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.
10-2-08 – Amsterdam, by Jodi
Our breakfast was wonderful again this morning – baked ham & egg mini casseroles, assorted breads, jam, platter of meats and cheeses, kiwis, OJ and coffee – Inge really gives us nice breakfasts. We head out for the nice walk to the train station at 9am, hop on the train and take the 20 min ride into Amsterdam. No one ever asked to see out tickets, like so many other public transports around Europe, it is on the honor system.
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.
9-30-08 – Haarlem, by Jodi
We wake up to rain, our good, clear weather has finally run out. And of course it rains when we want to visit an outdoor museum. We walk down the 3 flights of stairs to Margot’s ‘in kitchen’ dining room for breakfast. She pulled out all the stops for her great breakfast, we didn’t know where to start. There was granola, milk, drinkable yogurt, regular yogurt, a huge basket of all kind of warm breads, jams, butters, a platter of 3 different kind of lunchmeats and 2 cheeses, a basket of wedge spreadable cheeses, a bowl of strawberries, soft boiled eggs, coffee, hot chocolate, and OJ. YUM – our best breakfast yet and we stuffed ourselves. We were glad to have such bellyful knowing we would be walking the museum all day.
Streetcar Tracks
We thanked Margot for her hospitality and drive the 2 km to the Netherlands Open Air Museum. This museum is a collection of historic buildings from all areas of the Netherlands, relocated to this wooded land to form it’s own little historic village. The buildings included mostly farm homes, windmills, businesses, a train station and roundhouse, a doctor’s office, blacksmith, milk and cheese factory, and a brewery all from different eras depicting the lifestyle from that time. The center of the town are buildings converted to be used as a bakery and restaurants to buy food. Some of the buildings had people dressed in period dress that would answer questions, it was very interesting talking to them. Other buildings were well signed in several languages explaining their history or function.
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.
9-25-08 – Arles, by Jodi
We decide to pass on the hotel breakfast at 8 euro each and instead stopped at a patisserie for fresh croissants to eat on the road, mmmmmm. We travel on more country roads for about 2 hours until we reach the Mediterranean. We have now driven the whole country from north to south.
We stop at a deserted beach for a short walk to stretch our legs and a short rest. The sand is very fine and white, with seashells in abundance. Of course, I have to stop and collect a few.
9-24-08 – Carcassonne, by Jodi
This morning Alain gave us yogurt, fresh croissants, homemade spice breads and jam, coffee and hot chocolate. Francois pulled out his maps and wanted to see our intended route and made some recommendations of things to see along the way as we sat and had a wonderful breakfast at the family table. Unfortunately, we knew we wouldn’t have time, but he was a wealth of information and we appreciated his time. We thanked them both for being wonderful hosts and kept his notes for our next visit. We left with them both waving goodbye to us, just like a Mom & Dad, he he!
9-23-08 – Sarlat, By Jodi
Ginette accommodated us by having breakfast ready early so we could leave by 8:30. She was such a sweet lady, constantly bringing us things and moving nice lawn furniture in front of our room to sit. She always insisted on packaging up leftover baguettes or bread at breakfast for us to take for ‘picnic’ as she would say. After about every sentence, she would say, VOILA! , so that is why I said that in the prior post. We really liked her a lot and she really knows how to pamper her quests and run a great B&B.
So, on the road, about an equal mix of small country roads and highways, as we make our way to Oradour-sur-Glane. We drive to the new town of Oradour, buy a sandwich and eat outside the entrance in a park area before touring WW2 martyred town of Oradour-sur-Glane.
TVP Journeys 
You must be logged in to post a comment.