Honeymoon - Switzerland (23 April to 28 April 2013)
We took a cab from Premier Inn Hotel to the airport to take our flight to Zurich! We're heading to Switzerland. Ailing and Ann went Switzerland last year and they told me it's a beautiful country. I'm definitely so looking forward to it!
23 April 2013
For this flight, we transit at London. We had to spend quite a long time at the airport and so we had our lunch at a restaurant at the airport. The food was really bad but we had no choice since we had limited choices also.
We finally touched down Zurich at around 6 plus! We approached the information counter and was told that a cab to our hotel cost at least CHF60+. That's freaking expensive! So, we decided to take the tram which was pretty simple except that it was so difficult to buy the tickets. It's all in GERMAN. The thing about taking tram in Europe is that you seldom meet a bus conductor. So, it's all about integrity to buy a ticket for the tram ride a not.
Then, we finally reached our Hotel Astor around 8+. It's a serviced apartment with amazing pantry equipped with microwave and a small basin. And there's free WIFI. However, we hated the smoking smell in the room. And the toilet floor is so cold too! Thank god we had planned to stay one night at this hotel, if not I think we would die of suffocation. Haha.
We were not too hungry as we had a late and full lunch, so we settled our dinner with Yan Yan which I brought all the way from Singapore. Haha. We had an early night as usual.
24 April 2013
We went out to search for breakfast early in the morning. We came upon a nice cafe and we went in for croissant. The croissant is yummy! I like it a lot. Haha.
The standard of living in Switzerland is really high. Everything is freaking so expensive. We walked around and explored the train station as we had to activate our Eurail pass to take trains for the next few days. We were thankful that the lady at the counter could speak English! We took note of the timing to take our train later on to go Rhine Falls.
We also went Coop near our hotel. Coop is everywhere in Switzerland. It's like our NTUC! I enjoy doing grocery shopping at Coop as everything looks nice (but expensive). We bought some snacks for our picnic at Rhine Falls later in the afternoon.
We checked out from the hotel and stored our luggage at the hotel while we made our way to Rhine Falls. It's our first time taking the train and I must say I simply love it! There's beautiful scenery along the way and it's accurate! It will never miss the departure time. We were "forced" to buy the first class Eurail pass and so we had to enjoy the first class seats. Haha. But to be frank, first class and second class seats not much difference. Maybe, it's less crowded at first class cabins?
When we reached the station, we were kinda lost and we didn't know where to take the bus since the information on the machine is in German again. Luckily, Jianhui asked the bus driver and he said something Tagskarte and we just bought tickets to Tagskarte though I had no idea what is this. We boarded bus number 10 and we met a helpful lady who told us where to alight to go Rhine Falls.
Rhine Falls is the biggest fall in Europe. The weather is sunny and so when we were there, it was kinda hot. We ate our bread while enjoying the scenery. Then, we bought 2 ice cream cones which cost us CHF7. By the way, we also checked the price of ice cream at Coop. It costs about CHF2.90 at Coop so it's considered not that expensive buying from a tourist attraction.
We walked for a while before we decided to make our way back as we still need to head to Interlaken this late afternoon. We went back to collect our luggage then it's time to take train to Interlaken!
On the comfortable train - First class seats!
When we reach Interlaken West station, I could see that it's totally a tourist attraction. A lot of Chinese and Korean people around. Thanks to Jianhui who had researched before our trip. He would always brings me to the hotel safely. We were so happy to reach Hotel Toscano (about 700m from the station) when we saw the signboard. The receptionist (which we suspected could be the boss) was very friendly and helpful.
Our room number was 208. It's strange that our Manchester room number was 202 and Zurich room number was 204. It's all the even number and level 2. Time for TOTO maybe?
The pillows at Hotel Toscano was square and big just like the ones at Hotel Astor. I guess it's Switzerland's style of pillows? It's too flat for us so we had to fold the pillows to sleep well. Hotel Toscano is relatively a nice hotel for us to stay for 3 nights. No major complaints except that we wish they could give us free WIFI in the room. As it was already late evening, we walked around Interlaken before buying double cheeseburger from McD for dinner.
Our "dumpling" pillows
25 April 2013
As per advice from our friendly receptionist, we woke up early for breakfast to go to Jungfrocjoch, Top of Europe! Jianhui enjoyed the breakfast a lot as there were cornflakes, milk, eggs and lots of bread. As for me, I love the coco crunch with milk and my favourite cheese + biscuits. After our happy breakfast, we headed to Interlaken Ost to take train to Jungfrocjoch! The weather was really good and sunny that we got to enjoy beautiful scenery along the way. We changed trains to trains and finally to a small train. After about 2.5hours on the train, we were finally on the Top of Europe!
It's about lunch time and we decided to eat the kimchi cup noodles which looked damn good! And it cost us CHF7! Expensive but super shiok to eat hot and spicy cup noodles on the mountain. It tasted extremely yummy!
This tasted HEAVENLY!
Then we started our tour! It was really beautiful up there and because of the sun, we don't feel that cold actually. We even played with snow and touched snow with our bare hands! My first time playing with snow! Haha. Then, we ended the tour with a tour at the Ice Palace with ice sculpture. It was really slippery inside that I fell down a few times. Ops. Haha.
With Switzerland's flag!
Ice Kachang! He says I look like Scrat in this photo! haha
Snowball fight! OH no! This is a big piece of snow! Please don't throw at me!
They are enjoying themselves too!
Then, it's a long journey back to Interlaken Ost again. When we finally reached there, we were getting hungry, so we went to our favourite Coop to buy food again! We had a quick lunch at Coop restaurant.
Feeling adventurous, we decided to head to Lucerne! So, we took a train to Lucerne! When we reach Lucerne, it was already quite late around 6 plus. Thankfully, the sun doesn't knock off until 8 plus at Switzerland. So, we got to take photos of the famous Chapel Bridge and walked around while it was still "daytime".
Famous Chapel Bridge
Check out the clock's timing. It's already at 7.45pm and look at the sky. Still daytime.
We took a train back to Interlaken around 8+. As it was going to be a last train back to Interlaken Ost, we had to run super fast to chase the connecting train at Bern. Haha. And so, we reached back to our hotel relatively late at 10 plus.
26 April 2013
Having no major activity today means that it's R&R for us. We had a leisure walk around Interlaken and also enjoyed free WIFI at McDonald's after breakfast. In the afternoon, we headed to Lausanne to collect our race packs! Oh yes, we would be participating in a race in Lausanne! This would be our honeymoon race. I was told by Jianhui that the last runner took 2.5hr to run 20km last year. I'm so stressed by the timing.
When we reached Lausanne, it was raining and it was relatively cold! About 6 degrees celsius - definitely much colder than Interlaken in which Jianhui can survive with T-shirt and jeans. As per usual, Jianhui brought me to our hotel with the map. He's just so good with map and directions which is something that I can never excel in. Our hotel looks so good that I'm so looking forward to check in the next day. From the hotel, we headed to the race starting point which was relatively near.
We could only collect the race packs at 5pm and so we had a walk around the park. It's like our East Coast Park with sea sports activities. When it was nearing 5pm, we went to collect our race pack and there was a queue! We noticed that people here don't speak English, so it can get really irritating. So, I was really relieved when we finally got our race bibs and event T-shirts! Then, it's time to head back to Interlaken West again!
When we were back, we went to a Korean restaurant near our hotel for dinner as it was strongly recommended by Ann Tay. I ordered Ban Fan while Jianhui ordered hot and spicy beef soup. Dinner was really good as I really miss rice. And I miss local food so much. I would always feel this way whenever I went overseas especially to Western country. Too much of western food makes me sick and fat. Haha.
After our sumptuous dinner, we went back to our hotel, getting ready to check out the next day!
27 April 2013
From our recce yesterday, we knew that there wasn't anything much in Lausanne and so we decided to go Lausanne by taking the 12+ train. It's R&R at Interlaken. It started to rain non-stop and so we had no choice but to hide at McDonald's again. It's a nice chilling out place with hot tea. =p We also did some last minute shopping before we checked out from Hotel Toscano and headed to Lausanne.
Gloomy day at Interlaken
This time round, we took a shorter route to our Hotel, Hotel Bellerive. The receptionist could speak good English and he's so helpful. We were also given 2 free bus tickets which allowed us to take the tram to the train station the next day! The hotel room was really good and nice! Simply the best hotel so far! And we also had a lake view from our tiny balcony. All in all, it was a cosy room.
The best hotel so far for our trip!
Seaview from our balcony!
Our complimentary transport cards!
We rested for a while before we started to get ready for the race. Unfortunately, it started raining. Even before the race starting time, the rain persisted. I don't know if we are crazy or what, we decided to go ahead for the race. We ran to the starting point and then we started the race with the earlier batch runners.
A helpful runner helped us to take this photo before we started the race.
The moment we started the race, I kinda regretted it as it was freaking cold! It was so cold that my hands were numb and I had to hid them inside my pockets. All the runners were running super fast. No wonder, most of them could complete the race under 2 hours. And to make things worse, there were a lot of up slopes and down slopes that my legs were breaking. I was totally struggling to run in the cold and fighting the fatigue of running up slope. The good thing about the race was, the people were very supportive and they kept on cheering for us. If not for the rain, I would have enjoyed the race better.
When we ran past our hotel, I was tempted to give up but I told myself that since I had started the race, I must complete it. Jianhui could have ran ahead of me, but he waited for me. Thanks for his encouragement, if not I might have fallen out from the race. When we were nearing the ending point, we ran past McDonald's and so we went to the toilet. It was very warm inside the toilet and I used the heater to warm up my hands before continuing the race. It was totally the toughest 20km ever for me. I had never find 20km so far before in any of my races until now. And we even ran the wrong route which meant that we had ran 21km instead of 20km.
When we finally reached the ending point, I was very relieved that we finally completed the race together in such harsh conditions. We may be the last few to complete the race, but what matters is we did not give up and we had completed the race together. I was joking with Jianhui that god had wanted us to remember the wet weather in NZ and so we had to run in rain for our honeymoon race when Lausanne usually should be sunny in Spring. We were told that they ran out of medals and I was very disappointed as I was thinking
about the medal throughout the whole race. Just hope that they would
really mail the medals to us.
I was feeling very cold and so we went to hide in the medical tent. They thought that we needed medical help and so they gave us dry T-shirts to change and gave us blankets to increase our temperature.
When I felt much better, we went back to our hotel and I was so happy to have a warm bath. We also ate hot noodles which was so shiok.
28 April 2013
We woke up early for breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast was similar to the one we had at Hotel Toscano except that the croissant here is damn nice and we had to cook hard boiled egg here ourselves. After breakfast, we tried to take the tram to recee before going back hotel to check out. We love this hotel so much that we wished we could stay for another night but then again it's kinda boring at Lausanne.
Then, it's our final train ride - heading to Milan!
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Angeline winks
at |3:41 AM|
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Honeymoon - Manchester (20 April to 23 April 2013)
After much planning and anticipation, Jianhui and I went for our honeymoon trip to Manchester - Switzerland - Milan - Greece! It was a long good trip so far. It was like a little adventure for us, trying to understand German, French and even Italian! Now then I know English is really not that international language. But then again, just like what our hotel receptionist at Hotel Toscana was telling us, people at Lausanne do understand English, just that they don't like to speak English. Oh well, I guess it's just their culture. Just like the tourists to Singapore may not understand our Singlish too. Haha.
20 April 2013
It was an overnight flight at 1.40am (Singapore time) for us. Jianhui and I took a cab from our house to the airport on 19 April 2013. Thank goodness that we were both on half day leave so we could still so some last minute shopping to get ready for the trip. And most importantly, to pack our luggage! Haha. We had waited till Friday to pack our luggage.
Our luggages!
My mum, sis, Alan and Gwyneth came to send us off! So happy to see them. Most importantly, my sis brought waist pouch, soft friends (Dave, Sean, Pet and Hana) and travel adapter for me too! Gwyneth was feeling grumpy as she wanted to board the plane with us too. We had a drink at Wang Cafe before boarding the plane.
It was going to be a long flight to Dubai for transit then continued our flight to Manchester. Total of 14 hours. It was nightmare. Nevertheless, I managed to catch some sleep on plane though. As Dubai and Manchester were 6 hours and 7 hours respectively behind Singapore time, I had ate quite a lot of "dinner" on plane.
Transit at Dubai - still looking not too bad ya!
Dubai's M&M. Looking rich! haha
By the time we reached Manchester, we were so happy to be out of the plane. I felt so restricted on plane so I was so happy to be on "land". It feels good to be able to walk on my feet freely. Haha. We took a cab to our first hotel, Premier Inn which was definitely one of our favourite hotels so far.
The bed is comfortable with good pillows. Rooms are clean and not so crowded with 30 minutes free WIFI. Heater is working fine and most importantly, the rooms feel warm. It was relatively cold in Manchester, less than 10 degree celsius.
After resting for a while, we headed out to Old Trafford! It was about less than 1km to Old Trafford from our hotel. Being a Manchester United fan since secondary school days, it was definitely a dream come true for us to be here. We shopped around the merchandise shop before going KFC for dinner. As it had been a long day for us, we slept early that night.
21 April 2013
Early in the morning, we checked online and realized that the tickets for the musuem/stadium tour were sold out. We would be so disappointed if we couldn't go for the tour and so early in the morning, we headed out to Old Trafford, hoping to buy tickets.
To our delight, we could still buy tickets at the ticketing counter! Hurray! The museum had the history of Manchester United, the trophies and highlighting the legends of the club. Most importantly, we were excited to go for the stadium tour! We were finally so close to Old Trafford and we took many many happy photos at Old Trafford. Our guide shared with us the history and even brought us to the changing room! We saw all the players' jersey were hanging at the changing room and of course, we got to take photos with Giggs' jersey! By the way, he wears a L jersey. Haha. We bought quite a lot of merchandise today. Haha.
My favourite manager!
My favourite player, Giggs!
We are finally here!
At the changing room! I had touched their jerseys! Haha
The place where SAF would be sitting for every match
After our tour, it's about time for lunch and so, we went to Hungry House, a restaurant near our hotel. We ordered mixed grill and the beer is so cheap that Jianhui had to order beer too! Lunch was not too bad.
We went back to our cosy hotel to rest for a while before we bought tram tickets to go to the town, Piccality Gardens. The city got nothing much except that there were much more people compared Saliford Quay where we stayed. In fact, Saliford Quay is so quiet with no cars and no people that sometimes, there were only Jianhui and me on the streets. Scary ya? We walked around and even went to Aranda Shopping Mall. We bought coffee at Starbucks to relax for a while and to use free WIFI. By 6pm, they were all closing shops and so we headed back to Saliford Quay.
For dinner tonight, we decided to try F&B. As both of us were relatively full, we ordered only pizza and fries with 2 glass of coke. The coke cost GBP3 but we don't care. We just want to drink coke. Haha. The pizza was not bad and we managed to finish it though we were so full. Then, it's back to cosy time in the hotel! And you know what, we came to know that Manchester City had lost the match to Tottenham. This would mean that our match tomorrow will be a crucial one as we would be crowned 20x Champions if we were to win the match against Aston Villa! =p
22 April 2013
Jianhui wanted to eat his favourite McDonald's breakfast today and so he went to google the nearest McDonald's. We walked quite a long distance before we managed to find McDonald's. Weather was really cold so it's a joy to hide inside the restaurant, eating hot food and drinking hot tea. It was a great breakfast and the sausage McMuffin tasted quite similar to Singapore's version.
After breakfast, we strolled back to Saliford Quay. We decided to take tram and travel all around Manchester. We took different routes and we even went past Manchester City's home ground. Haha. Then, we went back to Old Trafford to buy more merchandise before heading back to hotel to get ready for the match tonight. Oh yes, we would be watching the match live at Old Trafford!
Manchester City's home ground
Around 6 plus, there were a lot of people hanging around Old Trafford and there were a lot of vans selling hotdogs, burgers and drinks. Many
traders outside were selling 20x champions scarf and all kinds of
scarfs. We bought the match scarf to commemorate that we came to watch
this match on this date. We bought a burger, jumbo hotdog buns and a
bottle of pepsi for dinner.
Then, we entered the stadium again. This time, we would be watching the match. Our seats were very very very high up with a lot of stairs. But, I guess we had not choice since those good tickets were probably booked by the season pass holders. Whatever it is, we were happy to watch the match.
By 7.30pm, the stadium were almost all filled out and the players started to be on the field doing warming up exercises. I really regret not bringing binoculars as I could hardly see Giggs. Haha. By now, the atmosphere at the stadium was very high and all the local fans were chanting Man Utd chants non-stop.
And finally, the match finally started! With less than a minute, Robin Van Persie scored the first goal! Hurray! It was right in front of our side! So happy! The whole first half was very exciting as Robin Van Persie scored a hat-trick at first half. All the fans were very high as this win would mean that we were going to be Champions for the 20th time! We cheered and chanted non-stop.
When the final whistle was blown by the referee, all the fans were super happy! Yeah! We're the CHAMPIONS! And to be able to celebrate the championship with the fans right here at Old Trafford was truly a great and memorable experience which I would never forget for life. At least, I could tell my kids that I went to watch a Man Utd match live, they won the match and it was also the same match that they were crowned Champions. Haha. The players were all happily celebrating on the field at Old Trafford. =p
Even when we left the stadium, everybody was in high spirits! And we also bought the 20x Champions scarf as souvenir. Then, we headed back to our hotel happily.
It was definitely a great trip to Manchester (especially to Old Trafford) and the next day, we would be heading to Switzerland!
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Angeline winks
at |6:47 PM|
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I fell into a drain
For the first time, I fell into a drain at a race. And the best part was, I had fallen into a drain at the first 1km. There was a human jam at the water point and so I "detour" to the pathway. As it was pitch dark, I did not notice the drain and so I fell into it.
Medic came to my rescue and after cleaning my wound, I continued with the race. I was okay to run, but my wound continued to bleed. When I saw the next medic, I got him to help me to bandage my leg.
I'm amazed that I had managed to complete the race with an injured leg. =p
Another race done. Looking forward to more exciting races in 2013!
The happy finisher with his beer and the "casualty" after 2XU Run 2013
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Angeline winks
at |1:31 PM|
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