Had two wonderful days eating the wonderful local food and seeing some great places. Wine comes from the local vineyards where you take your own bottles to be refilled. Local produce in Montélimar includes world famous nougat, olives, peaches, apricots and plums, wine both red and white, and goat and sheep cheese. Fresh bread and croissants are bought each morning and food is served as is. Salads are tomato and onion or just lettuce, bread cut at the table. Meals start with a small entree with wine, then mains, then fruit for desert. SO DELICIOUS!!!!!!! Montélimar is also known for its fields of lavender which is used in the perfume industry. In this area is one of France's most famous 17th century villages Poët Laval. It has well preserved houses made of the local lime stone,narrow ... read more

Today's schedule included a look at the historic Fachwerk houses in Melsungen and then coffee and cake mid morning, this is Germany and that's like compulsory! Once we got back to the smaller village outside Melsungen where i am staying, we went for a 5 minute walk to an animal park. Welll actually it was a 25 minute walk to the animal park through a nice forest path and along a little road accompanied by rain at times. Found some ripe blackberries and had a little taste....memories of childhood and picking them around Ashburton! Melsungen's history goes back many thousands of years but real habitation began around the late 1100's with people living and working in this area as workers in the nearby forests. The church is one of the oldest buildings in the area with ... read more

Today my hosts Shakila and Yannic decided, since the weather looked promising, to go firstly for a walk around Kassel which is known for its modern art installations. Quite near the centre of the city is a massive park once belonging to nobility with laid out formal gardens and some museums. Lastly we grabbed some bread rolls at a little bakery and a drink and headed to the Schloss and Schloss park Wilhelmshöhe right on the edge of Kassel. This is a massive park with lakes, waterfalls, gardens, forests, castles, statues, walkways and paths, museums and castles. It's a beautiful place, tranquil, well laid out and great for a picnic. Most museums are closed on Mondays in Germany as we found out. ... read more

Berend and Islemary were my hosts for two days in this tiny village near the Friesland border. The weather was nice when I took the train from Zutphen to Steenwijk and remained OK for the afternoon, but by evening rain and wind had set in. In the afternoon we went to the canal town of Giethoorn where there are many water related activities such as canooeing and canal trips as well as a lake to sail on. This is a popular tourist spot with walkways and paths, bikes to hire and cafes to sit in. In the winter the canals freeze and are used for long distance skating. It's an extremely popular holiday spot, really pretty. Another town nearby is Blokzijl which was once a harbour. Now its an inland water town as a new dyke ... read more

In this 1000 year old Catholic cathedral are stained glasses windows from the famous European artist Marc Chagall. He was a Russian Jew and at the age of 91 he completed, along with Fenster, the stained glass windows in this church. 3 years later he died. The German government asked him for many years to commission this art work, which is initially reluctantly agreed to. He uses blue as his primary colour, which has always been the colour of nobility. This was due to the difficulty in producing this colour from nature prior to introduction of artifical pigments. Quite interestingly blue is the primary colour found in many mosques and is also used extensively in deocorating of tiles in Islamic areas. ... read more