Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Thursday, 20 August. For reasons of their own, GCT required us to return to Basel to catch our flight home. Our train (#9732) left Verona promptly at 4:32 p.m. after only a two-minute stop. Unfortunately, one of our friends, who had been helping us with our suitcases, was still onboard. He rode with us to the next stop, Peschiera on Lake Garda, then caught a train back to Verona. We got to Milan at 5:55. Our 6:25 train to Basel (CIS 56) arrived in the station about 15 minutes later and we boarded. Immediately we realized that the train had been sitting out in the sun all day. The temperature in the station was 95, and the inside of the train was at least 20 degrees warmer. The feeble air conditioning came on when the train started moving, but then we were out in the sun again and it could make no headway against the heat. A conductor eventually came by and opened the small transom above the window. It was still 95 outside, but that actually was enough to bring the inside temperature down a few degrees. This time we were thankful when we reached Domodosola and changed to the Swiss train.
Of course, before that we passed Lake Maggiore again. This time the sun was in the west, and the scenery was even better than it had been a few days before. The stops were almost the same as they had been coming south, except that we stopped at Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, instead of Gallerate. By the time we emerged from the Simplon Tunnel at Brig, it was 8:20 and getting too dark to see much. We got to Basel at 10:32 and walked across the street to the Grand Hotel Euler on Bahnhofplatz. We were very pleased with the quality of the hotel, as well as the reasonable price. Friday, 21 August. When we got up we had to repack our suitcases for the trip home. (We had carried a smaller carryon suitcase inside one of the large suitcases for the train trip.) At about 8:30 we had breakfast in a cafe on Bahnhofplatz. Then we got our luggage and checked out of the hotel. There was a free city bus between the train station and the airport that ran every 15 minutes. We caught it at 9:45 and were at the airport by 10:30. Our flight to Munich was at 1:05 p.m. There we took a 3:20 flight to Newark. We had made many similar flights before but had never seen Greenland. This flight took us over its southeast corner and we had some fantastic views.
We landed at Newark about 6:30 and were met by our daughter-in-law, Mina. We spent most of the weekend with Larry's family. Saturday, 22 August. After lunch Larry and Mina drove us to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart (1899-1954) in Newark. We were amazed that such an impressive church was there. It had taken 55 years to build and rivaled many of the large cathedrals we have seen in Europe, in both in size and architecture. For dinner we all went to the Greek Taverna in Montclair.
Sunday, 23 August. After breakfast we drove back to our home in Massanutten, arriving about 5:00 p.m. Observations. We initially had some reservations about taking this trip because we thought we had already been to almost all the places on the itinerary. Although that was largely true, we still found the trip very interesting and enjoyable. The weather wasn't as good as we expected for August, but it wasn't that bad. We thought the daily itinerary could be improved at some of the stops (e.g., see discussion for Strasbourg). We often felt that we didn't have enough free time. Much of that, though, was our own fault for taking too many of the optional tours. Some of our most pleasant days (e.g., Boppard) were when we passed up the optional tour. Our dissatisfaction with GCT's policies on "breakaways" (staying over on your own after a tour) grew significantly with this trip. We had stayed over a number of times before and always had some problem or other, but they usually were minor or we were able to work something out with our Personal Travel Advisor (PTA). This time, though, GTC's inflexible policies were ridiculous and cost us two days and about an extra and unnecessary $1,000. Worse, the PTA seems to have disappeared and no one at GCT was willing to address the problem. (NOTE: I had previously complained repeatedly to GCT
about its breakaway policies, but to no avail. After this trip, I wrote
GCT regarding this trip. Several months later they adopted a much more
liberal policy, though one still involving fees that seem unjustified.) Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
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