Our plans, decisions, and adventures
We spent five nights in Cologne (Köln in German), which gave us plenty of time for day trips to Düsseldorf and Bonn. Cologne is geographically between the latter two cities, so each out trip required only about 30 minutes of train travel. Cologne Our hotel was on the opposite side of the Rhine River from... Continue Reading →
Koblenz sits at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers at the top of the Rhine Gorge, the section of the Rhine Valley that we had wanted to visit. We stayed partway down the river for four nights, but our hotel was booked up after that, so we managed to reserve an extra three... Continue Reading →
The 65-kilometre section of the Rhine River between Koblenz and Bingen called the Upper Middle Rhine Valley or the Rhine Gorge is frequently described as the most scenic section of the Rhine River (Rhein in German). That was our target, but how best to see it? Options included a boat trip (or as part of... Continue Reading →
We picked Trier as a short stopping point because we wanted someplace cheaper than Luxembourg that was on our way to where we had booked to stay along the Rhine River a couple of days later. We soon discovered that Trier had a few surprises for us. On our way into the old town, we... Continue Reading →
Luxembourg is a small country squeezed into a little corner of Europe where Belgium, Germany and France meet. Luxembourg is also the capital city of Luxembourg. We were originally booked for a six-day house sit in Mersch, a city about 30 minutes north of Luxembourg city, but when the homeowners had to cancel we had... Continue Reading →
We had a few days left over after spending a week in Brussels and thought we might like to see a couple of towns in the Wallonia region of Belgium before leaving that country. We would be returning to Namur to catch our train out, so decided to stay in Namur and do a day... Continue Reading →
The city of Brussels is the capital of the Brussels-Capital Region, the capital of Belgium, and the capital of the European Union. Though not part of the Flanders region, the Brussels-Capital Region sits geographically within it, forming just a tiny splotch on a map (blue in this case) of Belgium's three regions (Flanders and Wallonia... Continue Reading →
Belgium is divided into three regions, two of which split the country roughly horizontally into Flanders, the primarily Dutch (or Flemish) speaking north, and Wallonia, the primarily French-speaking south. Gent and Brugge are both in Flanders, north of Brussels. Gent We stayed four nights in Gent (or Ghent in English, Gand in French) with a... Continue Reading →
We spent quite a bit of time in the United Kingdom a few years ago, but didn't get to the south coast. For this trip, we needed a week out of the Schengen visa region and were lucky enough to book a house sit in Chichester in the county of West Sussex with just one... Continue Reading →
With our son and his family newly settled in The Netherlands, our first stop on our first journey in two years had to be their adopted city of The Hague (Den Haag in Dutch). After an uneventful KLM flight from Vancouver to Amsterdam, we purchased our train card (see TripBits) and then followed signs (and... Continue Reading →
The world is certainly not healthy yet, but we've decided it's time to expand our nomadic borders from the two provinces in Canada that we've been pinballing around in for the last two years. On Monday, May 2, 2022, we board our first plane since being recalled from New Zealand in March 2020, and off... Continue Reading →
Just left: Katwoude, Netherlands
Now in: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Up next: The Hague, Netherlands
Life: Phase Next 