Our last full day in Europe

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.

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.

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 15^th 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.

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.

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.

A Few More Photos

Brugge St Salvator Cathedral (above)

Brugge Basilica of the Holy Blood upper chapel (above)

Above - Scouts Plus in Enkhuizen

Scouts 100 year Parade Start in Enkhuizen

Scouts 100 year Parade in Enkhuizen

Gent - Riverside (above)

Gent - St Baafs Cathedral (above)

Monickendam - old boat

Villers Bretoneaux - War Cemetery

 Villers Bretoneaux - War Memorial

What tower in the distance?

Zaanse Schans - Working Mill

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.