included their clothes and shoes. We keep our temp at 72 in the summer and 68 in the winter.
It’s sad to say buy I totally agree on this, I have the same reasons, plus kids are not in school most of them are in travel mode with their parents shouting and running all over the place. It’s kinda tiring sometimes, I usually travel before and after summer ends 😉
I remember traveling with my kids and worrying they would disturb others. We were lucky in that they were good travelers and minded well – much better than at home!
It’s true that having children you would have more patience and understanding towards others, maybe I won’t understand it now since I don’t have kids yet. but yeah kids sometimes tends to disturb other people unintentionally it’s clearly not their fault.
We were also older parents – maybe that helped?
Yeah 😊