Winter 2016 trip! part 1

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته and good day!

Disclaimer: It's gonna be a long one. =P
 
My cousin, her aunt/uncle and friend came to visit before Christmas. This cousin of mine is more like a big sister than a cousin, since we have been so close ever since I was born. Her mum, my aunt, used to breastfed me because her son is only a year older than me. 

They came on the 22nd and stayed until boxing day (you need to spend boxing day in London, of course), and planned to go to Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Czech Republic on the 27th. They had been planning for months. My bestie and I just tagged along. We didn't plan anything from transportation to accommodation to places of interests. We just bought our plane tickets and laid back. This would be the first trip that I had no involvement whatsoever in planning it. 

On the 27th, we took a very early flight to Nuremberg, Germany. We didn't even get a good night sleep since we needed to go to the airport by 4am. 

 

K. Yong and her many..many nganga (mouth open) poses. LOL 

We landed in Nuremberg around 9am and immediately go to the car rental company. 

 

What did I tell you...ahaks!

My cousin had made a booking earlier, but to our luck, they messed up and had no cars for us. My cousin said that she could not except her reason and just saying sorry, since it would do us any good and asked the girl to find us a car, even if she had to ask from other companies, which she did.

 

Before the bad news of no car available. Still very happy and upbeat.

We finally managed to get a car by Sixt, which turned out to be a lot better than the one we booked, with better price! There's always a reason when something happened, innit?

 

As you might know, Europe drives on the right hand side, with the driver being on the left hand side of the car. I've driven before in Amsterdam and Brussels, but this time our driver is K. Yong. 

We head directly to Lucerne, Switzerland. It takes about 4 hours of driving. Pffft! With all the mumbo jumbo of the rental cars took us back a couple of hours. To drive in Switzerland, you have to buy the billette (kind of like road tax) before the border. It costs us €38! It was quite expensive if you ask me. The billette can be used for 17 days. 

We've already stopped somewhere in Germany to buy groceries since everything in Switzerland are expensive. We arrived in Lucerne as it was already dark, so we just wanted to check into our bnb and have a rest. Funnily enough, as we arrived, there was another bump, a misunderstanding in the booking. The guy that was waiting for us was surprised to see so many of us and said the room that we booked is only for 2 people. We were shocked and thought, where else are we going to sleep? If at the hotel, surely it will drill a hole in our wallets. The guy called his boss, told her what happened and we showed our booking confirmation (which is why it is important to bring them with you). Luckily, they have another apartment that can fit 5 people. There were six of us, but it doesn't matter since we can just squeeze in. 

It turned out, that apartment is somewhat like a penthouse. As you went up the elevator, it'll take you directly to the apartment. Just watch this video so I don't have to post a lot of pictures of it.

 

It was huge!!! There's one bedroom with one king size bed and a single bed on the side. The living room has a sofa bed. Huge flat screen tv (not that we're going to have time to watch anything). The bathroom was very nice with a skylight. Huge storage space.The kitchen even has a steamer. I mean..who put a steamer at a bnb?? I would live here if it was mine.They even have a porch, which I only went out to the next morning. 

I don't want to talk much about the place since I didn't have any info about it, but if you like, I could ask my cousin about it. Just email me.

Moving on..we went around the city that night before going to bed. We stopped at the Chapel Bridge and took some night sceneries pics.

 

Playing 'rebut tiang' in the cold. Ignore the jammies trousers. Didn't bother to change before going out. 

After wearing ourselves out, we went to bed and head out early the next morning after breakfast (my first trip with complete meals, every time too!). I need to stop here since it has been too long of a post already. Here's a sneak peak of the next one...

 

tada.....until next time..