Paris in a day

In July 2005, I flew to London for an executive board meeting. Garry accompanied me to undertake some initial recognizance for our eventual relocation three months later. It proved to be an eventful trip. In addition, to a week in London, we also visited my brother Hamish and his family in Austria, as well as enjoying a day in Munich. 

My company gave us a limited budget for Garry’s travel costs. He took this on as a challenge, did some hardcore research online, and found an incredibly cheap business-class airfare courtesy of SWISS airline. The final route we booked took us via Singapore, Zurich, and Munich to London. The fare was so rare that my hardcore travel agent struggled to find it in her reservation system. In the end, I had to send her a copy of the fare conditions we'd sourced from the web.

The only negative about these discounted fares was the SWISS business class seats. They didn’t fully recline so our dreams of a lie-flat bed were thwarted. Despite this drawback, we slept reasonably well in our flat, but sloping, beds. Although, a group of passengers seated in the cabin's bulkhead row was rather creative. They convinced the cabin crew to elevate their footrests into a near-horizontal position by propping them up with eskies from the galley.

Source: Getty Images

A few days after we arrived in London the city was shaken by the deadly 7 July suicide bombings on the Underground. 52 people lost their lives on that fateful day. Another 700 were injured as four suicide bombers struck during rush hour. The wreck of the Number 30 double-decker bus, pictured above, has become a defining photograph of the attack. It was blown apart in Tavistock Square by the fourth, and final, suicide bomber.

I was in my board meeting at the Baglioni Hotel when the news broke. Upstairs, Garry was preparing to take the tube into town for exploratory meetings with recruiters. He was understandably shocked by how close to home it felt. His appointments were canceled soon after as public transport shut down citywide. Not an ideal introduction to life in the UK capital.

The following weekend, on a sunny Saturday, Garry and I took time out from our hectic schedule to enjoy a more appealing aspect of London life. We caught an early morning train to Paris for a quick day trip. This was my second time through the Channel Tunnel on Eurostar. My first trip was another day trip in 1998. If you ask me, it’s still mind-blowing that you can board a train in London and arrive in the City of Lights three hours later.

Our day trip started with a visit to Notre Dame. While we didn’t climb its iconic bell towers, we did stop to stand on the Zero Mile marker in the plaza out front. This is the point from which all distances are measured from Paris nationwide. From here we walked across the Seine to Place de la Concorde via the ornate Hôtel de Ville, the Louvre, and the eternally exquisite, Jardin des Tuileries.

We then embarked on a metro rail tour of central Paris featuring some of its more distant sights. This included the Arc de Triomphe, and of course, the Eiffel Tower. Looking back we covered an impressive distance in a relatively short space of time. Undoubtedly, one of the more memorable moments that day was a postcard-perfect view of the Eiffel Tower framed by Baroque-inspired buildings on Rue Buenos Ayres.

Finally, before dashing back to Gare de Nord, we completed our French excursion with a brief visit to Montmartre. It was here, on the steps of Sacre Coeur Basilica, that we joined the tourist hoards for a classic sunset view of the Parisian skyline. Then, shortly after 10:00pm, we were back at Waterloo Station in the heart of London. 

I must admit that 18 years later I can’t recall many details about the trip. For example, did we venture up the Eiffel Tower? I don't think we did. If I recall correctly the queue to climb it was insane. Did we stop for a drink while wandering along the Avenue des Champs Élysées? I'm sure we bought at least a cold drink. After all, it was a July Summer’s day.

Kaprun Hochgebirgsstauseen

Here’s another retrospective post on our travel adventures. Shortly before relocating to London Garry and I flew to Europe for an initial recognizance visit. At the time my company was keen to reassure Garry that our relocation would be a positive experience. We flew SWISS airline to Zurich and then on to Munich before finally arriving in the UK.

The trip to Munich was shoe-horned into our itinerary in part to allow me to meet with several key European executives based there, and visit my brother in Austria. At the time, Hamish and his family lived in Kitzbuhel, approximately two hours by train from Munich.

We flew into Munich early on the morning of Friday, 1 July. I then spent the day in meetings with the team in Munich while Garry ventured out to grab a late breakfast and explore the neighbourhood. The Munich office was located about 15 minutes walk from the grounds of Nymphenburg Palace, one of the city’s popular tourist attractions.

Nymphenburg Palace was originally built as a summer residence for, Max Emanuel, who was born in 1662 to the Bavarian Elector Ferdinand Maria and his wife, Henriette Adelaide of Savoy. It subsequently became the primary residence of Bavarian royalty for the next two hundred years, The complex and its expansive gardens cover more than 200 hectares in the middle of the city.

Unfortunately, Garry never got to see the palace. In a rare moment of culture shock, he abandoned plans to tour the grounds after struggling to order breakfast in a local café where no one spoke English. Instead, he returned to the office and spent most of his time hanging out in the lobby.

Once I’d completed my duties for the day, we caught a late afternoon train to Wogel where we were met by Hamish. He then drove us back to Kitzbuhel. My parents were also staying at the time, so our arrival kicked off a minor family reunion. We spent a busy weekend with the family before heading on to London the following Monday.

While we were in Kitzbuhel, Hamish took Garry and I on a day trip to the Kaprun Hochgebirgsstauseen, one of the region’s popular tourist attractions. It’s an incredibly scenic hydroelectric complex consisting of two high mountain reservoirs, Wasserfallboden and Mooserboden, embedded in the alpine landscape at 2,036 meters above sea level. 

Hamish drove us into the area via the picturesque Thun Pass. We then bought a combined travel pass that included two bus rides, separated by an exhilarating transfer on the Lärchwald inclined lift. This is the biggest open platform inclined lift in Europe and the largest track gauge in the world for a passenger rail car. It carries up to 185 passengers at a time and lifts you 431 metres over a length of only 820 metres.

During the construction phase of the Kaprun high mountain reservoirs, this was the only means of transporting heavy equipment, construction materials, and lorries into the mountains. After the completion of the dams, it was converted into the tourist attraction that we enjoyed. Likewise, the narrow winding mountain tunnels our tour buses passed through are another enduring dam-building legacy.

The multi-modal journey is well worth the effort. As our final bus came out of a spiraling road tunnel, we were greeted by a breathtaking view of Grossglockner, the highest mountain in Austria. It’s 3,798 metres high and is surrounded by equally photogenic snow-clad peaks. On the day we visited, everything simply dazzled in the brilliant summer alpine sunshine.