Year: 2004
Paris Again
After a very late breakfast we headed off on the Metro to visit Montmartre and Sacre Couer Cathecral. The cathedral is large and impressive. What’s more, there is no entry fee. A mass was finishing just as we arrived and then a group of a dozen or so nuns sang another service which lasted for […]
Read MoreSomme
On Wednesday, we had a pre-arranged tour of the Flanders & Somme WW1 battle fields. Annette Linthout who I had found on the Internet picked us up at our hotel with the intention of following the general route of the Australian soldiers and then dropping us off at our next hotel in Paris in the […]
Read MoreBrugges
On Monday we went to Brugge. We caught a taxi to the train station at Gare le Nord and caught the Thalys train to Brussels and a connecting local train to Brugge. The countryside in the north of France is very different from that in the south around Provence. Here the fields were much larger […]
Read MoreParis
We arrived in Paris last Friday afternoon after travelling north from Arles. That trip took about 3 hours to do around 800 kms. It was quite something to be travelling for some of the trip at 300 km per hour on the TGV (France ‘s fast train). I had travelled at that type of speed […]
Read MoreProvence
We found the hotel relatively easily. It is a converted farm house and has a very interesting character. The owner / manager, Frank and his wife Catherine are very pleasant. There are a great number of rooms here which suggests that French farmers had exceptionally large families. The food in the dining room was enjoyable […]
Read MoreCote d’Azure
Saturday is a travelling day for us. We packed up last night and were away from the villa by 8.00 am. We drove back to Florence the same way as we had travelled to in the first place and headed for the Avis office near the station. We got a little lost & separated but […]
Read MoreTuscany
Here we are for our special week in a villa under the Tuscan sun. We picked up our rental cars from Avis in Venice last Saturday (a week ago’ -one snappy little Renault Megane and a rather beaten up Opel van. The previous renter of the van must have collided with a tree and a […]
Read MoreVenice
With our time in Lucca at an end, our caravan of people and multiple suit cases headed off to Venice. We caught a local train to Prato and then changed for a long distance train to Venice. Because the area around Prato & Florence is surrounded by hills, much of the first 1/2 hour was […]
Read MoreBavaria
This time we are in Germany. Up early in the morning on Wednesday, April 21, for a quick breakfast and a taxi back to Paddington Station for the train to Heathrow. While the station is directly under Terminal 1, it’s still a long walk of 3-400 metres to the departures hall. After checking in we […]
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