Earlier this year during the 2-month lockdown, or perhaps even more descriptive in French, la confinement, our desire to travel never lost its appeal. After all, our vacation plans for both April and May fell victim to the virus but that simply gave us more resolve to try again as soon as it was reasonable to board the train for another adventure. Those two trips had each been several hours away, and we’ll reschedule them later, but one destination less than 100 km (60 miles) from Carcassonne, as the crow flies, really caught our attention for this first venture out closer to home. It didn’t take much convincing once Bill showed me the view from the apartment that you see above accompanied by those magic words: by the sea. Off we went to Collioure. Continue reading “Collioure in 4 days”

It was 15 years ago when Bill and I went to Bruges, Belgium and that was for less than 24 hours. At the time we were staying in Paris which is only 2 ½ hours away by train and in those days we tried to pack in as much as possible to our annual two-week vacations. On that same trip we had already spent the week in a Loire Valley castle making driving excursions into the surrounding areas to see at least one other chateau every day, so why not visit another country too? All I can remember from back then is the chocolate, the beer, and the lace. On our recent return to the city we had the luxury of being there an entire week but we also had to sneak in a day trip to Ghent, only 30 minutes down the train tracks. Old habits die hard. Continue reading “Bruges in a week”