Yep, we are island hopping in Europe. First stop – Corsica. It is technically part of France but it really isn’t that near to France. We took an overnight ferry from Toulon (near Marseilles), from 6:30pm to 7:00am the next morning. We are not “cruisers” so this was kinda new for us. We rented a…
Tag: France
Searching for the lost Chateau in Burgandy
My Great-Grandma Tonsie told stories about how her grandparents were the gardeners/caretakers of a mansion in France in the 1860’s. We are traveling through Burgundy so we had to try and find it! Before I tell you about our searching, I have a LOT of interesting background story info that might be more interesting than…
Do we like “thru-hiking” in Europe?
We just finished our trial thru-hikes to see if are ready for doing a Camino de Santiago. I’m sure everyone is on the edge of their seat to see what we are now thinking :>) First, we need to try to define the terms. In America, I have done a lot of “backpacking” in Washington…
Hiking the Alsace Wine Route
Yep, another long hike… but this time on the other side of France in the Alsatian region. Alsace is a very German part of France because this area has been part of Germany in the past. Many people still speak German and the regional food also is a bit similar with a lot of pretzels,…
Hiking Cancale to Mont Saint Michel, Days 3 and 4
After eating enough oysters in Cancale to cure our sickness, we were ready to go and finish our hike. If you haven’t read about Day 1 and 2 of our hike you should probably do that first. We were now feeling fresh and determined to walk the rest of the way to our final destination…
Hiking Saint Malo to Cancale- Day 1 and 2
Our first step in the morning was to find a taxi to take our bags ahead to our final destination 5 days from now. We were able to negotiate a fair price with a driver who was willing to take our carry-on rolly bags to our Airbnb in Mont Saint Michel. Our Airbnb had agreed…
Back to France and Finding Roots
We had a great time in Fall 2023 traveling through Southern France and we really wanted to see some more of this country so we planned to return for the month of September 2024. Our flight came into Paris on September 2nd and we planned a couple of days here to get over jetlag. We…
My Favorite Towns in the World
We have returned again to Bucerias, Mexico for a 5 week stay. This will be the 4th year in a row that we will have spent at least a month in Bucerias. Last fall I wrote a post about how we didn’t know how to answer the question- Where is your favorite place? I have…
French Basque Country
Sometimes you just need some beach time. We had been in France for 3 weeks but we didn’t have a good chance to swim in the Med. We were busy seeing the sites and beaches weren’t the priority in Arles, Montpellier and Bordeaux. We did a lot of museums and cultural stuff which is the…
Bordeaux, France
We are huge wine lovers and just had to visit of the best wine regions in the world if we are in France. That got us here but there was a ton of other things to do and Bordeaux is a beautiful city. Fantastic architecture, long pedestrian streets, and some interesting museums to see. The…
Montpellier, France
During my last few years of working when I was dreaming of retirement, I was picturing a nomadic life, staying for 2-3 months in European towns that weren’t too touristy. I wanted to live in Europe, not be a tourist. Montpellier is the type of town that I had pictured. It has 300k people but…
Day Trips from Arles
The first week in Europe we try to take it a bit slow because we are almost always suffering from a bit of jetlag. A small town like Arles is a great first stop, because there isn’t that many must see destinations. We thought if we were able to conquer jetlag that we would be…
Arles, France – WTF?!?!?!
We are off on another adventure! First stop- Arles in Provence. It took us a bit to get here. British Airways overbooked us on our flight from Seattle and didn’t tell us until we just about to board. We ended up spending another night in Seattle and then accepting a 12 hour layover in London…