G'day!
We're home, we made it! After 17 months away, leaving Australia on the 4th of April 2013 and landing back in Sydney on the 6th of September 2014, after 44,600km of driving Black Betty around Europe, visiting ten countries all up being France, Italy, Ireland, Wales, England, Monaco, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, and Belgium, we have returned home safely and happily knowing we've had the time of our lives.
We feel like we have had a good blend of 1) living in the one place for a while, 6 months in The Lot and 6 months in Provence, both in the South of France, which has enabled us to get to know a community and make some good friends, and 2) we did three big round trips across a few countries, namely our one month UK trip, our three month top to tail tour of Italy, and our recent one month drive up to Austria and Germany.
I feel so lucky to have spent so much time with my beautiful family and seen so many wonderful things. What we've just done is absolutely priceless and our lives now seem so much fuller and richer. To be there to watch Connor grow from saying just one word, "car" to a chatty little boy and to see Sophie start school in The Lot as a shy little girl and then blossom into a confident young French speaking girl are treasures Jane and I now have forever.
Our trip has also helped us appreciate more the simpler things in life like sharing a meal, cooking, food, wine, a walk in the country, and time with family and friends.
I would like to say a big thank you to my lovely wife, Jane, for putting up with me :), looking after us all and for having the faith in me to come along for this amazing ride.
By the way, I called this blog Our “Grande Vacances” in Europe because "Grande Vacances", which literally means "big holiday", was the best and easiest way to describe what we doing to French people we met along the way, the reactions were usually pretty interesting too. So the title itself brings back good memories for us.
So here we are in this first photo, back at Sydney airport. The flight home was fine, we watched movies just about the whole way. I felt so relied to have us all back safe and sound. I almost kissed the ground as we walked out of the terminal, but decided it just looked too dirty.
Connor and I took the cable car up to the Hohensalzburg Castle, which sits above Salzburg. The view over the city, as shown below, is impressive.....
How's this for a view out the back door of our little cottage in Laval. The three little Shetland ponies had a good feed of carrots during our stay. The gorgeous hills around Laval stood beyond those ponies.
We're home, we made it! After 17 months away, leaving Australia on the 4th of April 2013 and landing back in Sydney on the 6th of September 2014, after 44,600km of driving Black Betty around Europe, visiting ten countries all up being France, Italy, Ireland, Wales, England, Monaco, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, and Belgium, we have returned home safely and happily knowing we've had the time of our lives.
We feel like we have had a good blend of 1) living in the one place for a while, 6 months in The Lot and 6 months in Provence, both in the South of France, which has enabled us to get to know a community and make some good friends, and 2) we did three big round trips across a few countries, namely our one month UK trip, our three month top to tail tour of Italy, and our recent one month drive up to Austria and Germany.
I feel so lucky to have spent so much time with my beautiful family and seen so many wonderful things. What we've just done is absolutely priceless and our lives now seem so much fuller and richer. To be there to watch Connor grow from saying just one word, "car" to a chatty little boy and to see Sophie start school in The Lot as a shy little girl and then blossom into a confident young French speaking girl are treasures Jane and I now have forever.
Our trip has also helped us appreciate more the simpler things in life like sharing a meal, cooking, food, wine, a walk in the country, and time with family and friends.
I would like to say a big thank you to my lovely wife, Jane, for putting up with me :), looking after us all and for having the faith in me to come along for this amazing ride.
By the way, I called this blog Our “Grande Vacances” in Europe because "Grande Vacances", which literally means "big holiday", was the best and easiest way to describe what we doing to French people we met along the way, the reactions were usually pretty interesting too. So the title itself brings back good memories for us.
So here we are in this first photo, back at Sydney airport. The flight home was fine, we watched movies just about the whole way. I felt so relied to have us all back safe and sound. I almost kissed the ground as we walked out of the terminal, but decided it just looked too dirty.
Sophie had been saying for months she was looking forward to going back so Sydney so she can put on her "dress ups", the time had finally arrived.... Jane's mum, Jules, as seen below, had kindly looked after those dresses and a lot of our other stuff whilst we were away...
So going back to Europe ....., I last blogged from our very comfortable little chalet in the mountains of Austria. It was then time to head for Germany to visit our friends Storm and Sebastian. On the way we visited the gorgeous city of Salzburg. Below shows us outside of the house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January, 1756.
We were then back on the road, and after staying a night in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany we arrived in Bochum, a city in the mid west of Germany. We stayed in a really cool old building, which as the owner said was one of the few buildings in the area which had survived the WWII bombings. It was an old banking chamber, hence the very tall ceilings as shown below...
From Bochum we were just half an hour drive to our good friends Storm and Sebastian. Storm is Australian and a child hood friend of Jane's and she met Sebastian who is German on a safari in South Africa. It rained a fair bit whilst we were there so we were forced to stay inside and drink beer, eat, and do a lot of talking which we really enjoyed. Here is Sebastian pouring the first German lager....
Storm and Sebastian took us out one day to the Gasworks, which is an entertainment precinct built on an old industrial area. And there we visited a massive ex gas silo which you can see just behind us in the photo below, and inside that silo was an amazing photo exhibition titled, "The Appearance of Beauty". It was a real highlight for me, the Germans really know how to do museums and art galleries.
The exhibition consisted of very large photos of artworks from around the world which showed that "beauty can be harmonious, radiant, sober, elegant, precious, splendid, and heroic: but that it can also be unfettered, terrifying, pitiful, fantastic, dreamlike, playful, and alluring". The photo below is just one awe inspiring example of what we saw. This one by Jacques-Louis David, titled, "The Intervention of the Sabine Woman", painted in 1799, shows the historical account of two hostile armies facing each other...
And here is another. It shows the face of a statue of the Egyptian scribe Mitri. This statue of painted wood and stucco was created 4,200 years ago! The eyes which are set in limestone and transparent stone was the first thing that caught your eye as you walked into the exhibition.
On another day Storm took us to where the reception was held for Sebastian and Storm's wedding. It was a charming old castle, moat and all. Thanks so much Storm and Seb for your hospitality, we had a ball!
We then headed to Belguim via The Netherlands where we stayed in Tourcoing which was just over the boarder in France. Whilst here Jane gave me a leave pass to visit the St Sylvester Brewery where they make 3 Monts Beer. This particular beer has been a cherished companion of mine during my stay in France, I love the stuff! After meeting the manager, Pierre, he said that his marketing manager would give me a tour of the brewery, as shown below. Now that was fun, taste testing along the way, ahh I was in beer heaven .....
From Tourcoing we could pop over the boarder into Belgium to visit Passchendale where some of the most important battles of WWII unfolded. My great, great uncle Lieutenant Victor Scott is buried in the Tyne Cot cemetery there. As shown below he died on the 4th of October, 1917, aged 30.
It was important for me to visit Victor's grave in Belgium as a year before we visited his older brother, Robert Scott's, grave in The Somme in France as shown below. Robert died a year earlier on the 15th of September, 1916, aged 35.
I went along to the Research Centre at Zonnebeke, near Passchendale, where some very helpful people told me about the battle that Victor died in, they showed me where the New Zealander's start line was that day, the 4th of October, 1917, and the ground they advances across. The research people were then able to find a war record for Victor Scott which included a picture of him. I sent a copy of it to my father who had never seen it before, he was very happy to see it. Afterwards I drove down to where the battle occurred and walked the few kms across it. The bravery of these guys is unfathomable, to jump out of those trenches and go forward knowing there was a high probability of being hit...
I bought a book there by Glyn Harper, "Massacre at Passchendaele: the New Zealand Story", which gives a detailed account of the NZ troops' experience at Passchendaele. The battle that Victor died in, on the 4th of October, is described as "one of the greatest victories of the war" on one of the pages of this book as shown below......
That afternoon I visited the Tyne Cot cemetery and took this picture of some of the huge number of ANZAC and British graves, and the country beyond where they fought. Under those trees on each side of the photo they have left the German cement bunkers from where machine gun fire would have killed so many. May we never forget.
From Tourcoing we headed south with our next night in the Loire Valley in a little rural village named Saint-Claude-de-Diray near Blois. On route we visited one of the most impressive cathedrals in France, and maybe even the world, the 13th century Chartres Cathedral as shown below...
Here is the impressive northern façade of the cathedral....
The church is well known for its 13th century stained glass......
Below shows a closer look....., this is where the colour "Chartres Blue" originated, magnificent and 800 years old!
The following morning we checked out Blois (now that's a hard one to pronounce), which sits on the Loire. There is something mesmerizing about this river, so wide, calm, and so much history on its banks....
We couldn't leave The Loire without visiting a chateau, and luckily the one shown below was nearby, the Chateau de Chambord, owned by King Francis of France and completed in 1547. It was his hunting lodge! He apparently enlisted the help of Italian artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, who "brought the Mona Lisa with him, which Francis had acquired". There's Jane and the kids running up to it......
Here's a closer look at the chateau, Soph showing Connor how to do hand stands in the foreground...
That evening we arrived in Laval, the little hamlet where our grand adventure all began back in April 2013. We lived here for six months, so it was really nice to visit this beautiful part of the world and to catch up with our dear friends there before we headed home. Beth was able to find us a little cottage, shown below on the left, which was just behind her house and perfect for our six night stay. You can see the old Laval church on the right up behind Black Betty.
How's this for a view out the back door of our little cottage in Laval. The three little Shetland ponies had a good feed of carrots during our stay. The gorgeous hills around Laval stood beyond those ponies.
Celine and Denis and their two kids, Gabriel and Romain, visited us when we were down in Provence during winter. We called them up and the next day we were at their place having lunch. Denis, who used to be a professional chef, in usual top form, wipped up a delicious meal....
.....of Cassoulet au Canard (baked white bean and duck casserole)...I have to have a crack at this dish myself sometime ....my mouth is watering just thinking about it....
The photo below was taken out the back of our cottage in Laval. We were just hanging out, painting and colouring in and enjoying the gorgeous French countryside.
Connor turned 3 in Laval, so we had a little gathering at Beth's place next door in a cute little barn as shown below. You can see Jane attaching some balloons to the outside of it.
And here we are inside that barn that night. It was a memorable, fun night, which included tasty magret de canard (duck breasts) expertly cooked over the barbie by Tony and yummy birthday cake made by Deni for Connor. You may not remember this one Connor, but we've got photos and the videos!
From Laval we headed to Provence to spend the last six nights of our 545 nights in Europe with our great friends Martin and Roxane and their two daughters Nepheli and Alkyoni. We had some lovely summer weather there and made the most of our remaining time, organising a bunch of things for our departure and hanging out with our French mates. Martin and I decided to make a kids house out of a large cardboard box, we then had to decorate it, right.....
One night after the kids had been put to bed we moved outside, had some cocktails and then watched Woody Allen's latest on the big screen, home made popcorn at hand, all under the stars......
On our very last night we went out for dinner at the best pizza restaurant in the area the "Pizzeria du Colorado", ....followed by more cocktails at home....
The next morning it was time to say goodbye. Nepheli and Sophie gave each other a big hug...
It was then time for Martin to take Nepheli to school...
When Martin returned we took a few more special photos...
Here's one of Alkyoni and Connor who are real good mates. Connor is still mentioning Alkyoni.
Martin and Roxane gave us a wonderful parting gift, they asked us to be the Godparents of Alkyoni, which we are thrilled about and very honoured needless to say. France is definitely a part of our lives now, and gladly so. Here is another great photo of the guys, Soph and Connor looking affectionately at Alkyoni...
So we sold Black Betty! Gilles, the owner of our house in Rustrel found some great accommodation in Avignon for a lovely lady from Sydney believe it or not, Sally James, she's going to live there for a year. He asked if she wanted to buy our car and the answer was yes! Here's Sally at the TGV train station as we handed over Betty, farewell and thanks a million Betty for doing such a great job over the last year and a half, you're in good hands.
And so we took the fast TGV train up to Paris and flew home, sad to leave France and Europe but knowing we'll be back, and we'll always have those fantastic memories of our "Grande Vacances".
Bonjour Sydney!
I hope you've enjoyed this blog. I've certainly enjoyed writing it.
Bye for now and best wishes, Jane, Sophie, Connor, and me, Michael.
If I can help any reader in some way, if you have any feedback, or you would like to ask a question, please email me on mjscott117@gmail.com.
"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page" - St Augustine
