REMEMBER Oradour-sur-Glane
A sign from the town of Oradour-sur-Glane that was destroyed right after D-Day of World War II. This sign was at the entry to the museum and stated it so eloquently.
That as we look ahead into the future and New Year we must always remember the past so we do not fall into the same habits and pitfalls others have shown us.
10-7-08 Paris, by Jodi
Rue Cler
A full day to explore Paris, we start with our pastries and milk that we bought at a local patisserie and start our planned walks. On and off the metro all day, going to the specific neighborhoods we wanted to see. Even though the metro saves tons of time getting around, my butt cheeks are sore from all the stairs and walking, he he!
10-6-08 Disneyland Paris, by Jodi
Picture heavy.
Up early, get ready, and go down to Rue Cler to buy patisseries and milk, mmmmm. 3 metro changes to the RER A train and almost an hour later, we are at Disneyland gates right at opening time of 10am.
Walt Disney Studios Park
We decide to go into the Walt Disney Studios Park first since we had never been. We ride Tower of Terror, Rock n’ Roller Coaster, see Animagic puppet show, and then walk around and take photos. There is really nothing else to do there that we haven’t done elsewhere, it is such a small park. We have lunch in the food court on their Main Street type movie studio, just burgers and fries but decent.
10-5-08 – Paris, by Jodi
Today we make sure we are in the dining room at 8:30 to get a jump on our drive into Paris. Kristen once again provides an elegant breakfast, same as yesterday except a different selection of meats and cheeses and she treated us with a small tray with Belgium chocolate bars and nougats. All our being spoiled, piggy breakfasts, come to an end today. We know we buy breakfast on our own from patisseries in Paris.
We check out and profusely thank Kristin for the wonderful stay; she truly made it perfect. So far, we both count Bruges as our favorite town to visit. Today is a bittersweet day. After the 3-½ hour highway/toll drive into Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, we say goodbye to our little car. We enjoyed everything about it – how it drove great, got 55 miles to the gallon, roomy, held all our luggage and other stuff like food and water we stored in the back seat. Drove up to the car return, signed some papers, and got a courtesy ride into the RER train station in the airport.
10-4-08 Bruges, by Jodi
No alarm this morning, we decided to get up when we get up. But after flopping in bed early, of course we are up before 7am. So far no rain today, but vey cloudy skies. We descend the steep stairs to the dining room for breakfast. We chat with the nice couple from Vancouver Canada we met briefly yesterday. Their Son, Daughter-in-Law and Grandson Leo who live in nearby Rotterdam, Netherlands also soon followed to join them.
Delicious breakfast
Kristin came into the room with fancy little bowls of yogurt with fruits artistically arranged. Terry ordered hot chocolate and me coffee. Kristin then asked who wanted an omelet, of course we all enthusiastically said, “Yes!” She brought out large baskets of wonderful breads, croissants & homemade jams and a platter of assorted meats and cheeses. Our table looked like it was prepared by a French chef – tiny beautiful flowers adorned all the trays, the food artistically arranged with sprigs of chives and greenery. It looked too good to eat. Then our heart shaped omelets arrived, made with onions, sweet peppers, cheese and herbs – warm and delicious! We all stuffed ourselves as we enjoyed the conversation breakfast was just perfect.
10-3-08 – Bruges, by Jodi
Up early and all packed and ready to go after breakfast. Inge brings assorted breads, jam, platter of meats and cheeses, vanilla yogurt with granola, hard boiled eggs, OJ and coffee. Can you tell we look forward to our big breakfasts? LOL, the breakfasts are excellent at the B&B’s. We eat small and use some the bread and meats to make sandwiches for lunch again, knowing we will have a long drive.
10-1-08, by Jodi
There was a huge rain and windstorm all night. We decide to use this as our lazy rest and a walk around Haarlem day. We just hope it clears enough tomorrow when we train into Amsterdam. Inge brings breakfast to the room at 8:30. There was a beautiful, large tray outside our door on a small table. We brought it in to the dining table and had pink grapefruit, OJ, coffee, a basket of warm bread and croissants, raspberry jam, hard-boiled eggs, and a platter of ham and cheese. Breakfast was very good and nice to eat leisurely in the room at our dining table for a change. We watched some news as the rain the wind raged outside. Our Internet connection went out, we suppose because of the bad weather.
Haarlem
By noon, the rain stopped and sky partly cleared so we decided to try for a walk. We walked up to the main square, admiring the Dutch homes, buildings, churches and canals. We continued on to the train station to check it out for tomorrow and ended up buying our round trip tickets into Amsterdam, E6 each. By 2 pm we had walked the whole town and the hard rain had started again.
9-29-08 – Arnhem, by Jodi
Valerie put out a nice breakfast of assorted breads, croissants, jams, yogurt, coffee, hot chocolate and OJ.
Into Brussels
This was our last stay in France until we hit Paris at the end of the trip. We take our time to eat and head out for the 1-½ hour drive to our next visit in Bastogne, Belgium.
9-28-08 – Verdun, by Jodi
We are both getting very tired. We’ve had a lot of consecutive one-night stays and are on the go constantly. We are looking forward to changing gears and moving into Belgium and Netherlands for a change of scenery and some multiple night stays in nice B&Bs.
This morning we eat the hotel breakfast, not wanting to even try to find anything open on Sunday morning. Everything in France is closed on Sunday except restaurants for dinner and the churches, which is the way it should be.
Verdun road monument
The 3-½ drive is a mix of small roads and some AutoRoute. The landscape is changing to rolling wheat fields, more cows and lots of big wind turbines that power the small towns; it is good to see alternative power sources at work. The tiny villages are quaint and are typical farm towns. Other than the food they grow, where do they shop for other incidentals? All the sizable towns worth any kind of market, are not close by, they must stock up on 1-2 week runs. But, just about every town has a patisserie – shame on them if they don’t!
9-27-08 – Dijon, by Jodi
Got ready this morning and opted for the corner patisserie for bread, croissants, and milk for breakfast, the hotel breakfast didn’t look like it was worth the E8 each for basically the same darn thing we got at the local patisserie. We ate and left Avignon early on Saturday so we lucked out with no traffic and it was pretty easy, except through Lyon. The 4-hour drive to Dijon was all on the AutoRoute, France’s toll system, and boy is it expensive. To drive 4 hours cost us E30, our only other alternative would have been about an 8 hour drive on tiny village, farm roads . . . um, let’s see . . . no.
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