July 2, 2013
Guten Morgen Salzburg! Well, actually we were not in Salzburg yet but in a small town called Hof bei Salzburg by the Fuschl See. This town boasts Schloss Fuschl, a castle-turned-luxury-hotel with > 300 Euros/nite room rate, which was only 10 minutes walk from where we were staying.
The mountain air was so clean and crisp in the morning and the view was spectacular. See for your self...
Salzburg itself was only 30 minutes drive from here. And ooh, Salzburg literally means salt castle. It was the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a famous Austrian composer; and also as the setting of Rodger and Hammerstein's musical "The Sound of Music".
We arrived in Salzburg quite early in the morning, around 10 A.M. We did had some trouble of finding a car park close enough to the old city center. First thing we did was to find a info center that offers city tour. We took the 2-hour tour around the city. We took the 1 P.M. tour so that left us with some time to have a stroll and explore.
The street in the city center was pretty narrow and full of tourists. It was quite hard to stroll in a comfortable pace. But, I must say, the buildings were sooo beautiful and looked romantic.
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| Too narrow street, too many people |
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| Mozart's birthhouse |
The tour started at 1 P.M. from the Mirabelle Garden. If you have watched the Sound of Music movie, you'll recognize this place in the scene where Maria and the Von Trapp children were singing the second half of Do, Re, Mi.
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| Welcome to the Mirabelle Garden |
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| This garden made me want to run around and sing Do-Re-Mi. |
The tour took us around to Mirabelle Garden, some settings of the Sound of Music movie, and around the suburbs of Salzburg.
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| That mountain over there, it's in Germany...=D |
At the end of the tour, we were given free tickets to go to up to the Festung Hohensalzburg.
First, we took the funicular (cliff railway) up to the castle. Vai and Mika were scared of the journey. The view was, spectacular....
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| To the fortress!! |
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| Inside the mountain... |
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| What a hot and tiring day! |
We left the castle at around 5 P.M. and had an early dinner at a small tratoria in the city center. The shops were closed by the time we finished dinner so no shopping was done in Salzburg. But Vai did get herself a dirndl...=)
July 3, 2013
Heading back to Amsterdam via Durbach and Paris. Left Salzburg very early as we need to reach Durbach before 5 P.M. However, we ended up staying in Strasbourg instead, mainly because it would create less chaos.
The hotel was quite unique. the lobby was supposed to be an outdoor court but they put a glass wall to cover it.
Day 19
July 4, 2013
So, it's 7:30 AM now. Had a cup of coffee at the train station then waited for the TGV train to come and take us to Paris. The info on which platform the train was leaving was only made available 10 minutes prior to departure.
After 3 hours or so of train journey, we arrived at the Gare de l'Est. Bienvenue à Paris! Went straight to our apartment near the Opera, and most importantly, the Galleries Lafayette =D.
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| Much better view from the apartment window. |
After dropping off the stuff in the room, went straight to the Eiffel Tower. It wasn't a good day to take pictures here as the sky was cloudy and gloomy. :-(
After a nice long walk along the Seine, a 30 minute boat tour, some more walks, we got stuck in the middle of the big rue with the Arc de Triomphe in the background. It was a 3-minute wait so why not make the most of if by....taking pictures! yeeayy. Not me of course. I already made it across the street. MamaHippo and Vai were so sloooooww!
Then....some good 30 minute walk to go back to the hotel. Just walk, no shopping, though it seemed that the boutiques along the way were tempting MamaHippo...
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| Shopping, anyone? |
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| Fancy queueing for € 800 shoes? |
July 5, 2013
I really don't like the Metro stations here. It's very not stroller friendly to the max! Stairs everywhere, elevators and escalators were scarce and the people were very not helpful. MamaHippo were trying hard to transport 2 children and 1 stroller down the stairs, and they were complaining that we were holding them up. Seriously? If we were in Japan, the U.S. or Singapore, many people would lend a hand. But here? They just snorted and carried on.
Vai's head got bumped pretty hard during this process. She then said, "Ouch! Excuse me, you just bumped your bag on my head and that really hurts!" but the lady just shrugged and left without saying sorry. How rude was that?
At the exit, they either put hard-to-push double doors that hit you back on the bum when you were through right at top of the stairs (imagine mommies who had to carry strollers, hold her child's hand while carrying the baby bag at the same time) or an iron rotating door that fits only one person. Anyhow, both exit options always requires climbing up stairs.
So, we did finally reach the bottom part of the Sacré-Coeur Beautiful isn't it? We did climb that numerous stairs to reach the church. It was mainly MamaHippo's fault. She thought that there would be some sort of ramps at the sides where she could push me but there wasn't. So MamaHippo carried me all the way to the top. Woohoo....=D
And this was the view from the Sacré-Coeur.
After enjoying the view and ate ice cream, we started heading down through the narrow streets of Montmartre. We stopped by at the Le Tire Bouchon, MamaHippo's favorite crêperie.
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| nutella crêpe |
Three nutella crêpes, 1 chocolate crêpe 2 cheese crêpes, 1 bottled water and 2 cups of coffee later, we all head back to the hotel.
July 6, 2013
Spent the morning shopping for shoes and left for Amsterdam via Gare du Nord in the afternoon. One of the Thalys engine broke down somewhere between Paris and Bruxelles, so the speed was reduced significantly. We had to change trains in Brussels. We ended up missing our train connection to Schiphol and had to take the local train and sprinter to reach our final destination. So, in total, we changed trains 3 times and with our ridiculous number of luggage, you'd probably understand why there were no pictures at all for this day.
After all that stress, we reached Sheraton Schiphol at 9 P.M. and zzzZZZzzzZZZzzz....
July 7, 2013
Another chaotic day =D. Spent the afternoon at the Den Haag shopping street. You see, shops here closed at 6 P.M. So MamaHippo had to move quick, quick, quick to find all the "oleh-oleh" for the family, relatives and friends in Jakarta. Not to mention finding the "titipan". With 2 tired girls and me, she basically couldn't move as fast as she could and no, she didn't have time to take pictures today while shopping. After shopping, we went to Zoetermeer to show Vai and Mika the old house where MamaHippo used to live when she was little and the hospital where she was born.
July 8, 2013
Last day of shopping! We spent the whole morning packing, then drove down to Den Haag for lunch and some more shopping. MamaHippo was happy that she finally found everything for everybody.
Her happiest purchase were these... :-D
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| MamaHippo went crazy in Alberthein. She bought jars of PB, boxes of chicken soup, stroopwafels, chocolate sprinkles and lots of lots of extra salty dropjes. Yummm.... |
Some kroket and few hundred cows later, they reached the hotel and started packing.
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| All empty! Had to wait for some time for them to fry some yummy kroket. |
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| I wonder whether there are more cows here than human? |
Day 24
July 9, 2013
Good morning Schiphol! Looking out of our hotel room window, I saw the Garuda Indonesia plane, waiting to take us home. So I snug back inside my cozy and warm travel carry bag. It was a great and exhausting trip. Hopefully one day, I could come back again.
Day 24
July 9, 2013
I arrived in Jakarta on Wednesday, July 10 at 10 A.M. There was 1 hour delay in Amsterdam and 3 hours delay in Abu Dhabi. I was greeted by the traffic jam and the hot humid air. It felt good to be home!
I was then returned to my beloved owner on July 7. They were happy to see me again. Thank you so much for letting me go see the world!!
And thank you HippoFamily for taking me with you all on your wonderful trip! Until next time!! :-)
