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”

Along the US coasts we’ve been from Key West, Florida to Maine’s border with Canada, from Vancouver, BC to Tijuana, Mexico and in the UK it was from Land’s End in England to the top of Scotland’s mainland at John o’Groats. In France we’ve traveled from the Pyrenees Mountain tunnel that joins us to Spain all the way up to Roubaix on the edge of Belgium. Now we can add one more border-to-border journey to our list, this time in the country of Luxembourg from Esch-sur-Alzette in the south to Troisvierges in the north. In America we were in a car while on this side of the Atlantic it’s been by train, as was this most recent vacation, but this time there was one big difference—the cost. The fare to go from one end of one of Europe’s smallest (but wealthiest) countries to the other end was 0 €.

Continue reading “Luxembourg City”

One advantage to living in France is that you’re never really all that far from Paris. In about  5 ½ hours we can travel from our downtown train station to one in the nation’s capital and walk from there to a hotel for that evening. With a dozen daily departures we can take our pick to be there for a 12:30 PM lunch, a 3:00 PM hotel check-in, or a 7:00 PM dinner. An overnight sleeper train would arrive in plenty of time for breakfast. That convenience means that it’s possible to make a connection and continue to a further destination such as Brittany, Champagne, or even London or Amsterdam. For today’s adventure we stayed in Paris but made a day trip into Normandy to spend the morning walking in the footsteps of artist Claude Monet in his beloved gardens of Giverny.

Continue reading “Monet’s Giverny”

Nantes had served as our home base for a couple of day trips to the Atlantic coast and now it was time to explore a bit more inland. Our travels took us to a picturesque town nicknamed “the Tuscan village of France,” and then on to Angers, home to the world’s largest surviving medieval tapestry. These train journeys were even shorter than the others, only about 30 minutes each, but like the previous ones everything we wanted to see was within a short walking distance from the station. 

Continue reading “Clisson + the Apocalypse Tapestry”