A restful weekend in the French countryside…

Posted by on Mar 18, 2013 in France | 1 comment We met a more tired looking Lara the next day outside our apartment and caught the 11am train to her parents’ house for the weekend in Malesherbes, about an hour and a half south of Paris. Malesherbes is in the Loire Valley region of France and most well-known for some large Château’s such as Fontainebleau, however we were here just to enjoy the company rather than wanting to go...
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Paris continued …Ooh la la

Posted by on Mar 15, 2013 in France | 1 comment On our second full day in Paris we headed straight to the Eiffel Tower by metro determined to climb the 669 steps to the midway platform and then the lift to the top. Unfortunately it wasn’t the clearest day and we could barely make out the Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre where we would be spending time with Lara later that afternoon.  The Eiffel Tower is perhaps the first man-made structure the...
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France? That wasn’t in our plans!

Posted by on Mar 12, 2013 in France | 2 comments We never exactly made plans per se about travelling in Europe; it was more an idea of which countries we wouldn’t visti – France and other ‘western’ European countries were toward the top of that list. This was mainly becuause we’d travelled there previously and also due to the high cost of travel/living in this part of Europe.  However, sometimes the best thing about making...
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Cruising the Med part 2 – ports of call

Posted by on Feb 28, 2013 in Cruising, France, Italy, Spain | 1 comment We arrived into Barcelona on time at 9am via Ryanair after a very early start in Budapest and caught a taxi directly to the port for €28 – and back into the land of western prices.  Although our cruise ship wasn’t scheduled to sail until 6pm, we could leave our bags and complete the check-in procedure then have a few hours in downtown Barcelona ahead of our official boarding time of...
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DIPS cruises around the Med

Posted by on Feb 28, 2013 in Cruising, France, Italy, Spain | 1 comment After many long nights trawling the internet in Budapest and languishing over where to go next, we came to the conclusion that travel in Eastern Europe during winter was not going to be straight forward. Many of the low cost airlines simply don’t fly in this region during these months of year. Our departure date to Iceland from Berlin had already been fixed for the 8th of March, and we would...
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