After what seems likes ages, our exhausting little jaunt around Europe is finally over and we’re now back in the UK basking in this truly glorious British weather 😯 So here’s a little snippet of what we got up to…
Day 1 – was spent travelling to Dover, where we spent a far from pleasant night eating in Dover’s version of Fawlty Towers.
Day 2 – began with a 2 hour bob up & down across the Channel (it was particularly bobby today), before driving to Chartres, France. We paid €18 for a bottle of house red, twice!!!
Day 3 – a look around the hugely impressive Chartres Cathedral, before driving south to the very volcanic Mont Dore. We ate a meal inside a boxing-ring!!!
Day 4 – the very volcanic Mont Dore was today wet & freezing cold and our planned cable-car ride was abandoned because of the low cloud 🙁
Day 5 – drove south, via the hugely impressive Millau Viaduct to begin our week long stay in Olonzac, near Carcassonne, France. We got horrendously lost (as we usually do!!!).
Day 6 – did nothing… And it was really nice 🙂
Day 7 – realised that I’d had my hat & MP3 player stolen from our hotel in Mont Dore!!! Very, very peed off.
Day 8 – local market in Olonzac, but sadly no hat. Lightening made the street-light near our veranda go pop 😯
Day 9 – thanks to my not so cultured darling little boy we had a ‘whistle stop/chase the screaming kid’ tour of the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres, Spain. At least I did manage to get into the place this time.
Day 10 – went to swim in a river, but there was no water ❓ Went to go on a boat trip up the canal (which did have water in it), but the ticket office didn’t open until an hour after the boat had left ❓ Bought very cheap local wine instead!!!
Day 11 – took Sawyer for his first encounter with the sea, which must be a hugely surreal event for a 2½ year old. It took a while, but he did eventually get wet.
Day 12 – drove to the very glamorous, if a little brash, Antibes, France. Trod in some very posh dog poo and took fancy nighttime photos of Cannes.
Day 13 – entered Italy, ‘ciao’ and was hugely relieved to discover that our Milano apartment did actually exist 🙄 After a few hours inside the non air-conditioned electrical death-trap we wished it never had.
Day 14 – blagged a free tram ride into Milano Centro, where we ate pizzas & ice cream, but decided against the rather pricey designer hats.
Day 15 – had breakfast (what scraps we had left!!!) in Italy, lunch in Switzerland (38°c) and evening meal in the Black Forest, Germany (sadly no gateaux though).
Day 16 – our friend’s car was massively kaputton & was promptly towed to a local garage. All a bit sombre today. Drank lots of beer!!!
Day 17 – car fixed, thanks to the very efficient Germans, we headed north into Luxembourg and promptly stumbled into the Tour de Luxembourg (or at least something that involved 100’s of bikes)!!!
Day 18 – saw the hugely impressive Atomium (don’t waste your cash by going inside the thing though) in Brussels, on our way to Bruges. Drank rather a lot of very nice (and a tad strong) beer and didn’t see a single midget 🙁
Day 19 – left our stunning B&B in Bruges armed with leftover breakfast and headed for our ferry home. The M20 north to London was closed and covered in cocoa, apparently!!! And it rained… A lot!!!
So there you have it, well almost…
Day 20 – checking through all the answer-machine messages on our phone back in the UK and I picked up a 2 week old message from some woman in Mont Dore, saying that a hat & an MP3 player had been left in our hotel room and did we want them posting back 😀
