Auto World and the journey home

We visited Auto World today and saw some great cars, motorbikes and motoring history.  There wasn't time for much else other than getting back to the railway station to get the train home.  A fun weekend!

Exploring Brussels - Church, Parade, Food, Beer

We had a very full day today starting with an Assembly at Fishmarket followed by the Schuman museum and the European Commission.

Then we saw a Beer Parade and went to a fun place called El Greco for lunch.  After lunch we visited the Horta Museum and then spent some time at the Beer Festival in the main square in Brussels.



We had a drink at "La Morte Subite" then enjoyed a rather good but rather expensive dinner at Scheltema.

A trip to Brussels for a beer festival

We left home around 7.30am this morning to get a train to London to get the Eurostar to Brussels.  We were off on a trip to a "Beligan Beer Weekend" with Gordon's staff social group, HASSRA.

We arrived in Brussels around 2pm and got a coach to our Hotel, the Sheraton on Place Charles Rogier.

After a short rest we went and explored the Comic Strip Museum and then found a bar for a quick drink.

Next we went and found the beer festival and had to buy some tokens for beer as well as for glasses. This was quite a queue but we then got to enter the enclosure on the Grand Place and sampled a few nice Belgian beers.  The portions were small as the alcohol content is high!

We had a pleasant dinner at a restaurant right on the Grand Place called L'Estaminet du Kelderke.

Travelling home

Sadly today meant time to return home.

We got a TGV from Marseilles to Paris at 1006 hrs, getting in to Paris Gare de Lyon at 1323.  The journey was uneventful but Gare de Lyon is a really smelly and badly signposted station, as we found was Gare du Nord after a short Regional Train trip to transfer between the two termini.

The Eurostar was on time and staff served a pleasant light meal to us on the way to London.  We got a train to Oxford quite easily and were home by 7pm after a fabulous holiday.

Chateau d'If and Frioul

Today was the last full day of our holiday. We had a fairly early start and got a boat from the old port to the Chateau d’If, only about a 20 minute trip.   It’s a castle on a rock just off the Marseilles coast that has a fascinating history and offers some great views of the City and of the Frioul islands. There was a useful audioguide for the castle that also synchronised with some of the films showing about the castle.

Once we’d fully explored the castle we got another boat to Frioul.  This is an archipelago consisting of two main islands, Rattoneau and Pomegues (it also includes If and Tiboulain). We did a lot of walking around beautiful paths and saw some good views of the area. There was a fantastic display of aeroplanes too, which were apparently practising for a show on Saturday. They are the Patrouille de France, similar to the UK’s red arrows.

We got a boat back to the mainland around 5.30pm and enjoyed a quick drink before choosing our final evening’s dining venue.  On the advice of TripAdvisor we settled on going to a place called La Table a Deniz.  We enjoyed some really excellent food with me having a veal stew and Gordon enjoying rabbit stuffed with tapenade.

We had a few drinks at our favourite bar. Polikarpov, afterwards to mark the end of the holiday.

Returning to Marseilles and a slightly bonkers dinner

Today we got up fairly early and packed everything up after breakfast so we could drive back to Marseilles.  We left around 11.30am and got to Marseilles in time to return the hire car on time.

Once we’d done that we had a pleasant cous-cous lunch in a Tunisian restaurant near the main rail station then walked down to the Old Port again to check into our fourth and final hotel, the Alizé.  It was right on the port so very convenient, although there were a lot of steps up to the first floor where the lift started – not ideal with huge bags!

Once we’d got settled into our room we went to have a look at the Museum of the History of Marseilles.  Unfortunately it was only opening for another 45 minutes and the person on the reception desk didn’t think that would give us time to do it justice.  We had a bit more of an explore instead and then went back to the Hotel for a rest. We also booked some tickets for another boat trip to see the Chateau d’If and the Frioul islands.

Dinner was at a restaurant called “Chez nous” on Place Notre Dame du Mont.  The food was good but the service just a little bonkers! They insisted we used the badly translated English menu even though we were coping just fine with the French one.

Olive mill in VilleVieille, Plage de L'Espiguette and a night market in Sommieres.

Today was Gordon’s birthday.  We started it with a trip to a local olive cooperative in Villevielle where we were shown all the steps of the process for making oil from raw olives brought in by local people, some of whom only had a handful of trees.  It was interesting also to see the different methods of harvesting olives that are in practice, from picking by hand to fully automated tree-shaking and olive-catching.

After this visit we drove down to Plage de l’Espiguette – it is a huge beach and really well kept.  The sand was clean (and hot) and we had a few hours there including several cooling swims in the sea.

As today was our last full day in Sommieres we decided to have dinner at Chez Tybere, a restaurant recommended by the hotel.  It didn’t disappoint us and we enjoyed seeing a friendly cat there too.

A trip to Arles

We got up reasonably early this morning and drove to Arles.  We managed to get parked more easily than yesterday and so started our exploring.

Our fist visit was the Arena, which has been extensively developed and rebuilt over the years, so is still rather impressive.

After a quick lunch from a supermarket we did a bit more of the walking tour around the City, visiting the old Roman baths, then the Eglise St Trophine.  Next we visited the old Roman theatre but couldn't visit Arladen museum as it is closed for refurbishment.

We drove back to the hotel in Sommieres and spent a few hours resting by the pool, swimming, reading and drinking beer.

In the evening we had dinner at Les Korrigans du Vidourle, a Brittany-themes Creperie.  I had a crepe with andouille and cooked onions - the closest I've got yet to an Andouilette on his holiday!  We finished the evening with a drink at a bar on the riverside in Sommieres.

The Grottes de Clamouse and Saint Guilhem le Desert

We drove over to Saint Guilhem today to find limited parking and huge jams so ended up driving back about 4km to the Grottes de Clamouse.  There was a free bus into Saint Guilheme but there were all arriving full so we visited the Grottes (caves) instead.  The tour was about 1.5 hours and was a real treat of stunning natural beauty and a reprise from the 30C+ heat at a steady 15C for the whole tour.

After the caves we did manage to get a bus into Saint Guilhem and enjoyed a pleasant walk around this extremely pretty village and a tour around L'Abbaye de Gellone.

After a rest at the hotel we wandered back into Sommieres for dinner.

Moving on to Sommieres and seeing Les Saintes Maries de la Mer

We had breakfast a bit late today and then left our lodgings in Vergeze to move on to the Hotel Estelou in Sommieres.  We arrived pretty early as it's only a short drive away but our room was ready and the hosts kindly let us move in.  The hotel is a conversion from what used to be the railway line through Sommieres and it has been done sympathetically leaving some railway memorabilia around the building and site.

We left the Hotel fairly promptly and drive to Le Sainte Maries de la Mer where we enjoyed some bull steaks for lunch, very traditional for the area, and then visited the Church and enjoyed some great panoramic views from the roof.  After a wander around the town we returned to the car and did a drive around the Camargue, seeing lots of flamingos and egrits as well as lots of other birds.  We went to a beach called Piémanson and found it to be full of vehicles and caravans that looked very run down.  It was covered in litter and worse and really was not pleasant.  We didn't stay long and then returned to Sommieres.

We enjoyed an evening meal at a restaurant called L'Atelier, in Sommieres.  It was good to be able to walk there and thus enjoy a beer or two!

Sommieres for Breakfast and Aigues-Mortes again

Today our hosts took us to Sommieres to see the Saturday market.  It was incredibly busy.  We enjoyed having breakfast at Les Delices du Liban, run by a friend of one of our hosts.  Places like that are relaxed and we were able to eat croissants, break and galettes from other stalls in the market there,

We visited an Olive Oil cooperative on the way back to Vergeze and enjoyed tasting some different Olive Oils - it's amazing how different they are when you taste carefully.

In the afternoon we went once more to Aigues Mortes and enjoyed the historic walk around the Remparts there.  There were some great views of the town and we enjoyed learning about this history of the place as well as seeing some of the salt harvesting industry that now happens on the flats of the Mediterranean in the area.  We also saw the first rain of the holiday although it wasn't much!

Our evening was spent having another excellent meal with our hosts at La Maison de Pierre and meeting some friends of theirs who had driven from Normandy.  There was some quite heavy rain overnight.

La Source du Perrier and Aigues-Mortes

We had a fairly lazy breakfast with our hosts Fred and Reginaldo this morning and then went for a drive to see La Source du Perrier as it is in the same village as the place we are staying.  We had to book at go back at 4pm.

We went on to Aigues-Mortes, an important inland port town that was founded by Louis IX as a principal gateway to the Mediterranean as Marseilles was not part of France at that time. We had lunch there and explored two churches, Notre Dame Des Sablons and the Churches of the white penitents and of the grey penitents.

Back at La Source du Perrier it was good to learn some history of Perrier and to discover that is it now available in 140 countries worldwide with all of it coming from this same source.

We came back to the B&B for a swim and a shower and then had a delicious evening meal at a restaurant in the next village, Codognan, called Lou Flambadou. It was good that it was only 20 minutes walk away so we could both enjoy the various wines offered with each course.

Montpellier

We got up a bit earlier today to get a local train to Montpellier as it only took 20 minutes and was going to be much easier than driving in.

After arriving we stopped for a coffee in the Place de la Comédie then started the walking tour recommend by the Michelin guide we were using.  We visited the Hotel Particuliers including the museum of Montpellier.  Next we continued the tour to get to the Musée Fabre where we saw lots of art including an excellent temporary exhibition on the golden age of Naples.

We followed this with lunch where we had Raclette with possibly more Reblochon than Tony ever wants to see again.

Following lunch we returned to the Musée Fabre to see the permanent collections then continued the tour, seeing the Cathedral St Pierre and the Medical Faculty (which was sadly closed).  After that we visited the aqueduct and Place Royale du Peyru and then we walked over to the East of the city cente to see Antigone, a modern development of a former army site.

We got a tram back to the rail station and got back to Vergeze around 8.45pm.

A relaxing day at La Maison de Pierre and exploring Vergeze

We didn't do much today but had a lazy day around the pool at our lovely B&B, La Maison de Pierre.

We went for an explore around Vergeze (not a big place!) in the late afternoon, including seeing the cinema/theatre that looks like a church conversion, and had a few beers in a local bar.

We chose a restaurant for the evening then went back to La Maison de Pierre for a rest and a swim again and to get changed for the evening.

Our evening meal was at a local hotel and restaurant called La Passiflore.  It was extremely tasty and we both enjoyed eating in the pleasant courtyard setting.

The Villa Mediterranée, Regards de Provence Museum and Unité de L'Habitation

Today is our last day in Marseilles in this part of the holiday.  We went fairly early to the Villa Mediterranée, an amazing building on the port that I'm not sure has found its purpose in life yet. It is an impressive structure though with a section with windows in the floor.

Following this we went to the Regards de Provence museum where we saw two exhibitions, one called Lights of the South.

Our next port of call was to go and collect the hire car that we had booked so we could do some more exploring.  We got it from the Thrifty depot at the Marseilles main railway station and took the opportunity to go and visit the Unité de L'Habitation - a modernist residential tower block that contains housing, an hotel, shops, a school and roof pool.  It was one of the early tower blocks in Marseilles.

We then went and picked up our suitcases from the hotel and drove to our second booking for the holiday, La Maison de Pierre, in Vergeze.  We received a good welcome there and a pleasant dinner with our hosts Fred and Reginaldo.

A boat trip to the Massif des Calanques

We got up early today and had a quick breakfast at the local bakery as we were booked on a 9.30am boat trip from Marseilles to see lots of Calanques.  These are narrow and steep-sided coastal valleys that create a magical juxtaposition of sea, rock and sky and are extremely beautiful.

We got as far as Cassis and then cruised back to Marseilles for about 1.45pm.  We had lunch at a little restaurant called Smart Cook.

In the afternoon we did some more exploring including visiting the cathédrale notre dame de la garde. It is a big basilica at the highest point in Marseilles so was quite a climb but that was rewarded with some excellent views of the City.

Our evening consisted of dinner at a place called Restaurant Paul then a few beers at Polikarpov!

A day exploring Marseille

We didn't get up very early today but did enjoy a good breakfast at the hotel.  We spend the day exploring Marseilles, seeing the Panier district and the Vielle Charité art museum.  We had a light lunch of quiches and salad and in the afternoon we visited the Cathedral La Mejor then the new Mucem museum.

We went back to the hotel for a rest and then went out for dinner at a small vietnamese restaurant just over the road from the hotel. It was very good but the food was actually more like that you'd find in a Chinese restaurant.  We had a few drinks in our favourite bar, Polikarpov and had a fairly early night ready for a boat trip in the morning.

The start of the summer holiday

As we've already been to Japan and Germany this year we decided just to spend two weeks in France this summer.  Instead of driving and camping we have decided to do the train and hotels.

We left Oxford by train around 10am and got to Paddington in plenty of time to get to St Pancras in time for Eurostar check-in.  It's a good job we did as there were no tubes between Paddington and St Pancras so we had to spend £20 on a taxi.

The Eurostar left on time and we enjoyed a pleasant light lunch on the way to Lille.  The change of train at Lille onto the first class TGV was straightforward and we were soon on our way to Marseilles.

We arrived at Marseilles around 2045 and got a local metro train to the Old Port, from where our hotel, Hotel Hermes, was a short walk.  It has a rather nice roof terrace!  We left our things in our room and went to find dinner at "Au Sanglier"and a couple of drinks before retiring for a good night's sleep.

Last day in Germany - lunch at Rolandsbogen

Our last day in Germany had arrived.  After breakfast our hosts Elmar and Ursula took us with their son to Rolandsbogen, an old castle that was just remains save for one of the last arches of a castle built in the middle ages.

There was an excellent restaurant there where we enjoyed a great farewell lunch with our hosts.

We left Bonn just after 3pm for a train journey home, this time all first class as that’s all that was available.  As ever, it’s been a fantastic week in Bonn and made even better by starting with three nights in Aachen.

Bürgerfest

We went to Stadtplatz today for the Bürgerfest in Bonn.  There were some excellent performances by groups both from Bonn and Oxford and their surrounding areas.  We enjoyed Morris dancing, an excellent brass band and some teenagers who did some amazing breakdance-style dancing.  We had a light lunch in a local café and a short wander around some Bonn shops before returning to our host’s home for a brief rest before the evening event.

The evening saw a Barbecue at a local school called Bonns-Fünfte.  It was a fun evening with good food and more entertainment.  There was some football being shown and the opportunity for some great conversations with friends old and new from Bonn.

Brühl, Ecumenical service and formal dinner.

Today had a seminar on local planning and development on the agenda but not being a councillor at the moment I elected to miss that.

Instead we got a train to Brühl and visited the Augustus Burg – an incredibly well-preserved palace that was built in the 18th century by Karl Augustus, the archbishop of Cologne and part of the Wittelsbach family (who ran Bavaria).  After this we talk a walk through the beautiful gardens of the Burg, to a hunting lodge that was rather further away that we had expected.  It was about a 2 mile walk and sadly had just closed for a 90 minute lunch when we got there.  We walked back into Bruhle and went to the Max Ernst museum where we had a pleasant lunch and enjoyed some more fine art and a special exhibition of quirky photography.

We got the U-Bahn back to Bonn and got dressed into our suits for a reception at the Stadthaus (Town Hall) followed by an ecumenical church service at the Namen-Jesus church.  It was bilingual as well as ecumenical so took quite a long time.  We enjoyed some excellent music by a local choir including the mass setting by Karl Jenkins.  The church is an “old Catholic” church – a church that is actually in communion with the Anglican Church rather than with Rome.

The service was followed by an excellent formal dinner at a local restaurant including a great speech by Oxford’s Lord Mayor Rae Humberstone, and by the Buergermeister of Bonn, Helmut.

Rhine boat trip, Walk of democracy and Bad Godesberg

After a good German-style breakfast, our host Elmar, drove us to the pier from where the boat tour was leaving.  We cruised down the Rhine as far as Linz, and were served plenty of drinks and an excellent lunch.

We got back to Bonn at 2pm and then started a “Walk of Democracy” that was laid on as part of the twinning trip. We saw some fascinating sights including several former government buildings that are now United Nations buildings housing lots of parts of the UN. Since German reunification, much of the government function has moved to Berlin but there are still quite a few activities and official residences in Bonn.

At the end of the walk we stopped off for an ice cream in the Koenig museum and then got a U-Bahn train to Bad Godesberg.  We had an explore there and climbed a tower at a castle where we enjoyed some great views of Bonn.

In the evening we enjoyed a really good musical concert at Carl-von-Ossietzky School and a few drinks in Bonn afterwards.

Moving on to Cologne and Bonn

We left Aachen fairly early today to go to Cologne where we had arranged to meet a friend from Australia who happened to be there for the week.  We were a bit early so (re)visited the Cathedral first then met Craig outside the Cathedral.

We had lunch at a fairly traditional place called Peters Brauhaus.  We visited the Walraf-Richarz museum where we saw more fine art.

We left Cologne for Bonn around 5.30pm and got to our hosts, Elmar and Ursula, at about 6pm.  We received a very warm welcome and went fairly quickly after that with them to the Oxford Club in Bonn to the opening event of the Oxford in Bonn twinning festivities.  It was good to catch up with many old friends from previous twinning events.

After the event Elmar and Ursula took us to a local bar where we had some drinks and a meal.  I enjoyed some liver.

Couven, Media, Charlemage, Suermondt-Ludwig - Museums day!

Today we finally found shops open.  It hadn’t been a problem having them closed but it was good to see Aachen on a typical working day including its market with lots of asparagus of many different colours.  Today was to be museum visiting day.  We started off at the newspaper/media museum, then the Couven Museum (with lots of high class interiors), then we had asparagus (Spargel is big in Germany) for lunch.

Following lunch we went to the centre Charlemagne then had some Kaffee und Kuchen.

Our last museum of the day was the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum where we enjoyed lots of fine art.

We dined in a restaurant in the centre of Aachen called Zum Goldener Einhorn (the Golden Unicorn) where we enjoyed a much more typical German dinner of Asparagus Soup, Clear beef soup, baked black pudding and some delicious lamb.  We went back to Café Kittel for late evening drinks.

Exploring Aachen

We got up at a reasonable hour and enjoyed breakfast at the hotel.  Today was a bank holiday in Germany for Pentecost so no shops were open but the Cathedral and its treasury were.  The treasury is one of the most important cathedral treasuries north of the Alps and contains a huge amount of material from the era of Charlemagne.

After lunch near the cathedral we had a pub lunch and then visited the Rathaus (Town Hall), it was also extremely interesting.

Following this we went to Carolus Thermen, a spa just outside the City with some fun swimming pools, including a whirlpool and dozens of different saunas and steam rooms at different temperatures.

Back in Aachen we again found little open so enjoyed a Mexican meal in a place called La Tijuana.

We rounded of the evening with some beers in Café Kittel.

Off to Aachen on the train

This is the start of a week in Germany, partly to visit Aachen and partly to join in the Town Twinning celebrations in Bonn, visiting old friends made as part of this link.

We left Oxford just after noon to get to St Pancras in time for a Eurostar train to Brussels at just after 3pm.  It was on time and after a change at Brussells we got an ICE train right across Belgium and into Germany, arriving at Aachen about 3.5 hours after leaving St Pancras.

We checked into our hotel and had a wander around the town, finding most things closed as it was Sunday evening. Eventually we found a nice Argentinian restaurant and had some pleasant steaks for dinner.

Going home

We had a taxi booked from the hotel this morning at 7.20am to take us to Kansai Airport near Osaka.  The journey took about 90 minutes and our bag drop and boarding were straightforward.

The flight to Paris was comfortable but a bit of a headwind made us about 30 minutes late at CDG so the connection to the flight to LHR was very tight - in fact so tight that although we made it onto it, our luggage didn't.

Air France communication was excellent  - they had texted and emailed us both as soon as we got to the luggage collection hall so we didn't have to wait at all - we just filled in a form arranging for them to deliver the luggage to home the next day and that was that.  It did indeed come the next day.

Japan has been an amazing holiday that we've both really enjoyed.  Highly recommended.

Our last day in Japan - Nijo Castle and Kuruma

Today was pretty wet so we didn't rush out but we did go and see Nijo Castle - a pretty impressive site with some more excellent gardens.  The Ninomaru garden is renowned for its rocks and we enjoyed walking around it despite the rain.

Following that we found some lunch and then got several trains to get to a traditional village in the mountains called Kuruma.  It has a nice Riyokan (traditional Japanese Hotel) that also has an Onsen (a natural sulphurous spa). We spent some time in that and had dinner there. Sadly the mountains were in clouds so the views were not perfect!

We visited our favourite local Izakaya for a final drink on the way back to the hotel ready for an early start in the morning for the taxi to the airport and the long flight home.