Blogs from Pays-de-la-Loire, France, Europe - page 11

For some reason I had thought that Pornic was going to be a high-rise apartment sort of seaside resort. Very pleasantly surprised to find I was completely wrong. No sweeping seaside bay here but a fishing port built along a deep river estuary. There was a very good walkway all along the north side of the estuary so we walked along it right to the end where it came out at the yachting marina and a proper little sandy beach. Shame we had not brought swimming things as the sea looked quite inviting. We had lunch at a bar and the brochettes de crevettes were delicious. The walk back into town seemed much shorter than on the way out and we climbed a steep little path to the upper town. As normal for my shopping expectations, ... read more

So our adventure began with a very very very long day of traveling. We picked up the car in Toulon and decided to get to the Loire Valley to do our castle tours we should drive as far as we could the first day. So we drove for about 8.5 hours with a couple of stops until we got to Tours, France. Rob was pretty happy to be driving on roads at about 130-150kmh. Our little car can go pretty fast... I was happy that it was turquoise like my car back home (a colour Rob for some reason hates...lol). Anyway so we stayed the night in Tours at a cheap hotel (36Euros a night...woohoo) it was a pretty random hotel but it did the trick, then it was up early and off to fit in ... read more

After last night’s thunderstorm the day is looking clear and the temperature is rising. But before we leave for Angers and the Loire Valley we have one final visit to make – the centre of Rouen. From our reading prior to coming on the trip we discovered that Rouen has a beautiful cathedral that is in the long process of being cleaned and restored. With the car once again packed we drove down the hill to the city centre and found a very handy car park within easy walking distance of the sights we wanted to see. On our way to the cathedral we discovered a part of the city with very old restored buildings similar to the ones we saw yesterday in Gaillon. Again it was difficult to find a right angle anywhere. We wondered ... read more

Playing catch up in the blogging game is not fun - it's interesting, reminiscing about the past year, but suddenly realizing how much I left out is a bit terrifying. As such, I've decided to put in a few short entries so we can see where I've been and then a longer one about the last few weeks. Let's take it from the top: France. France you see, was part of the summer of absolute craziness. First there was Vancouver, including the CHI Conference and a visit with family and friends. Then there was Brazil, and the crazy printer - there's a video here now by the way, showing the journey and what it resulted in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mEk4A7ETec Okay so that was that, then we went to Copenhagen literally overnight, celebrated father's day by participating in the ... read more

We left Paris today for Nantes. The main reason for making the trip was to visit the war grave of Barry's great uncle Noel, from who Barry was given his middle name. Noel was killed there in world war 1. We found the hotel very central and close to the town square. It is a lovely town, much quieter than Paris, which was a relief, and very attractive. We decided to visit the grave the day we arrived in case we didn't have time the next day. We ended up getting a taxi there, asking the driver if he could pick us up in an hour, only to receive a curt "Non". We found the grave without any trouble. It was sad to see that there were four Kiwis buried there so far from home. Noel ... read more