Across Europe: From a Paris Heatwave to the Swiss Alps

If you want to test a new family dynamic, there is a specific recipe I can recommend. First, plan a trip to Paris during a 38°C (100°F) heat wave. Second, fly everyone in from three continents. Third, have at least one flight delayed. Fourth, when Karthika and her parents land at CDG, make sure the customs line takes over an hour and their cab driver is very French—screaming curses at other cars, ignoring his GPS to take a "shortcut" in the opposite direction, giving up, and rejoining the exact same terrible traffic jam half an hour later.

My mom and I flew in from Dublin on a separate, comparatively uneventful leg. We all converged in the lobby of Hôtel Taylor—and that was when I met my in-laws for the very first time.

That was day one. Karthika from Seattle, her parents from Mumbai, my mom and me from Dublin, all of us jet-lagged and sweating in the same heat. Miraculously, everyone survived. My mom is incredibly personable and immediately helped break the ice while Karthika and parents recovered from the taxi ride from hell. We dropped the bags and handed out gifts—Karthika's parents brought me a traditional Kerala outfit—and whatever nerves I'd had about the first meeting melted almost immediately. Just like that, the trip was underway.

Trip Overview

This was a multi-country European expedition designed around a major milestone—bringing our families together for the first time. Over the course of the trip, the overarching theme shifted dramatically. We started in pure, sweltering chaos in France, executed a flawless mid-trip pivot in Alsace that became a lesson in "less is more," and ended up finding absolute, postcard-perfect peace in the Swiss Alps.

Act I: The Crucible (Paris)

Paris was hot. Not just warm, but super fucking hot. We were sweating like nobody's business, sprinting from shade to shade. We started at Trocadero and walked up to the Eiffel Tower, where we realized the only way to avoid the stairs was to buy the "elevator ticket with champagne" package—so, twist our arms, we drank champagne. We even managed to complete the glass bead blending ceremony from our wedding right there, since Karthika's parents hadn't been able to make the original ceremony.

Despite the chaos, Karthika's first impression of the city captured exactly what makes it work: "I like how cosmopolitan it was... It felt like a proper big city. I quite appreciated that it was just nice and quiet and green."

We balanced the icons with quieter stops, too: the Louvre's glass-pyramid courtyard, and then Notre Dame, where—with mass underway, the bells ringing, and the reconstruction crane still looming outside—Karthika and both moms lit candles. Even for a "seen one cathedral, seen them all" guy like me, it was a genuinely grounding pause.

But beyond those green spaces, Paris was largely an exercise in enduring crowds. The Palace of Versailles was spectacular, but inside the Hall of Mirrors, you couldn't take a full step forward. It was packed to the point of being actively not fun. The saving grace was renting tandem bikes—me and Karthika on one, the two moms on the other—and riding around the massive gardens to escape the crush of humanity.

The climax of the French chaos, however, happened at the train station. A group of French ticket inspectors attempted to extort us for a fake fine. They took our problem ticket and refused to hand it back—so we couldn't even show that it was valid—then feigned a language barrier and pretended to call the police. I ended up standing my ground, arguing with them in the sweltering station until they finally backed down and issued the tickets they legally owed us. (I have since raised complaints with France's national civil-rights ombudsman and the independent French rail mediator. Yes, I summoned two separate government-grade authorities over a single train ticket fine. Yes this is, in fact, a very French way to do it. And yes, I know it's pure stubbornness at this point—even if it had been a 10-euro fine, I could not have let it go.)

But the Paris moment I'll actually keep wasn't at any monument. On our last night before my mom's early flight home, we were too wiped from the heat to face a restaurant—so we all went out together and grabbed a spread of groceries, ate around the hotel-room table, and we taught Karthika's mom how to play Hearts. We said our goodbyes to my mom that night as she was headed back home the next day. Of everything Paris could have served up, that makeshift dinner, on our last night all together, was the one that really felt like family.

Act II: The Pivot (Alsace & Germany)

The next morning we boarded our own train out of Paris—my mom's flight home had left ahead of the rest of us—only to discover our train car was the only one with broken air conditioning. It was awful. Karthika and I spent the ride huddled by the luggage racks in another car, plotting an escape.

Our planned Airbnb in Strasbourg didn't have AC. So, right there on the train, we pivoted. We ate the cost of the Airbnb, booked a room at a cute hotel with a pool in the foothills of the Black Forest (Les Jardins d'Adalric in Obernai), and rented a Peugeot 5008. There was a hilarious generational divide here: Karthika's parents were stressed about the sunk cost of the unused Airbnb, while Karthika and I were experiencing pure, unadulterated relief with the rental car's AC blasting our faces.

This changed the whole trip. We adopted a "less is more" philosophy: grab baguettes from a local bakery, pick one or two things a day, and leave the afternoon for the pool. Our first evening we drove up to the cliff-edge abbey at Mont Sainte-Odile—serene, beautifully kept, and blissfully uncrowded above the Alsace plain. From Obernai we ran easy day trips: Kaysersberg, with castle ruins above town and a tiny old jail built right into the fortified bridge; a picnic at the mountain lake of Lac Blanc; and a tasting at a family vineyard that's been running continuously since the 1700s.

The standout was the 15th-century castle of Haut-Kœnigsbourg—the best-preserved one I've ever set foot in, with a wild backstory: the Swedes blew it up in the 1600s, the German Empire later rebuilt it as a monument to German greatness, and then promptly lost it back to France. We also hit Monkey Mountain (macaques, babies and all), capped a day in postcard-perfect Colmar (where Karthika squeezed in a job interview from the hotel), and learned that at the local Obernai pizza places, everyone is strictly required to order their own whole pizza. We slowed down, and it was glorious.

On our way out of the region, we finally gave Strasbourg the quick look it deserved—its cathedral genuinely floored me (I'd put it above Notre Dame). Then the French rail gods struck one last time: our air-conditioned train to Freiburg, Germany was cancelled minutes before departure, dumping us onto a smaller, packed, AC-free replacement.

Freiburg more than made up for it. The old town is laced with Bächle—tiny water channels that have run through the streets since the 1200s—and Karthika and I spent an embarrassing amount of time damming them with our feet to send little flash-floods at whoever was standing downstream. I also found the dessert of my dreams: a massive bowl made entirely out of waffle-cone material, filled with hazelnut and chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, and actual Ferrero Rochers. We capped the evening at the city's most iconic beer garden (there's an elevator up, no climb required)—the food was mediocre but the beer and the golden sunset over the rooftops absolutely delivered.

Our last day in the region taught us the same lesson all over again—the hard way. We got upgraded to a speedy BMW and I opened it up to 210 km/h (about 130 mph) on the Autobahn, which earned a very deadpan "I think I'm dying now" from Karthika in the passenger seat. Then we dropped onto the B500, one of Germany's most scenic routes, and tried to do all of it: castle ruins, waterfalls, a mountain lake, a viewing-platform hike, Triberg (cuckoo-clock capital of the world), and—obviously—Black Forest cake in the actual Black Forest. By the time we rolled back to Freiburg, wiped, it was a real "less is more" reality check. Lovely day; we just should've picked half of it.

Act III: The Reward (Switzerland)

To get from Freiburg, Germany, to our final destination in the Swiss Alps, we took seven distinct modes of transit: our feet, a standard train, a Basel city tram, another standard train, a specialized high-elevation cog railway, a bus, and finally, two different cable cars.

But the transit wasn't just a slog. As we walked into the massive Basel SBB station, we were greeted by the sound of yodeling. It turned out we had stumbled perfectly into the triannual Swiss Yodeling Festival—which hadn't been hosted in Basel since 1924. Watching groups of people in traditional dress yodeling as they rode the escalators was peak travel serendipity. From there the scenic train carried us through Interlaken—nestled, as the name promises, between two lakes—on a car that even had a bougie little onboard bistro with real tablecloths.

When we finally reached Mürren, it was everything the postcard promises. Car free (caveat for the local farmer vehicles). Just bells, cows, foxes, and the Eiger staring right at us. Karthika nailed the contrast: "I love how nature-focused Switzerland has been. It's nice to hear birds. We see so many cats, and goats, and wildlife."

We swam in the local community pool looking at the snow-capped peaks, bought snacks from unmanned honesty shops, and hiked down toward Gimmelwald through open fields—passing two foxes, goats, and cowbell-clanging cows along the way—to eat pizza at the Mountain Hostel as the sun set over the Alps (where Karthika fit in another job interview, because the Alpine job hunt apparently never sleeps). We even took the cable car up to Piz Gloria—where they shot a James Bond movie—and did the "Thrill Walk," navigating a series of wire tunnels and glass-bottomed bridges suspended over dramatic, snow-covered drops. After the heat and the crowds, the absolute quiet of the mountains felt earned.

Most Memorable Moments

Logistics & Practical Information

Heading Home

On the last afternoon, we watched the paragliders launch from the takeoff spot in Mürren, then sat down for our final lunch together. After that, we splintered—Karthika and her parents heading south toward Italy, and me taking the train north to Zurich to fly home.

Sitting on the train to the airport by myself, it was a strange mix of feelings. There was the undeniable, quiet relief of finally having a moment to myself after weeks of intense group travel and logistics. But looking out the window as the Alps rolled by, I already found myself missing the company. We survived the heat, the extortion, and the chaos, and we did it together.