Thursday 28/6, today all we have to do is drive 292km to get
from Maastricht to Frankfurt. Now when you have a Merc Limo available, why not
drive 393km from Maastricht to Frankfurt and visit Luxembourg on the way. Well,
that’s what we did. Luxembourg is such an intriguing and beautiful city. It’s a
pity we didn’t have more time to explore this city, its history and its ruins. This
country has a population of less than ½ a million and even though it has
history dating back to the Romans, it is considered to start from about 963AD.
We had a very enjoyable afternoon walking around this beautiful city. For Jean,
this was topped off with another patchwork shop visit and another 1kg to add to
our already bulging bags. Our trip from Luxembourg to Frankfurt was marred by
quite heavy rain, but travelling in the limo was still enjoyable. Jean drove for
a while this morning and admitted that the ride was somewhat more luxurious than
Gina’s ride, but Gina does have some advantages. It was somewhat difficult negotiating
the underground car-park in Ellie, and fitting Ellie into some car-parking
spots was just impossible. On the way into Frankfurt, we got to see the Rhine
once again, a different view than that from the River Boat. We also saw a rather
different shape for a VW Passat, the result of some passionate kissing of some
Armguard on the Autobahn at some considerable speed. Surprisingly, (well not
really, it is German engineering) the driver was walking around talking on his
mobile phone. Tomorrow, we plan to look around Frankfurt, and then return Ellie
to Mr Hertz, check-in and find the QANTAS Club for a quiet relaxing evening
prior to our departure at 10:40PM. The next you should hear from us, is in
person or on the phone, sometime after 6:40AM Sunday 1/7.
Friday 29 June 2012
Thursday 28 June 2012
MAAS, Maastricht, Andre, Aachen, Shops
Tuesday 26/6, we left latish in the morning and head into
Maastricht town centre. We find an underground car-park by accident and upon
walking out onto the street; we are right beside the Andre Rieu concert stage.
We walk around the old town, exploring old watermills, town walls and buildings
400 and 500 years old. We have lunch and do some exploring of the Maastricht University
precinct and another look at the concert area before we get the car and head
back to the hotel. No patch-work shops were visited, darn says Jean. We get all
glammed up and have dinner, then onto the bus to head to the concert. The
concert started in broad daylight at 9PM and for an hour we were all enthralled.
By 10:30PM, the east half of the sky is dark, but the western half is still
blue and intermission has just finished. From here on the concert just gets
better and better, and it finished with several Dutch folk songs. We couldn’t
understand much of what was said, but the music was just fantastic and the
atmosphere just had to be experienced. Jean waved her arm off, with her Aussie
flag flying high. 11:45PM and the concert was over, we headed to the bus
pick-up point and travelled back to the hotel. We weren’t the only Australians there;
we saw several other Aussie flags and meet another couple from Melbourne as we
were leaving the concert area. They heard our accent as we were saying good
night to the Dutch couple who had been sitting beside us.
Wednesday 27/8, we head off in search of elusive patch-work
shops. Jean’s in charge today, her first real drive of Gina. Back to Belgium we
go, to the city of Liege. Jean is re-finding her left-hand driving skills. We find
the shop and a car-park is directly opposite. Jean wanders around the shop for
about 30 minutes, marvelling at the material, but alas it’s not patch-work
fabric. They tell us we need to visit their other shop in Awans. Coffee time,
you know when you swap old coffee for new, then into the car and off to Awans.
Jean says, George you can drive. We find the Awans patch-work shop, it’s hard
to miss. 2,500 sq metres of floor space, well over 1,000 rolls of curtain
fabric on display, and that’s about ¼ of the shop, patch-work fabric from all
over the world and everything else a patch-worker with withdrawal symptoms
would ever need. Jean thinks she is in patch-work heaven. And they cater for
men too. Four flat screen TVs, with lounge chairs so you can watch sport or
whatever you fancy. This shop has a remarkable sales table, one piece of timber
over 7 metres long, 1 ½ to 2 metres wide and about 100mm thick. It weighs 660kg
and was brought all the way from Indonesia by the shop owner, who is Dutch.
2.5kg of patchwork stuff later, Jean and George depart for Aachen, Germany, in
Gina. Those Germans and smart engineers, they can morph cars. Actually, both Jean
and George are both amazed that no one has asked about Gina. At Aachen, George arrives
in Gina, a white Italian 2 door petrol buzz-box, a Fiat 500, and 15 minutes
later George departs in Elly, a black German 4 door diesel limousine, a
Mercedes E220 Elegance. Hmm, a nice drive back to Maastricht. Alas, Jean has to
return to Maastricht in Gina; actually Jean didn’t mind driving Gina, she was a
lovely little buzz-box, reminds Jean of her green Mazda 121. A lovely little
car! We then return Gina to Mr Hertz, with close to an extra 2,500km on her
odometer. We had planned to travel to Frankfurt by fast train, but weren’t keen
on lugging all the cases on and off the train, and we had to change trains on
the journey too. So tonight, we unpack our bags, and re-pack them into an
orderly fashion, don’t forget we have to get that 2 ½ kg of patch-work stuff
and the odd tourist item into those bags that were bulging when we left Brissie
4 ½ weeks ago. Bags are packed, blog to be updated and then sleep before we
head to Frankfurt tomorrow.
Tuesday 26 June 2012
Look out Maastricht, here we come
Monday 25/6, we awake to another dull overcast day, but we
decide to go via Brussels anyway. This was a good choice. By the time we got
there (220km later), the sun was out but the air was still a bit chilly. We
found an underground car-park almost immediately and hit the streets. We had a
good look around the La Grand-Place (the town square) where the town hall
amongst other stately buildings is located. The town hall dates from the early
15th century. We continued off visiting other streets and building
and eventually arrived at the Mannequin Pis, dressed in one of his 800
costumes. After this we (George) treated ourselves to a Belgium Waffle topped
with Chantilly cream and Chocolate. It was then back to the car for the 120km
trip to Maastricht, what a great trip! The first 5 or so km was slow with very
heavy traffic but then the expressway opened up. A beautiful bit of 3-lane
highway with a few large sweeping curves and a 120km/hr speed limit, with most
of the traffic (Gina included) sitting on 130, with several cars passing in the
160 to 180 bracket. A one stage the railway line runs parallel to the
expressway and a passenger train glides past us doing about 150 when all of a
sudden it was gone and out of site. Jean isn’t too keen on travelling in the
slow lane at 130 when we are rapidly catching a truck, but we indicate and merge
left, indicate and move right; all’s good! We arrive in Maastricht, and find
that the hotel we are booked into is the “Official Andrew Rieu” hotel. Jean
meets one of the back-stage staff (actually the orchestra’s caterer) while we
are checking in. The two of them chatted for what seemed ages to George while
he continued with the check-in, arranged for the pre-concert dinner for
tomorrow night, the bus trip there and back, and unpacked the car. Tonight, an
online search located around 6 patchwork shops nearby, so George guesses what
we are doing tomorrow before the concert. The concert starts at 9PM and
finishes at midnight, the bus returns us at about 12:30, so a blog update may
not occur tomorrow.
Monday 25 June 2012
Just drivin' in the rain
Sunday 24/6, we left Paris this morning in light drizzling
rain heading towards Charleville-Mezieres. We chose to head via Soissons. On
the way to Soissons, we passed the Vauxbuin French Military Cemetery. Stopped
for a couple of quick photos. The rain continued to drizzle. After Soissons,
the rain slowly got heavier and heavier and at one stage was so torrential that
we couldn’t travel much faster than 80km/hr on the 130km/hr expressway. Arrived
at Charleville Mezieres and had dinner in a Spanish restaurant where we met
another Australian couple from Albury, VIC, who are currently on a bicycle
riding tour of Northern France, Belgium and the southern part of The Netherlands.
They are about our age and are riding a bicycle built for two, which has a
small trailer behind it where they carry their clothes etc. This bicycle dismantles
then folds-up and fits into this trailer. The wheels come off the trailer, too,
and then this trailer is their luggage for their airplane flights. A lot of
their riding has been along canals. They have travelled on the train a couple
of times, like today when the weather is poor, or when they want to move to
another area, but most of their travel has been by bike. We had an interesting
chat over dinner. Tomorrow, our plan is to travel to Maastricht possibly via
Brussels but this will depend on the weather.
Sunday 24 June 2012
Paris, been there, done that
Friday 22/6 and Saturday 23/6. As mentioned for Friday, we
took the Metro to the city, the 10:30AM Metro from Port de Clichy (seven
stations from the Champs E.) was standing room only, and very, very cozy at
that. We searched out the nearest Hop-on Hop-off Bus stop and headed off on a
quick trip around the city. Quick it was not. After completing about ¾ of the
circuit, we got off at La Fayette. This is one of the larger department stores
in Paris. The store is spread over 3 buildings, one for home goods, one for men’s
wear and one for women’s wear. Each building comprises a basement, ground floor
and 3 or 4 floors above, and the floors are huge. It the ladies’ wear building,
there is one floor devoted wholly to shoes, another to just jewellery and
perfume. It was then back onto the bus, but we never made it to the Arc de
Triumphe as it was peak hour traffic and the busses are not allowed there. So
we get on the Metro and came home.
Saturday morning, back on the Metro, back on the Hop-on bus
and off to the Trocadero. We walked from there to the Eiffell Tower. Due to a
technical issue only one lift is working and pre-booking tickets to the lift
doesn’t work. Usually pre-booked ticket holders jump the queue. We had a good
look around, had lunch and then took a river cruise of the Seine for an hour.
It is just impossible to describe the enormity of the Tower. It’s like the
first time you look into the Grand Canyon. Photos just can’t describe it. The
whole of Paris is big things, or extremes. Today we heard that there are 14km
of corridors in the Louvre Gallery and there are near 38,000 art items on
display which is less than 8% of their art collection. After this we Hopped-on
and headed for the Arc de Triumphe, and had afternoon tea with nice French
pastries. Headed over to the Arc and saw the daily memorial service to the lost
and missing soldiers of the wars. Afterward, we walked up possibly 280+ stairs
to get to the top of the Arc de T. and had a spectacular view of Paris from
there. After we came down, jean commented “It’s ten to eight!” It felt like 4PM
to her. We headed back to the hotel had a late dinner, and that’s it for the
day. Tomorrow, Charleville here we come.
Friday 22 June 2012
A Few More Photos
Scouts 100 year Parade in Enkhuizen
Some oddities on the way to Paris
Thursday 21/6. Today started off OK, I took the suitcases to
the car and brought back a paper-bag. I asked Jean the simple question “What is
the opposite of Pi…. Off?” Her answer “Found.” How do we get to that? Well, we
misplaced a paper bag containing about 50 postcards bought during the river
cruise. Some had even been written on ready to send. Jean searched high and low
and everywhere in between. No paper bag, no postcards. Jean was well and truly
Pi…. Off (to put it politely), as she told some of her friends in an email. I
found the missing bag. All happy, we got in the car, instructed Annie to take
us to Amiens, not far from Villers-Bretonneux (our destination on the way to
Paris). I estimated it was about 150km due south. We followed Annie’s instructions
and discovered she calculated 167km. I must be wrong. Now remember back on
Tuesday, I made a mistake on our way to Boulogne-s-Mer on the way to Dunkerque
when Annie was misbehaving. Today she was trying to make up for her bad day,
because she first took us west to Boulogne-s-Mer then south-southeast to
Amiens. I guess it may have been faster as over ¾ of the trip was on a 130km/hr
expressway. Gina cruises well at 125km/hr but slows a bit on the up-hills. Just
prior to Amiens, we reset Annie to V-B and with a bit of local help arrived at
the Australian War Memorial and Cemetery. We spent about an hour walking around
here, then headed off for lunch. Not much on offering in V-B, so we headed to
the local supermarket. Another oddity! Jean shopped in her first Aldi today.
After a home-made (in Gina) lunch, we headed to the Franco-Australian Museum.
As we were about to walk in, a bus-load of high-school aged boys and a couple
of adults followed us in. All the boys had Australian sports shirts on. They
were a cricket team from St Pauls High School on their way to England to play
cricket during their mid-year school break. (For non Brisbane people, St Pauls
High School is not far from where we live in Brisbane). The Museum was very
interesting. As we were about to leave the museum, thunder and lightning
arrived. We quickly jumped in the car and started our trip to Paris through torrential
rain. About another 150 km to go, and the first 40 was in driving rain. We arrived
in arrived on the outskirts of Paris at about 6:00PM right in the middle of
evening peak hour traffic. Induction by fire, into driving in Paris. What fun!
Left turn into a narrow 2-way street to be confronted by 2 cars side-by-side
facing us, we squeezed past. Need to stop to check the map, pulled into a small
space behind another car, to then discover that we were both in a bus stop, bus
arrives, no problem, just stop in the middle of the road and let passengers
off. Paris parkers are ingenious. At most intersections, you can find four cars
parking at 45 degrees on the corners of the intersections. Easy parking,
difficult to negotiate the corner while driving. At last we made it to the
hotel, checked in, had dinner, took a short walk to find the Metro station (with
the help of a young Paris girl) for tomorrow’s escapade into Paris city. Jean
hopes that loos are easier to find in Paris. She is getting tired of having to
search out a WC and then pay EU$0.50 to use it. It seems that all eating places
must have a loo and they are free if you are a patron, so we call in; buy a cup
of coffee, dispose of the previous cup of coffee, then drink the fresh one.
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