When we plan a multi-day trip, we usually choose a good hotel to stay which has breakfast facility. One of the main reasons is that, if you start the day with a good breakfast, that alone will keep your spirits high throughout the day. It is also the time for you as a family to recollect some of the beautiful moments from the previous day.
Considering this, on our
first ever trip to Europe as a family we decided to follow the same plan. After
experiencing the joy of European breakfast in Germany in a hotel, our next stop
was at one of the most enchanting tourist destinations in the world, Switzerland!
We decided to try something
different this time. We found a lovely apartment at Bern through Booking.com with
the option of breakfast included. The description spoke about bread, eggs, jams
and a few other associated items available for breakfast. We were quite happy
with the deal and also the location, as it was perfectly placed to reach the
attractions we wanted to cover while being there in Swiss.
After crossing the border of
Germany and Switzerland, we made a quick stop at the famous Rhine falls. By
evening we reached our place of stay at Bern. It was not dark yet since it was
summer. The instruction from the apartment owner was clear on how to access the
apartment. We followed that and settled ourselves well for the night.
We woke up the next day and
just like how we experienced breakfast in previous hotels, we were hoping to
see a welcoming spread of morning delicacies. Nothing happened. We tried
contacting the owner and that was when reality struck. The description in Booking.com
apparently meant, breakfast items were available in the apartment, but we had
to prepare that ourselves! Bread was placed on the kitchen table. Eggs, jam and
butter were in the fridge. Cooking utensils, oil and rest were available at our
disposal in the house for us to make the breakfast. Coffee powder, tea bags and
sugar were neatly sitting on one corner of the table, and they seemed to be
mocking at our misery.
As soon as we recovered from
the initial shock, we decided to prepare the breakfast. We got the eggs done.
Coffee was also prepared and finally it was time to have them all together with
the bread. We opened the packet of bread, which was dark brown in colour,
seasoned with wholegrains. Those were the times, when we were yet to be fully
into brown bread-based diet. Nevertheless, we were game to experiment this new
type of bread.
That was when shocker number
two greeted us. We felt the bread was as hard as a piece of plywood that we
thought we will need an axe to break it! Even after we managed to break the
bread to pieces, the greatest challenge was to eat it. It won't be an understatement
if I said, that was the most tasteless bread we ever had in our life! Since we
were getting late and had to have something, we managed to gulp down the thing
they called bread and headed out to our destination for the day.
A lesson well learned not to
blindly trust and guess everything written on travel sites. When in doubt,
ask!
