Tour ends in...

From Chartes, which has the famous cathedral with glass stained windows everywhere

...to Orléans with Joan of Arc all over the place

 ...our Tour the France ended where it should end: In Paris!

 Paris was hot, sunny, buzzing, crowded and fantastic! I got sunburned and came home with a blister from walking from the Eiffeltower to the Arc and back again.

I loved the Kadinsky fountain!

I won't bore you with more French pics(and I have loads more *lol*); next post will be English!! My bag is packed and ready: tomorrow morning Quilting DD and I, will fly to Birmingham to the Festival of Quilts. I'm excited (ánd a tiny bit nervous..) but I'm sure we'll have a great trip. I'll take pics and tell you all about our British adventures when we get back :)

Let's talk some more French:)

 It kept on raining while we followed the Loire, so we decided to head south towards another river, the Dordogne. Sunflower country!

 Our campsite on castlegrounds..

 Medieval little towns everywhere..

ánd the area where the people lived 17.000 years ago!! Lots of caves with original pre-historic wall paintings. I visited Lascaux, one of the most famous. Actually the replica of Lascaux cave. The original was closed in '63. Visitors caused mold and fungus on the drawings. But....impressive still!

 Next campsite!Is that a castle :)

And the small town where we got stuck. After 2 flat tires, the radiator broke. We were on hold for 6 days, waiting for car parts and repair :(
The Dordogne was beautiful, the castle campsite perfect, but after six days of waiting and again lots of rain (and no means of any transport!) we were NOT as happy as in the beginning!!

On the other hand: it was raining back home too and the view from my own house is by far nothing like this.

Tour de France 1

This was my home for over 3 weeks :) There IS a life after motorbike-holidays and we talked about buying a small campervan ("when we get old"....) for years. We rented this one to learn if traveling like this is something we wanted.

Plan was to tour France and first stop we planned were the D-Day beaches. Visiting a cemetary isn't very "holiday-like" but both DH and I were really impressed and touched at the US buriel site near Omaha-beach

On to happier things! We passed and visited Mont St Michel, an abbey on a rock during low tide. High tide means the sea is all around (including the camper parking space)

After that we met the river Loire. This means castles, castles and...CASTLES!!

 No wonder Perrault got the inspiration for his "sleeping beauty" story in this area! (no, dear readers, sleeping beauty is not written by mr. Walt Disney *lol*)

The last one is Chambord, a royal castle. I have never seen anything like it. This is a picture on/of the roof

Between the castles we came across lots of medieval villages and ofcourse we stayed at a campsite on castlegrounds.
Don't think this post can handle more pics, so more tomorrow:)

Rainy days..

It looks like autumn outside: grey skies and constant rain. The house is, well let's call it clean, the laundry done, the garden a mess (but I'm NOT going to do anything about that in the rain!) and tonight's dinner is planned. I set myself behind the pc to print a few holidaypics in order to frame them, but...the printer's cartridge is empty. Grrrr!
Instead I have no other choise to show some more on my blog...hehe

DH had to work again last monday. When he came home I asked him how his first day back was and he answered: oh great, I'm going back tomorrow. *lol*

In 2 weeks it's my turn again and I'm not looking forward to it!

Far away and back...

We traveled long and far and traveling days were mostly WET.

The roads were narrow and winding

The laundryline was attatched to an olivetree

..and the nearest city is the home of the most beautifull works of art..

Í'm bááááck!