After last year’s very enjoyable tour of the Scottish outer Hebrides and my failure to enjoy a swim in the sea, we decided to head to sunnier climes this year. However, before heading to France for the start of our main holiday, we spent a few days in Brighton and Hove, keeping Paul’s mother company whilst his sister and brother-in-law took a well-earned break. I shall write this blog piece as a diary with entries every few days and post updates and photos regularly.
29th July – 1st August
Sadly for my readers, you don’t get to see a photo of me going for a swim in the sea at Hove on a sunnier day. I did go swimming in the sea twice, as Monday and Thursday were really beautifully sunny days. As I went swimming on my own, I took no valuables with me; Paul’s mother lives 10 minutes walk from the beach, so this is not an issue. Also, I don’t take selfies as they are so unflattering! So photos of me are always taken by other people. Paul was born in Brighton, but I am the fish in the family and really should have been the sea-born one in our relationship. He will not swim in the sea until the air temperature reaches at least 90 degrees.
The photo above is therefore from the Tuesday when I went into Brighton on the bus to do some shopping. I also wanted to have lunch looking at the sea; it was quite a blustery day, so sitting in the Palm Court restaurant watching the lashing waves was a sheer delight. I am so pleased that the powers that be acknowledged that local people refer to the Pier as the Palace Pier, not Brighton Pier. I suppose that Brighton Palace Pier is a bit of a compromise. The West Pier which is now no longer, has a beauty of its own. See the picture below:
I just love Brighton, which is so vibrant and much more exciting than my own home town, Maidenhead, but being surrounded by family and friends as we are in Maidenhead counts for a lot. Whenever I go there, or indeed to any seaside town, I wonder why I don’t just make the decision to live by the sea! It is ever changing and is as appealing in stormy weather as in bright, sunny weather. For me though the best bit is immersing my body in the briny stuff. Brighton also has the best shops and restaurants too, so really it has it all!
Other activities undertaken whilst we were in Hove and Brighton included rescuing Jean’s milk from her failing fridge. Paul had already discovered on his visit the previous week that the fridge was not functioning properly, and had had to throw away some milk. Because of health issues, Jean eats very little, so there was not much food in the fridge, but of course we needed to have meals whilst we were there. I suggested that we should buy a mini fridge as a temporary solution until she could sort out a more permanent resolution to the problem of a fridge that was not cold enough. When I chose the fridge in Argos, I had not appreciated quite how small it would be! It will come in handy for future holidays, as it can also operate from the car battery. Anyway, I managed to cram some bacon and a pack of sausages in there, as well as some yoghurt and the essential milk. I am beginning to think I have bad vibes which cause electrical appliances to fail. Only a few weeks ago we had to replace our own, large fridge, as I managed to pull the door off one day and we decided it was not worth trying to get it repaired. Usually our dishwasher and washing machine need replacing with quite short intervals between the two.
We played a few rounds of Rummikub at the table one evening. Jean really enjoys board games. I love games, and luckily I am not of a competitive nature, as I usually lose the game.
On Wednesday Paul’s sister and brother-in-law returned from their holiday in Spain, so we met up for a coffee on Thursday morning and we went round to their house for an early dinner before heading for Newhaven for our late night crossing to Dieppe.
Friday 2nd – Sunday 4th August: Dieppe, Nancy and Strasbourg
We took the over-night ferry to Dieppe. We have used this ferry once before; it leaves Newhaven at 11:00pm and arrives at Newhaven at about 5:00am! We always take cabins on over-night ferries, but you do have to be a bit organised with this one. We like to have breakfast when we arrive in France, and it is just not possible to find anything at that time in the morning. Apart from anything, Paul has to get behind the wheel right away and drive, so some caffeine is really needed. This time we were prepared, and I packed up some croissants, a wrap and some fruit. Then I got up in time to dispense hot coffee into our insulated mugs. All in all the experience was a lot better than last time with a bit of pre-planning.
Paul had decided that after a short night’s sleep, we deserved a night of luxury, so he booked us into the Grand Hotel de la Reine in Nancy. That was quite a drive, and as usual my navigating skills were tested to the limit. We have settled on a routine with the navigating, which is to use road atlases most of the time, and resort to google maps on the phone when trying to find streets in a city, or trying to find the right road to get out of a city! This year I bought some new road atlases. We have one for France already, but I added to our collection: Germany (including Benelux, Austria, Switzerland and Czechia), Italy and Croatia (including Slovenia, Bosnia and Hercegovina). Bad as I am at navigating at times, I do love following the route on the atlas and occasionally making the right decisions about which road to take. I write down Paul’s suggested route in a notebook.
Anyway, I diverge. Back to the Nancy experience! The hotel is in the very grand Place Stanislas, with so many grand buildings (all from the 18th century) and with many golden gates. Our room was very luxurious and pleasant, although we did not have a view over the Place. We ate in the hotel restaurant, which was superb, although I could have done with some potatoes to go with my excellent beef fillet. Plenty of vegetables though, so full marks there!
It is wonderful having the opportunity to explore so many beautiful cities whilst we are on holiday. I often think that I have visited more noticeable cities in southern Europe than I have in the UK. We enjoyed looking round Nancy the following morning and paid a visit to the Musee des Beax Arts, which is one of the other grand buildings in the Place Stanislas. After lunch we continued on our road journey, heading for Strasbourg. This is of course on the border with Germany and is very Swiss and German in character. There are many wooden houses and buildings reminiscent of the Swiss alps. It was nice to have a little more time to be able to speak the native language; French is the only language I have ever manged to learn competently and retain. We stayed in a completely different style of accommodation in Strasbourg, and not as close to the city centre. However I would highly recommend the City Residence Strasbourg Centre if ever you visit the city. It was more of a hostel for backpackers, but so clean, spacious and well-equipped. In fact the shower was more modern and worked better than the one in the grand hotel in Nancy! Breakfast was included and was more than adequate. We only had a fifteen minute walk into the city.
We had dinner in Strasbourg, then a good long time to look round the following day with stops for coffee, lunch and ice-cream. One minor incident in Strasbourg, which was silly and possibly unavoidable, was losing or having my purse stolen. I realised over lunch – of very delicious Tarte Flambe ( a local speciality) that it was missing. After lunch we rushed back to the cafe where we had drunk our morning coffee, but all to no avail. Luckily I had made the sensible decsion of carrying a minimal holiday purse containing just euros and one credit card. We actually had a reasonable number of euros, as we travel a lot so just save them from the previous holiday. So although it was frustrating losing about 30 euros, it was not a disaster. Paul dealt with the online cancelling of my credit card whilst standing by a fountain on the way back to the car. Oh the wonders of modern technology! You may be surprised to learn that since then he has entrusted me with his credit card, the other one linked to the same account….
Next stop, Friedrichshafen!
Sunday 4th to Tuesday 6th August: Friedrichshafen
I am a water lover and love the sea best of all. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live in a land-locked country; there are of course many in Europe, including Slovakia, Hungary, Luxembourg. Andorra, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Vatican City. I have been to Luxembourg, Andorra, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is highly possible that I have been to the Vatican City, having visited Rome as a very young child, but I’d have to check that with my mother!
Germany of course is not land-locked but it does not have much coastline. The beauty of Switzerland and of parts of Germany is the staggeringly beautiful lakes and mountains. Swiss people must treat their lakes as their places for watery leisure. Paul booked us into a guest house in Friedrichshafen in Germany for two nights. This is a beautiful town with the lake as the focal point; you can look at the other side of the lake and see Switzerland. Although we do take long holidays, we make a point of not staying long in expensive countries, so we enjoy the scenery of Switzerland without stopping there. For this same reason, we have not yet explored Northern Europe. In the future we hope to explore Norway, Finland and Sweden, but this can wait!
We had a very pleasant two day stay in this German lake-side village. I spent an afternoon swimming in the lake and walking along the beach. It really was like a beach, with lots of water sports and opportunities to hire boats and other equipment. Our guest house was very pleasant, but quite basic. Although the room was spacious, I felt that the owner was somehow missing a trick. We had a lovely balcony, but there were absolutely no facilities, such as kettle or a fridge. We really wanted to have breakfast on the balcony, but of course this involved going to the shop, having coffee dispensed into our insulated cups, and purchasing fruit and pastries to take back. Luckily there were a few good, small shops nearby, so this was feasible.
We had two excellent meals in Germany. The first one was at a simple Italian restaurant close to our guest house. This might sound unadventurous, but it was getting late by the time we arrived and we needed a quick fix and for Paul not to have to drive much further. The second night I researched lake-side restaurants and made a booking online. Usually we don’t book restaurants on holiday, but the town is quite stretched out and I was really keen to find a location with good views of the lake.
As my daughter Jess has not joined us on our jolly jaunts this summer, choosing instead a jaunt with her cousins to Scotland, I have been having a little joke with her, seeing how many flamingos and cats I can spot and photograph for her. Flamingos we love, and we held a flamingo-themed 80th birthday party for my mother last year. Cats are just because we are a cat-loving family, and love seeing all the semi-wild cats in europe. Here are some flamingos I spotted in Friedrichshafen:
Next stop: Merano!
Tuesday 6th to Saturday 10th August: Italy (Merano, Udine and Trieste) with brief stops in Switzerland and Liechtenstein
Before leaving Friedrichshafen, we purchased some excellent sandwiches, fruit and drinks from the excellent shop there. Paul had planned that we would be in Switzerland for lunch but did not want to pay for lunch out! This might sound crazy and stingy, considering how far we have travelled and how many meals out we’ll be purchasing. However, Switzerland is notoriously expensive, and it is on the list to visit when we are even richer! It also seemed like a novel, fun idea to take sandwiches to Switzerland. In addition, the mountains are fabulously breathtaking. However, I am ahead of myself here. Paul is trying to help me to visit a few more countries, as I am not very well travelled. We both filled in one of those ‘how many cities and countries have you visited on this list?’ games on facebook recently. Of course he scored about 60 and I scored about 30; I cannot remember how many destinations there were altogether. We worked out that the only way I can catch up with him is if from now on we only go to places he has already been to before! Anyway, we can both now add Liechtenstein to the list (not sure it was even one of the options on the facebook game!) Before you exclaim that this was a rather expensive stop, I hasten to add that we only paid for parking and two cups of excellent coffee.
We had a beautiful drive through the Swiss mountains, and enjoyed the German sandwiches immensely. We also managed to find some statues and landmarks commemorating ‘Heidi’ from the book by Joanna Spyri and the sequels by Charles Tritten. They were books I really enjoyed reading as a child.
Being musical theatre enthusiasts, we planned to drive into Merano playing the relevant soundtrack from the musical ‘Chess’ so I made sure that we had the CD in place ready to play and sing along to. Our hotel in Merano was beautiful, a boutique-style hotel with excellent customer service and a very friendly German host. She welcomed us most warmly, advised on places to eat and assured me that I’d be able to use the outdoor pool before we set off on our travels the next day.
We drove into Merano and had a very simple dinner of pasta. It was actually pouring with rain, so we did not get much of a chance to explore the city centre. We did peer into the Therme hotel, which is modern and quite splendid. Through the windows you could see the amazing set up of the various pools and thermal treatment rooms.
This is all I have time to write at the moment, but watch soon for the update to include the rest of this section of our journey….
We spent 2 nights at a fabulous apartment in Trieste. The view from our window is in one of the pictures above. See below for a couple of pictures of the interior of our apartment:
This was one of those situations where we nearly came to grief trying to find our apartment. This time it was not just because of my inadequate map reading. We stayed in a number of hotels/apartments this holiday which were not obvious from the outside in terms of similarity to the picture included with the property details; this letter had included a photo of the seafront. There was no number or name on the building. In the end we had to find a space in the car park and then do some further investigating. Anyway, it was worth it in the end!
Once more I shall say, and I could bore for England on this subject, that not all people in the holiday letting business want to rip off August holiday-makers. We stayed in some fabulous places, some quite quirky. probably at an average of £100 a night, but some costing only £40 or £50 a night. Of course, with an apartment, you have the option of self-catering, so you can save on restuarant bills too. I decided to cook in the Trieste apartment, because we had eaten out for many nights, and it is relaxing just having a meal ‘at home.’ In addition, we had this wonderful shop just across the road called ‘Eataly.’ Having a wander round, your immediate impression would be that the prices would be high, but it really was very reasonable. Here is one of the meals that I cooked in the apartment, a simple dish of pasta with seafood:
We also bought delicious ciabatta sandwiches from Eataly, for a picnic by the sea, and for our onward journey when we left the apartment.
The only feature of the apartment I would fault was the design of the bedroom. For a start it had beautiful beams; yes very attractive, but hazardous for bumping your head on, which Paul did a couple of times! However, he might not have bumped his head quite as much had we not switched to sleeping at the ‘wrong’ end of the bed. I have a habit of getting up in the middle of the night at least four times to go to the loo. I also have to sleep on the right hand side of the bed, as I like to lie on my side but I cannot lie on my right side! Why not? I don’t know; maybe it is something weird in my genetic make-up but it is so uncomfortable that I just cannot do it. The other feature of the bedroom, as you can see from the picture, is that you can only get out of the bed from one side, without climbing over your partner. Hence we had to switch the pillows to the other end, and hence the low beam being particularly hazardous – I actually took the photo before we changed the bed round!
Whilst staying in Trieste we visited a castle by the sea and had the most beautiful walk. Because of the difficulty of parking the car in the high season, we had to park closer to the castle and pay for the parking; at this end of the beach swimming was not allowed, as it was a protected area. I had to ressit immersing myself in the water, and just gaze at its beauty. See the pictures below from our walk.
After our short stay in Trieste, we headed off on our exciting journey to Croatia. This was quite a challenging day, and we kept crossing borders and wondering what documents we might be asked for! Having been stopped in Switzerland a few days before and asked to show passports, driving licence and log book for the car, we were somewhat apprehensive. Paul had forgotten to pack the log book. ‘Well, how do we know you haven’t stolen this car?” demanded the Swiss police! What I was thinking, but did not actually voice out loud, was that car thieves very rarely bother to steal or pack a collection of dirty clothes, board games and a large collection of chocolate bars – the chocolate was even Lindt bars! Anyway, they let us go, but told us that in Switzerland it is the law to have the car lights on all the time.
To get to Croatia, we had to cross into Slovenia first, which meant going through border control twice. We had to wait an hour in the queue at border control, and were wondering if they would let us in without the car log book – would they also accuse us of stealing the car? Not that they would see many GB cars on the road, and most officials are initally confused by the right hand drive. I did actually spot one other GB car, which was quite exciting! Anyway, after establishing online with the DVLA that we could not prove Paul’s ownership of the car without writing in (the queue was not that long that this was a feasible option), we did manage to retrieve the insurance documents; the wonders of technology! In the event it was a bit of a let-down. Border control did not even open our passports; luckily they did not ask for any other proof of identity either!
I am going to start a new blog to relate the exploits of the Croatian leg of our holiday…..
