1st_Europe_Report (30 images)
Paris to Namur with one day trip to Holland.
After the many hours of traveling from our California home to arrive at Paris
mid-day, we are beyond spacey. The recommendation of our hosts Patrick and Karen
is to try to stay awake to more quickly adjust to local time (9 hours ahead of
California time). They take us through many of the back roads of northeast
France and into their city of
Namur in southern
Belgium where they now live. They had arranged for us to stay in a short-term
rental apartment in the old city, just walking distance from their home. Namur
is the name of this old historic Belgian city at the confluence of the Meuse and
Sambre rivers, as well as the name of the area’s province located in the
Wallon/Wallonia region. We
had had an enjoyable one-day visit
here 7 years previously when Patrick brought us here on a day trip when he
was living in Brussels. Neither of us had any idea at that time that we would
return for a longer stay. This travel report will focus mostly on our first few
days of arrival, settling in to our place in Namur with its preparation for its
annual “Fête de Wallonie” (regional
festival - for non-French speakers, try this
Google translation), and also a one day trip to the Netherlands. Patrick had
arranged to take off from his work in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Sept. 16, as that
was our original planned date of arrival. The French Air pilots’ strike changed
all that. Karen was able to get tickets to a special museum in The Hague – so,
not to waste a day off, we drove to Holland on that day, as this report
indicates. Hopefully more reports to come later.
Click a picture to see a larger view.
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To 2014 Trip Index