Vive La France...part deux!

Tuesday morning saw us leave our B & B - which, it must be said, had the best shower I have ever had in my life, if you're in France, go there... worth it for the shower alone!
We hit the road on our 438km odyssey to our next digs - an 11th century castle in the Lorraine region near the border with Luxembourg - but more about that later.
We did more war-ry stuff, stopping off in Le Quesnoy, a fortified town that NZ soldiers liberated after 4 years of occupation in 1918... naturally, the people there were pretty stoked by this and are quite fond of kiwis; there are several streets named after NZ, Avenue des Neo-Zelandais, Rue de Nouvelle Zelande, Rue de Waikato and Rue de Cambridge... as well as a Square they re-named Place de All Blacks! It was so nice to see bits of home when we're so far away, although certainly not what we expected to find in rural northern France!
Photos here:
Bonus find in Le Quesnoy: Asterix, in French, in the supermarket... for €5! Hooray!
We embarked on a walking tour (again in the bloody rain - grrr) which was a bit of a task in map-reading and patience on Kent's behalf, but it took us around the town's fortifications, which date back to Napoleonic times, and to some of the memorials to the New Zealand troops... and past the biggest Maori fulla you have ever seen (check the photos below and you'll see what we mean!)
Back in the car, and onto the toll motorway... €20 poorer and several hours later we arrived at the castle in Jaulny, thanks to the magic of TomTom... there is NO way we'd have managed navigation without it.

The town itself is the stuff of postcards, overlooking a valley, on a hill and most of the buildings are hundreds of years old - the kind of place you'd like to fold up and put in your pocket... and the castle is breathtaking - I could go on and on about it, but it might just rank as my all time favourite place EVER... I think Kent is in agreeance.
Again we had a lovely host, Anna (who spoke great English, which was a godsend, as my French doesn't stretch much further than the standard yes, no, thank you and hello... and Kent's is virtually non-existent), whose family has owned the castle since the middle of the 1800s. Some of the castle is a museum, with full suits of armour, a summons to war (in French, obviously) and so many priceless treasures - and they actually belong to her and her family!
Her loveliness just proved that the reputation the French have for being rude is clearly unfounded, I suspect it might be the English habit of refusing to learn or even try to speak the local lingo and just speaking slower and yelling that might evoke this legendary attitude, but we saw none of it from anyone; they even smilingly put up with our pidgin attempts at speaking French. The language thing does sometimes cause a few crossed wires - a great example: after Anna suggested to us that we visit "Noh-See" the next day... we were stumped, until I asked her to write it for us, and found that it was Nancy... which immediately led me to think of 'Allo, Allo', as I'm pretty sure I remember a scene where Rene tells someone both he and his brother were "Nancy Boys". She said the city was beautiful, and very special, and she wasn't exaggerating... very European, with a large square and gorgeous architecture, beautiful park etc etc etc...
On our way back we checked out Pont-A-Mousson (about 20mins from Jaulny), yet another beautiful town... there are just so many of them around!

More photos:
Last installment on it's way shortly...
K & E x

Vive La France... part un!

It's been awhile. This can be attributed to two things:
1)Eryn discovered Facebook... and what a huge time-thief it is!
2)We spent loads of time getting ourselves sorted for our road trip to France, which was ace!

We madly decided to take the mighty Corsa to the continent with us... I say mad because there is an engine light of some description that just keeps going... but so does the car, so it can't be all bad! I'm picturing Dad rolling his eyes at that last bit.
First lesson - Driving laws in France are quite different than in the UK - obviously there's the whole 'other side of the road' thing, but in addition, you have to carry a high-vis jacket, one of those red triangle things, a fire extinguisher, spare lightbulb kit, first aid kit, ownership/registration and insurance papers... information that might have been more useful to us, had we found out BEFORE we boarded the ferry. Evidently checks on foreign cars are frequent and the punishments handed out are quite harsh... so that had us a bit anxious before we even docked at Dunkerque.
They take their Sundays quite seriously over there, so there was practically nothing open when we arrived, but we did manage to find a great Maritime Museum with all sorts of bits in it, particularly about the mass evacuation in 1940... if you're not interested in war history, best stop right here, as the rest of the trip was full of it.
We stayed in a very cute B & B, our host, Nelly (whose husband is Jean-Luc - could he be any more French??!) was lovely, despite protesting that her English wasn't very good (it was better than some of the students Kent has encountered in England) and sent us to La Coupole, a huge concrete dome, built by Hitler & co in WWII to launch V2 rockets at London, the next day. It was impressive...even though it was abandoned towards the end of the war. Probably for the best, methinks.
From there we were headed to Ypres/Ieper, which meant we needed to cross the border... well, I say border, but really it was more like a petrol station forecourt, unmanned, where you don't need to slow down, into Belgium. My hopes of getting another stamp in my passport were dashed... thanks very much, EU.
Cue lumps in throats for both of us... which might seem a bit on the dramatic side, but when you consider that Ypres was the focus of much of WW1 - it was pretty much destroyed during the war, then rebuilt afterwards with money paid in reparation by the Germans, and that it's surrounded by Comonwealth War graves sites (we saw at least a hundred signs for different ones from the car), it certainly makes the whole thing seem so much more real than 5th form history ever did... We were lucky enough to see the Last Post played at the Menin Gate in Ypres that night, something they close the road for and have done every night at 8pm since 1928! It was very moving, as the gate itself is a giant memorial to 50,000 fallen, with every single one of their names engraved in the stone.
I was mildly put out as I couldn't find any Kiwis but it turns out that it wasn't big enough for all the names they had orginally planned, and the NZers decided to put the names of our boys on one of the other memorials - Tyne Cot - fortunately, it was just down the road at Passchendaele. It was raining at this stage, which seemed quite fitting. There are 11,856 men buried there, with a memorial to a further 35,000 missing - and an entire bit of it dedicated to Kiwis - which started the waterworks again - we were really just blown away by the sheer numbers of people, mostly younger than us, who died for their countries. Just thinking about it still makes me feel so incredibly humbled... but enough being maudlin for now... That's not even halfway into the trip...

Photos are here:
More soon,
K + E x

Dublin Photos... finally

Before I forget, after the whole "Oops, Kent? I think I lost the camera..." debacle, here are the photos from beautiful Dublin...
Would love to hear what you've been up to...
Eryn x

Sláinte!

Prior to two days ago, my knowledge of Irish people consisted of watching reruns of Father Ted, that movie about a dead guy who wins the lotto, reading Angela’s Ashes, and a couple of fairly depressing filims about the IRA… We didn’t go anywhere near ‘Craggy Island’, so I couldn’t possibly comment on Ted & Co, but on the whole, it was much as I’d imagined; Dublin is a beautiful city, the countryside is lush and the people are very friendly – with the best accent ever!

Not surprisingly, as many people had warned us, our Ryanair flight was delayed, and it was already pretty late on Friday night, so not the best start, but it tied in quite nicely with my plans to go late-night club hopping in Temple Bar with Kent… yeah, right.
After a comfy, if too short, night’s sleep in our rather luxurious hotel, we hit the footpath to wander into the centre of town… in the rain, ick! It stopped almost as soon as we got to town though, and the rest of the weekend was actually pretty nice - phew.
We took the hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city – a nice way to check out the sights and decide what we wanted to see later… which led us to a tour of Kilmainham Gaol, the onetime home of some of our Australian neighbours’ ancestors. It also held the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, most of whom were executed within days of being arrested… a major landmark in Irish republican history. Our guide was really passionate and she made the whole thing quite real, and I have to confess that I had a lump in my throat in some places; it was very moving… certainly wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for a pick-me-up!

We had dinner in a quite little traditional pub just off the Temple Bar, minus the hoardes of hens-parties… complete with a ‘Smokers Beer Garden’ which really meant a covered in area that collected smoke and sent it back inside to the rest of us – nice! If there’s one huge difference we’ve noticed on this side of the world, it’s how many people smoke, and how much less hysterical non-smokers are about it; not sure if that’s a good thing though…
Next day was a bit of a rush to get going in time to get to the bus stop for our tour out to Malahide Castle and the Coast… bed was a bit too comfy and we overslept! We did get there in the end, and it was worth the hurry, as Malahide is a beautiful castle, which was lived in until the mid-70s when the last owner had to sell up to pay inheritance taxes, then she high-tailed it to Tasmania… it must have broken her heart to sell the home her family had lived in for a staggering 900 years! Kent was in his element, and managed to find out that they still hire out the Grand Hall for banquets, complete with string quartet, for the teensy sum of €3000 plus €75 per head for minimum of 30 people, so I think it might be a while before we can afford that (but it would be a pretty amazing experience…). We also headed to Howth, for a wicked view over Dublin Bay – lucky the sun was out, and we could see quite a way across. We also saw the school where U2 met (they’re very proud of their rock music protégées in Dublin) and heard a few great (and some tall) tales from our guide.

You may wonder why there are no photos… keep reading and all will be revealed.

Our afternoon was somewhat more adrenalin-filled; we took a ‘Sea Safari’ out of the River Liffey and into the Irish Sea in an RIB (rigid inflatable boat – those open ones that bounce around like nobody’s business in the waves – eek!), around Dalkey Island, Dun Laoghaire and the Muglins… which sounded JK Rowling-esque enough to keep me happy. It was quite exhilarating – not something I thought I would love, but I did – and sooo much better than a boring/sedate cruise up and down the Liffey.

From there it was a short wander to the bus station, past a canoe polo game we stumbled across en-route, to get to the airport… where I lost our camera.

Yup. Lost our camera… bother… or something stronger.

Needless to say, there wasn’t much joviality on the plane home. After a similarly quiet drive, we arrived back in Ipswich about 12.30am; not the nicest with Monday morning looming at work for both of us… and still no camera.

It’s not all bad, though. Someone found the camera and handed it in (which was lovely, am so incredibly grateful to whoever it was – hopefully lovely things happen to them) and it’s now winging it’s way back to us in time for our drive to the continent in less than two weeks… so I will post the photos soon.

Take care,
Kent & Eryn x