Big Picture
Hello! This is part 1 of our Europe trip in 2013. In this post, you will see our journey from Singapore to our first destination, Florence. The journey took 15+ hours with transits in Zurich and Milan. Buckle up your seatbelts and ready for take off!
- Part 1 Flight, Zurich, Florence (this post)
- Part 2 Pisa, Rome
- Part 3 Vatican, Rome
- Part 4 Venice
- Part 5 Salzburg
- Part 6 Neuschwanstein
- Part 7 Paris
- Part 8 Zermatt
- Part 9 Luzern
Flight
We started our adventure at 20 October 2013, with LX179 departing Singapore to Zurich at 23:00.
LX179 was a SwissAir Airbus A340-300 (which is an old model, after I searched for it). The seat configuration was 2-4-2 for Economy class. As someone who always traveled with regional SilkAir at most, this plane was certainly the best that I have traveled with. Entertainment system on your seats! Yay!
12-hours in a plane was a new thing to me, although most of it was gone in the sleep. I think the cabin lights were on for 2 hours in the beginning and 1 hour at the end of the flight. We were given supper almost immediately after take off and a breakfast closer to landing. I would say I am satisfied with the flight, especially considering its S$700 price tag!
We landed in Zurich at 06:00, and we had to take the airport train to get to the arrival terminal. The airport was small, quite surprising actually. Or maybe it’s just the smaller terminal we arrived on. I felt that Changi Airport is much bigger. The air outside the airport was cold. It felt like air conditioning was turned on outside the buildings and off inside buildings.
Train Zurich-Milan
Zurich railway (Bahn) is located a crossing away from the airport. I feel that the Bahn is bigger than the airport terminal itself. We went to ticket office to collect our Zurich-Milan tickets, which was our next immediate destination, and also Paris-Interlaken tickets for a week later. Afterwards we went to the baggage office to ship one of our suitcase that contained ski clothes directly to Zermatt, for 12 CHF. I would say this is one of the best travel features inside Switzerland, a.k.a. better luggage management. This nifty little feature was the one thing that enabled us to go extreme lightpacking with confidence…
To go to Milan, we needed to go to the main train station in Zurich HB. Train ticket from Zurich airport to Zurich HB is flexible, meaning you can hop on any trains that passed by your destination, any time and any train you want (actually, after that I realized we booked the open ticket, which means you can hop in anytime, any train. If you booked a reservation seat, that means you had to hop on that specific train). I think we took an InterRegio train, which was a double decker train. Definitely we go to the second floor! Journey to Zürich HB only took 10 minutes. The Zurich HB station was big and rather cold, since it was semi-open air type. We went to our Gleis (platform) and since it was still half an hour to go, no one was there! (although the train was already there).
The train to Milan was EuroCity 15, a nice train, and we got the coach directly behind the Ristorante (restaurant) coach. The scenery from Zürich to Milan was amazing. In the train two times the mini bar (cart full of snacks and drinks) came to our coach, although we didn’t buy anything. It seemed expensive, 3.30 CHF for a croissant, if we guessed other passengers’ transaction correctly.
Train Milan-Florence
Fast forward to arrive at Milano Centrale (let’s not describe the hunger part of 4 hours in the train :P) we had 20 minutes to transfer to our train towards Firenze S.M.N. The station was damn cold, by the way, I think because it was raining beforehand. We found our Binario (platform) fast enough, and once we found our next train, Frecciarossa 9533. We looked for our coach and seats, and settled down.
This Frecciarossa train was very amazing. It was a high speed train, and at one point it clocked 300 km/h. Yet the train itself was smooth and silent. The train was not full, and there was not even a conductor checking our tickets. We were rather concerned about our A4-sized online tickets, and we didn’t do anything to our tickets to beforehand (validating or some sort). Anyways the conductor didn’t appear at all up to Firenze, so we just alight at Firenze SMN like nothing happened.
(If I am not mistaken, online tickets were automatically validated. Only if you buy tickets from the machine, you need to validate it first before boarding the train, otherwise if the conductor found you with unvalidated ticket, you ‘ll have to pay a fine around ~10 Euros).
Arriving in Florence
At Florence train station, we met our friend Steven (his group started their Europe trip a week earlier than us). We went for late lunch, remember we haven’t had anything since breakfast in the plane, 4AM Europe time! Honestly, we should have ordered something in the train. We were too focused with the train transfers and overlooked the eating part. I ordered lasagna and my two friends ordered pizzas, Capriciossa (ham, salami, egg) and Quattro Formaggi (4 cheese – didn’t remember all but Bleu Cheese was there). The Quattro Formaggi was hell. I like my lasagna though, full of meat although a little bit salty.
Long story short, we found our hotel, Plus Florence, after a little bit of exploring, and checked in around 4PM local time. A nice little hotel bustling with backpackers. The hotel was quite good actually. Our triple room had 1 double decker bed and one single bed. Room and bathroom were clean, only the Wifi was a little bit crowded. The receptionist warned us about that, and suggested their computer rooms on the first floor if you really need more reliable internet (not sure about the crowd though). After a little break we went to explore the city.
Florence City
First impression of Florence: the city itself was a little bit messy (compared to the super orderly Singapore). It was full of old buildings. Getting around to the city center made the building more beautiful (that sentence should be constructed the other way round btw). Traffic was rather messy as well, particularly ambulances, which mightily blew their noisy siren and simply forcing people to give way. There were lots of tourists in the city center. I am not good in describing scenes and buildings, so I guess I will let my photos do the job.
We went back to our hotel quite early, around 8PM, skip dinner because our lunch were super late. After a round of gelato, I was very sleepy (already 4 hours past our proper sleeping time). We went to a supermarket to buy bottled water and detergent. We set up our innovative laundry trick – basically just making your own clothesline and hang your underwear there after washing it. Speaking of trick, we were tricked by the bottled waters in Italy. Here it was common for people to drink soda water (frizzante) rather than non-soda mineral water (naturale). I myself liked soda water, but my two friends didn’t, so we made note to ourselves to buy only naturale next time. That wrapped our first day.
Map
This map summarizes all our journey in day 1: