If you saw last week’s blog post you’ll know that we spent about a week on the northwest coast of France in the Pas-de-Calais departement in the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer. The object was to have some time to visit a part of the country that previously we’d only glimpsed from a railway carriage on our way from London to Paris, initially from a ferry port or years later after passing through the Channel Tunnel on the Eurostar. Once we’ve arrived in a city by train, our favorite method of transport is on foot, so we chose some destinations that were easily walkable from the station.

Continue reading “Carcassonne of the north + a favorite village”

We knew of Boulogne-sur-Mer because on trips from the US to England years ago, it’s where we would arrive by ferry whenever we could “sneak” across the channel to get a taste of France. Once the Channel Tunnel opened, however, taking a train directly from London to Paris in a little over 2 hours, and maybe back that same evening, just made more sense. In those days, whether by ferry and train or later just by train, our destination was always the capital, so that coastal part of the country, known as Pas-de-Calais, remained unexplored by us. Now that we live here, there was time to go back to see what we had been missing in the port city and in the surrounding area.

Continue reading “Boulogne-sur-Mer + Wimereux”

A bit of poetic license gives us today’s title since the Belgian city of Liège actually has an accent grave but “siege” is a true part of its history. Given that there’s evidence of 9000 years of human habitation in the city, there have been plenty of opportunities for invaders to take over, notably in the 15th century and again in WWI. All of those conflicts meant that much of the city has been destroyed over the centuries yet museums have flourished to maintain a link to the past. The guidebook we were following suggested starting with the cathedral since it was one structure that has remained fairly intact and can provide a tangible historic connection.

Continue reading “We siege Liege & Namur”

After a few days in Luxembourg we took the train across the border into Belgium to explore some cities there. We started with the one that a guidebook described as, “visually stunning” with the bonus of being the hometown of the inventor of the saxophone—an instrument that I played (badly) a long time ago. How could we resist? But with this being Belgium there were bound to be other temptations too such as chocolate, beer, waffles, and fries and we went in search of a local speciality—Couque de Dinant.

Continue reading “Dinant, Belgium in 1 day”

Within the city of Luxembourg we’d had access to all three forms of its free public transit system: bus, tram, and funicular. Now we were going to move out into the country of Luxembourg to visit two historic locations, but like in the previous few days this wasn’t going to cost a centime to get there. The first day would require a train and then a connecting bus to Vianden, that one guide book described as, “…quite simply, the most picturesque little town in the Grand Duchy….” The next day we were on a train for about an hour to medieval Clervaux to see its 12-century castle (its garden view is in this paragraph) and the Benedictine Abbey.

Continue reading “Luxembourg cities”