If you are a fan of the bicycle race, Le Tour de France, you will have heard it referred to as La Grande Boucle or in English, The Big Loop. Although these days the race doesn’t necessarily make a geographic circle, sometimes even starting in another country, it did indeed complete a grand circuit around France when it was created in 1903. About every two years the riders pass through Carcassonne so we get to see them regularly—as long as you count a two-second glimpse as they all whiz by as “seeing” them! Using that concept of a big circular trip, we’ve just returned from our own grand tour by train around Brittany.

Continue reading “La Grande Boucle of Brittany”

There was a British TV series called “Coach Trip” where a busful of passengers traveled around Europe and each day they could vote off one couple that didn’t fit in with the rest of the crowd. We had our own version of that show when our neighbor brought us the paperwork for a 4-day bus trip—one day to get there and one day back plus two days at the French theme park, Puy du Fou. They skip the rollercoasters and other rides in favor of massive, historical, live-action movie set productions ranging from Roman coliseums to 17th-century villages. We set off for our long weekend adventure early on a Friday with the promise of a pause café and lunch before we got to our hotel just before dinner.

Continue reading “Coach Trip to Puy du Fou”

We’ve crisscrossed Europe by rail for decades, discovering countless destinations. For us, train travel is all about the convenience: a quick walk to the station, a relaxing ride (often with a picnic lunch!), and arrival just steps from our hotel. Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid—with more to be discovered. We’ve even explored Italian treasures like Milan, Turin, Bari, and Venice; yet, one iconic place remained unseen: the Eternal City. All roads (or in our case, rails) lead to Rome, but somehow, we’d never taken that particular route. We decided to change all of that by embarking on a special train journey from Paris (we joined it in Lyon) to that fabled destination for our 40th anniversary.

Continue reading “All trains lead to Rome (part 1)”

In honor of today being the first day of summer, is the story of our wintertime visit earlier this year to Luchon in the Pyrenees mountains. It will be one year ago tomorrow when the train line into this ski and thermal baths resort town reopened after a 10-year absence.  We’re always on the lookout for a new part of the country to discover—by train—so this was a great chance to add another destination to our list. Since we seldom see snow where we live, a visit in the winter was going to be ideal.

Continue reading “A refreshing break”

In the last blog post we talked about our “slow travel” discovery of canal cruising in France. On four different trips, with the barge as our floating hotel, we’ve been on excursions to châteaux, museums, champagne caves, and fascinating historical sites. Back on the boat we enjoyed all of our meals, an open bar, and even learned how to make Chantilly that we might otherwise call whipped cream. While each waterway vacation shared similarities, there were enough differences to make them unique and encourage us to try another. When an advertisement for a trip on the canal de Bourgogne (Burgundy) arrived, we took a look at the port stops and the planned excursions to see if we could arrange something comparable on our own using the train.

Continue reading “Do-it-yourself land cruise: the experience”