My brother and sister-in-law are very generous. Every year they go on a chartered catamaran cruise and always invite us along as their guests. We’ve never taken them up on their offer until this year but it wasn’t on the water. In what you might call a “land cruise” we were being treated to an all-inclusive—accommodation, meals, drinks, and excursions—five days at the 17th century Château Alizés at Le Chaufourg in the Périgord area of southwestern France. Although Bill and I have been lucky enough to have vacationed with friends in three other châteaux around this country and Ireland, on those vacations we all had to do our own cooking, bartending, driving and tour guiding. Now that was all about to change. 

We’d been to Nantes before but only as an overnight stop between trains, never venturing much further than to a hotel right outside of the station. Now we were going to spend a week there, with plenty of time to explore this historic city and discover some of its Breton heritage, from the Château des Ducs de Bretagne to the numerous museums and the beautiful Jardin des Plantes. Given that our vacation apartment was a 5-minute walk from that château, that would have been a logical starting point for our first day but we had loftier plans in mind.  That is, the Great Elephant (featured photo above) at the Machines de l’île, standing 12 meters (39 feet) high, 8 meters (26 feet) wide and 21 meters (69 feet) long!

We’ve been to the Netherlands a few times and on any of those visits that happened to be in the early spring we were always on the lookout for blooming tulips. In fact, on one trip at exactly this week of the year we went twice to Keukenhof, described as “The most beautiful spring garden in the world”. They showcase 7 million spring-flowering bulbs with probably none better known than the tulip. There are express buses that go directly from downtown Amsterdam to the garden, some passing by endless fields of yellows, reds, pinks, and purples, and maybe even the elusive black flowers. What we didn’t realize until recently was that some of those bulbs that end up in the Netherlands actually start out here in France.