Carnaval in Nice!

One of our highlights of being in Nice was seeing their Carnaval celebrations. Carnaval is traditionally a time of celebration just before Lent, but we were there quite a bit after Lent started, so I’m not too sure on how the timing was worked out.  We had been just a little early for Carnaval celebrations…

Read More

Nice was nice

We drove from Avignon right down to the south coast of France, where we met our friend Sarah in Nice (pronounced niece).  Sarah is a Kiwi who has been travelling en route to the UK – when we found out we were going to be in the same continent at the same time, we made…

Read More

A Pope’s Palace and the Pont du Gard

We had a rather more adventurous drive than planned from Tours to Avignon. We realised that not taking the toll roads meant that we would be going through hills and mountains – what we hadn’t realised was that we would hit an unplanned snowfall, and get out first ever experience of driving in snow. No…

Read More

Chateaux and wine in the Loire Valley

We researched trains and buses to get to the Loire valley and on to the south of France, and quickly realised that we were going to pay about the same amount to go by public transport as we were by train – so we hired a rental car and picked it up in the middle…

Read More

A birthday in Paris

On our second to last day in Paris, we decided to get out and walk in the gorgeous sunshine.  We started at the Madeleine church, which looks like a Roman temple on the outside but is a Catholic church on the inside.     We then walked through the Place de la Concorde, down the…

Read More

Under Paris

Having visited the Catacombs in Rome, we were interested in visiting the ones in Paris too. Despite all the reviews talking about having to wait for hours, here we experienced one of the benefits of travelling in winter in Europe – no lines at all! The catacombs were really interesting.  Originally a space for mining,…

Read More

A visit to Versailles

We took the train out from Paris to the nearby palace of Versailles.  Built by French royalty in the 1600’s, it is now a UNESCO World Heritage site and museum/tourist destination.  We spent the whole day here exploring, beginning with an exhibition on the sculptures at Versailles before exploring the lavish rooms and the famous…

Read More

Paris wanderings

We had a rather round about route to Paris from Bruges! We had booked a train from Bruges to Lille and then a bus from Lille to France.  However, the snow in the night turned our route into a train ride…then another train ride…then a 45 minute wait in the snow…then a bus to Lille!…

Read More

In Bruges

We spent two days in Bruges, Belgium (also known as Brugge).  A lot of people have told us how much they loved Bruges, and while we did enjoy it, we also definitely thought it would be a nicer place in summer as one of the highlights is wandering the scenic streets.  This was a less…

Read More

Kinderdijk

We had really wanted to see some windmills in the Netherlands and our research had guided us towards Kinderdijk.  Kinderdijk is a collection of 19 original windmills in the south of the Netherlands – perfect to visit on our way to Belgium.  It’s also a UNESCO world heritage site.  We took a train to a…

Read More