Blogs from Nord-Pas de Calais, France, Europe - page 16

We are further north now in St Omer, about 30 miles from Calais which makes getting across the channel and back to west London pretty easy, assuming the weather continues to hold. It has been warm again today. I really cannot complain, we left the UK at about 2.30pm on 5th June, since then we have not needed wet weather gear. This close to the channel, and on a Saturday, St Omer is rather unsurprisingly full of Brits. It also has a mix of French and UK bikers hanging around the town square. It is quite lively with in my view with rather too much beer being consumed in the afternoon. Part of me wants to turn around and do it all again. I doubt we would still have jobs to return to if we did ... read more

And here I am at my fourth and last host families house already! this year sure does fly by so quickly!!! The day my parents left from France was the day I switched host families and what a great idea because I think its harder to say goodbye to parents the second time! and so I'm living with two parents who work in the catholic church, 3 host sisters, two who work outside of town and only come a few times per week, and one 17 year old sister, who is awesome! Also I have a host brother who goes to school in another town and one who was in Venezuela for a few years who just came back. So it has been such a change from all my host families and i'm so happy to ... read more

With our bus trip to London not until late this afternoon, we slept in a bit this morning. It looks like our wifi has been cut off for our departure day, which is a bit of a pain as we could really use it to book some flights that our coming up. After breakfast, we did some mailings of things and then explored the mall a bit more, including a nature store that has become Joshua's favourite. After a lunch at Subway, we picked up our bags from our hotel and walked a short distance to Lille's other train station, where our bus (and the much faster Eurostar train) depart. Though our bus was supposed to leave at 3:30, as the time approached there was no sign of it, despite the fact that our tickets said ... read more

We got an earlier start today packing and cleaning up the apartment. At 10:45 the father of the apartment owner showed up and we gave him the keys. We were taking the metro again to the train station, but fortunately it was not too busy on account of today's holiday (the French seem to have a ton of holidays). Despite our attempts to plan this route today, the metro stations seem to have few elevators and escalators. It means for a lot of hauling around of suitcases. We end up arriving at the station a good hour and twenty minutes early, so we have time to look around in the souvenir stores beforehand. Security at this train station is quite tight with machine gun toting guards patrolling the platforms. It sort of reminds me of the ... read more

Hello, Some pictures from our visit to the Canadian Memorial in Vimy, between the cities of Lens and Arras Hallo, Een paar prentjes van onze uitstap naar het Canadees gedenkteken te Vimy tussen Lens en Arras Marijke en Luc... read more