Sleeping in the animal park has the advantage of being allowed in it earlier/later than the day visitors. The resort area in the west has - aside from the hotel rooms and cottages - black bears, gray wolves, beavers, .. and it’s open all night. The rest of the park is open to resort guests… Continue reading The last holiday day
Wednesday 16 October. It’s our twentieth wedding anniversary! We’ll take off in the afternoon for a long weekend in the Ardennes, but first there’s a working morning, so the alarm is still set at six. It’s a complicated morning: I have work to finish before noon and also a few remote meetings planned, plus I’m… Continue reading Our (the hamlet)
Now that we have the channel tunnel, the travel time from Belgium to England is not as long as you’d imagine, if you disregard the delays due to roadworks for a minute. We sort out the cottage and set off around nine, that should give us plenty of time to do some sightseeing along the… Continue reading Homeward!
Up and running at six this morning! We want to catch LeShuttle (the train through the channel tunnel) around nine. We're taking a trip with family, so we're a group of three cars, but it's nigh impossible to coordinate which train to be on, so we've agreed to meet up at our first activity in… Continue reading To England
We slept in a gîte, a rented appartment belonging to the champagne supplier we visited yesterday, so there’s no breakfast. We don’t mind, we’ve had such copious amounts of food the last days that we’re happy to take a break. We skip breakfast, leave the key in the lock box and set off north. Champagne… Continue reading Champagne – part 1
Up at seven, breakfast at eight, they have - aside of the normal offerings - really delicious cookies. We’ve been keeping an eye on the news, the storm Ciarán is expected to do its worst today, with high winds, strong gusts of wind and rain squalls. My mom was house sitting (or cat sitting, more… Continue reading Driving through Ciarán
We’re coming to the end of our Spanish holiday, so today’s goal is simple: get to Tours in France. We take our time with breakfast, because lunch will be highway food, which is not often appetising.. It’s been raining the whole night and morning, fortunately our car is parked inside and we can pack up… Continue reading A rainy ride to Tours
I’m up at all hours in the night, but around nine I feel steady enough to leave the hotel room. I sip ginger tea, gingerly, while Arne has breakfast. We scroll through Google maps to find a quiet activity or two on the road to our next destination. We give the mountains a final wave… Continue reading A quiet drive
Up at eight, breakfast at nine, packed and ready to go around ten or so. We have a lunch reservation at the restaurant Txispa (pronounced tsjispa - it means spark) in the tiny village of Axpe-Atxondo, about a ninety minute drive from here. We were politely informed by mail that we should arrive between 13:20… Continue reading Basque-Japanese cuisine
It’s a bit weird to start a daily post with yesterday’s dinner, but what can you do when dinner time starts only at eight thirty.. We have dinner in the hotel restaurant, where we’re the only customers until another guest walks in around ten. The waitress speaks English and they even have an English menu… Continue reading Unexpected pleasures
We had a delicious dinner yesterday, as typical of the region it started late but was very quick, with the glasses of wine delivered immediately after ordering and food not ten minutes after. I had the trout (local style, which includes ham) and Arne octopus. We made an effort to stay up a bit, but… Continue reading El Monasterio de Piedra
I wake up before the alarm at seven, so I grab my tablet and browse for new books, it’s a weekly struggle, even though I always read at least one old book before I buy a new one.. I decide to read an old favourite again: The Hob’s Bargain by Patricia Briggs. We have breakfast… Continue reading To Spain
It’s an odd start for a holiday, we had planned to get organised and packed yesterday afternoon and evening, but Arne’s come down with a viral infection and spent all Friday in the couch. I’ve at least managed to get the laundry done and some of the specific stuff like camera equipment, shoes, finalising the… Continue reading To France
I wake up around six, a bit early but that's okay, we have a lot to do this morning! We first pack up mom's trekking gear, which we won't need again until I drop her off at home, and stuff that in the trunk of the car. Next we drag the bike rack and bike… Continue reading To Basel
Up at 6:30, packed and ready to go at 7. I'll skip breakfast as usual, I refill my water bottles and can have something from my snack bag when I get hungry. I ask the receptionist what was up with all the late arrivals and she explains there was a beer festival nearby, that explains..… Continue reading To Milan – part 2
Tomorrow my mom arrives in Milan by bike, after a month long trek from Belgium. As usual the last few years, we're making a city trip out of it! Since Milan is only about a 1000 km from Antwerp by car if you take the straightest route, I'll be taking the car there and we'll… Continue reading To Milan – part 1
Since we were in so late yesterday, we decided to forgo an alarm. I wake up a few times during the night, but suddenly it’s eight thirty. We have a leisurely breakfast - I combine American pancakes with vanilla sauce and mixed nuts and love it - and discuss the options for today. It’s only… Continue reading Sequoias etc
Normally these blog reports start with getting up from bed, but today I must admit I’ve been lazy and didn’t write yesterday about yesterday’s adventures, so this post kicks off with a summary. I can even be very brief, because it must have been one of the most frustrating holiday launches ever. We finished our… Continue reading Traffic jams
I wake up at six, wide eyed and ready to start the day, but the rest of the household is still fast asleep, so I read until the alarms go off at seven fifteen. I hop down the stairs, it's a beautiful morning, warm enough even to have breakfast outside. Considering we're near the Belgian… Continue reading A hot day in the car
A good night, we wake up with the alarm at seven and the first thing we do is look out over the lake to watch the sun come up. As predicted the cloud cover is pretty low, but there's a hole that makes the lake glow with the reflection of the new day. Off to… Continue reading Die Deutsche Alpenstraße
It wasn't a great night.. noisy bed, lumpy pillows. Then again, we booked this hotel using loyalty points on the booking platform so it's basically free and that's an enjoyable fact. The reception was closed the day before and we used a code to get our key from a safe, but this morning there is… Continue reading Back in Konstanz
Febe writes 