Not Before Time

We have spent the last few days in the area of Champagne in France where we have checked out the scenery which is very pretty and there are lots of chateaux and cathedrals to see.  The beverage has lots of bubbles and tastes fantastic!

 We have stayed in self catering accommodation so we could have a bit of room to move around (hotel rooms in Europe tend to be on the small side) and so we can do some cooking (restaurants are really good, but you do get a bit tired of eating out) and it has been very relaxing (have I mentioned how tiring travelling is?). 

This might be our last post until we get to the US, as from today we will be staying in a little town in the hills just north of Paris and internet access is not so good.  We will be in the US from September 2 and should be able to update and respond to emails then. 

When we left the Rhine area we headed for France and the Dijon area. We are staying in Dijon for a couple of nights to check out the local cuisine. While it can be said that it is just another medieval city, we are finding that it is very relaxing to walk the narrow streets and there is still a WOW!! factor as you turn a corner a see a building that was built some 500 – 1000 years ago.

Maggie tried the escargot (snails to me) last night and said they were great, I personally stuck with the Fois gras (Pate), real gourmandes  ain’t  we??

From here we are heading into the Champagne area, and hope to get a self catering unit for a week or more, so we can relax, do a bit of cooking and prepare ourselves for the next part of our journey to the United States. 

The time is now going very quickly and we will be home in 5 weeks.

After leaving Belgium, we headed into Luxembourg.  We had planned on staying in Luxembourg city for the night, but instead we decided to head on into Germany.

Trier
Maggie wanted to spend a couple of days in the Rhine area.  We spent the first night in a town called Trier – apparently the oldest town in Germany.  Trier is reputed to have the most roman ruins outside of Rome and one of the entrances into the town is quite spectacular being a roman gate along with the remains of a wall.   Inside the town were some superb medieaval buildings and beautiful churches. The town was quite busy with heaps of young people.  World Youth Day was being held here and in Cologne and preparations were underway in these areas for a visit by Pope Benedict on his first trip outside of Rome.  Also, there was some sort of antique expo to do with the roman ruins, so all in all, there were quite a few people in town.  The Tourist Centre person we spoke to was quite stressed, and when we made enquiries about accommodation she seemed certain that would wouldn’t be able to find a bed. But, as has been the case for us just about the whole of this holiday, we were extremely lucky and  found a room in a hotel just a couple of minutes walk from the centre of town.
We spent the afternoon walking around the town, and had dinner that night in a little pub/restaurant in an alley.  We met a couple of locals there who were really interested in the fact that we were from Australia.  One of the guys is very keen on going to Australia and was asking us lots of questions about it.  I think we convinced him he needed to visit Australia – are we ambassadors or what??

 After Trier we headed north so we could head down the Rhine and visit some of the little villages and towns.  The scenery is magnificent.  The land around the river is quite steep and any spare bit of ground is covered in vineyards – which seems incredibly difficult to harvest – or if it doesn’t have vineyards, then they have built a castle on it!  It is picture postcard pretty country.

St. Goar
We stayed a couple of nights in a town called St Goar which is right on the river and on the other side is a town called St Goarhousen which is reached either by ferry (it takes all of 2 minutes to cross the river!) or you drive for miles before you can cross over..  From either side of the river the towns look like toy towns – the houses are all very old and lined up along the waterfront.  Really lovely.
The hotel we stayed at is in a building which dates from 1524.  There’s a picture in the gallery – our room is on the 2^nd floor on the extreme left hand side.  The owner is from the Balkans and the hotel offers dinners which are German/Balkan in flavour (goulash, sausages, stews etc).  There’s nothing flash about the hotel, it has very basic facilities, but heaps of character.  No television, phone etc, but it’s also very inexpensive.  (We can’t understand the tv anyway, as it is all in German, although there is usually CNN or something but that’s even worse as it’s very boring!). When we left St Goar we stopped at a small 14th century town called Bacarach for a looksee, we both looked at each other and decided that if you were to stop at every small town that looked interesting we would need another lifetime.

In Belgium we decided that the main place we wanted to see was Brugge so we headed directly for it. We arrived before lunch and went to the Tourist information office to see what was accommodation was available, we thought that we may have some difficulty due to the holiday season and the town seemed to be very busy. We were able to get a B & B not far from the town centre with Jaak and Mary-rose DeCrop, they made us feel very welcome with the first hour being taken up with a cup of coffee while Jaak told us about the town and places to see and eat, he provided us with maps and information during our visit. Brugge is a lovely medieval town with canals that wind their way through the city streets. About 60 metres from our B&B was a great park with swans, ducks etc, very picturesque. The weather was not to kind to us and we had to purchase a couple of cheap umberellas, however this did not stop us from walking the town that afternoon. We ended up at a grill restaurant that Jaak had recommended, they had a wood fire with grill in the middle of the dining area so you could see your meat being cooked and chat with the chef and staff. We were so impressed that we booked another night to sample the big steaks, as we were not that hungry. The town itself has many attractions and I think we walked every street in the 3 days we were there, even with my sore back.

The pictures do not do this town justice and it would surely be on our list of places to be revisited, if we ever get the chance.

 When we left Brugge we decided a couple of days in Brussels would be great, however when we arrive it was raining heavily and it looked like another large city so, a drive around satisfied our curiosity. Maggie found a location called La Roche in our guide books where a lot of Belgium people go for holidays so we thought we would take a chance on getting accommodation in that area. We found a great hotel at the site of an old mill and set up for 2 nights. The town was quite busy with tourists who mainly seemed to be from Germany and Belguim, not too many English speaking people. The town was situated on a river and had the usual lovely old buildings. My back was getting better every day so we spent most of the time between rain showers walking the streets.

Well, we (Dave really) finally managed to get the car on an Autobahn in Germany on the way to the Netherlands. 192KPH on the flat, not bad really considering it’s only a 1.6l Diesel, couldn’t do it for very long though as the fuel consumption went from 5.4L /100 k to 8L/100k.  After my bit of fun we landed in Zandtvoort just outside of Amsterdam. This was a quiet time for us as Maggie had picked up a virus, but it is a pretty little town on the coast with not too much to do. (perfect). When we left Zandtvoort I managed to pull a muscle in my lowerback loading the car so the next few days would also not be too hectic. Stop in Amsterdam and visited the red light district, not so interesting during the morning? Visited the Kinderdyke area which has 19 working windmills. We didn’t know that families live in the windmill so it was a very interesting visit. Well lets head to Belgium.