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.

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