On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 53 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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There are other changes as well.
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We go on to the joy and through the tears
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
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I had a motel where the wi-fi didn't work, so I got behind a day. But I'm all caught up now!
That cathedral is just awesome! Daylight, lit up at night, in the dark... it's just beautiful!
Great pictures from all of you.
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Great photos Sabine! But tell the truth here, are they yours or Manuel's? If they're yours, you know I want to see Manuel's as well, especially as he had such a snazzy camera!
Can't wait to see you guys again. My goodness, it'll be here before we know it! It's already less than two months now...
Great photos Sabine! But tell the truth here, are they yours or Manuel's? If they're yours, you know I want to see Manuel's as well, especially as he had such a snazzy camera!
Can't wait to see you guys again. My goodness, it'll be here before we know it! It's already less than two months now...
Hahaha, Chez, of course they're Manuel's photos! I think I maybe took a total of two photos the entire trip You can definitely tell that these photos were taken with Manuel's fancy camera - they are a lot clearer than the ones we take with our point-and-shoot camera.
I know, only 56 days left till we come visit you!!! Yay
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Hahaha, Chez, of course they're Manuel's photos! I think I maybe took a total of two photos the entire trip You can definitely tell that these photos were taken with Manuel's fancy camera - they are a lot clearer than the ones we take with our point-and-shoot camera.
I know, only 56 days left till we come visit you!!! Yay
I hope you're ready to "tag team" on another trip report then....
Sunday 28 March – part two: a surprise extra country!
We headed off and our first mission was to find gas, as the car was desperate for some by now. We followed our sat nav and found a place. At first, we thought it might be closed, but no, it was open, although it didn’t have many lights on. We filled up and we were good to go.
It was out of Koln and off on to the autobahns, heading for what we believed to be the Belgian border. There wasn’t much to see in the rest of our stay in Germany on the way.
Lorries all parked up, as they’re not allowed to drive them in Germany on a Sunday
When we did finally get to a border sign – and my goodness, you have to watch out for these things, as there is no customs at all between the European Union countries, there’s literally a sign to say you’re in another country and that’s it - it wasn’t the one we expected. The Netherlands? Cool, we’re going through a sixth, unexpected country on this trip! The reason for this is that I hadn’t planned our journey home, figuring I’d leave it to our sat nav to sort out the quickest way. We weren’t in the Netherlands for long, maybe 25 minutes or so, about the same amount of time we were in Austria for earlier in the trip, and if we’d taken the lower motorway, which I thought we might, we would have missed the Netherlands altogether.
It was pretty neat and I was busy snapping away for the brief time we were in the country.
Look how close this train is to the road!
All too soon, the sign appeared and we were into Belgium.
We think this was a former customs point between the countries
For the first few miles, there was pretty much nothing for me to photograph at all, as the road, which was about as straight as it was possible for it to be, had trees on both sides. Still, it allowed me to deal with my 600 plus work e-mails as we went along, so that was something.
Finally, we did get some scenery, as we approached Brussels and that was also where we saw our first bit of rain as well. From the weather forecast last night, we had expected to pretty much drive home in rain the whole way back, but our luck with the weather continued and we saw very little rain during the drive. It would come and go from time to time, but nothing terrible. :
The other side of Brussels allowed more chances for photographs, as we travelled towards first Ghent, then Brugges and finally Ostend.
I have to say that I was particularly pleased with the amount of cows I saw in Belgium. It’s now officially the cow capital of Europe to me!
We both commented how much we enjoyed the scenery in Belgium. It’s known as a very flat country and I hope some of these photos show that, which means that you can see an awful lot as you travel. In that respect, it was a bit like Switzerland, with something to photograph along most of the route.
Eventually, we passed our final country marker and were into France. I’ll be honest here, the rate of photo taking slowed down dramatically at this point. Don’t get me wrong, some parts of France are lovely. Heck, we visited some on the way down to Switzerland, but this part of the country is sadly not one of those parts. : It’s an ugly part of the country for much of the route, with a lot of industry along the coastline and sadly the familiar sight of graffiti as we drove. France and Germany had had way more graffiti than any other country we’d visited and, of the two, France was definitely the one with the biggest problem.
We made it to Calais just before 4.00, as our plan was to buy some wine, before catching the Eurotunnel back home. We thought we’d programmed our sat nav to take us to Carrefour, the French supermarket, but evidently not, as he managed to take us to a church instead. At least we saw the sights of Calais on the way and I don’t think either of us had ever seen some of them before, so that was something.
Ok, let’s try again. We programmed in Carrefour again and finally found one, but it was closed. I’d remembered that the French too were a bit of a pain for shutting shops on Sundays as we drove into the town, but I thought I had a clear recollection that this was something they’d done a few years ago and now had stopped that practice. Anyway, we weren’t need the tourist area.
So, we’re on to attempt three by now. We asked the sat nav to take us to Cite d’Europe, which is the huge shopping complex right next to Eurotunnel, which definitely has a Carrefour and a Tesco, our own home grown supermarket. The closer we got to the place, the less things looked right. It just seemed too quiet, with very few cars around. As we pulled up to Cite d’Europe, you could easily see that it was closed, with about half a dozen cars in the car park.
Oh well, looks like everywhere is closed in Calais today then. I said to Mark that this was worse than it was a few years ago, when at least there were some things open, but today nothing was. The reason I’d wanted to go to Carrefour was to get the wine my dad likes that you can only get in French supermarkets, but I guess he’ll have to go without then.
Demoralised and now desperate for a restroom, we headed for Eurotunnel and checked in. Secretly, I was dreading it telling us that we had to stick with our original reservation, which was 7.20. It was now 4.30 and I didn’t relish the prospect of having to sit around the passenger terminal for three hours. Fortunately we didn’t need to, as it offered us two times, either 5.20 or 5.50, so we chose the earlier.
We headed straight for the passenger terminal and I think you can guess what our first stop was... That done, it was into the shop to stock up with wine, as my favourite White Zinfandel was on special offer, buy three, get six. A box of six bottles was just €14.60 ($19.70), which was a major bargain, so we grabbed a few boxed and headed back to the car.
Our number had just been called for boarding, so we set off and sailed through both the French and British customs, especially after the van in front of us got selected for special extra processing by British customs. That left us free to head straight for the train and we did – literally.
We weren’t stopped anywhere and headed straight for the train. By now, it was about 4.45 and I realised that they were putting us on to the 4.50 train, even earlier. We lucked out and were one of the last cars (there were literally only two more behind us) to be allowed on to the lower level, which was great news, as we both hate travelling on the upper level, as you feel the movement much more.
Just 35 minutes later and we were home, back in the UK for the first time in over a week. At least the weather this side of the channel was much better than what had greeted us when we first arrived on the continent last Friday.
It was only another half an hour’s drive and we were back home, with the boards and TV to catch up on and lots and lots of washing to get done, but with both of us cherishing some great memories of our first European road trip. One down for 2010, two more to come yet...
Just for the record, you’ve obviously seen details of how many miles we drove each day. In total, Mark drove a total of 1,848 miles in nine days through six countries.
Today we drove 310 miles. The weather today was cloudy with temperatures in the high 50s. The best thing today was the breakfast at the Hilton. The worst thing today was saying goodbye to Sabine and Manuel and heading home. Today we tried going to the Koln botanical gardens And the result was they’re a real treat. The most magical moment today was discovering we were going through a sixth country.
Next: coming in June – northern France and Disneyland Paris
Great finish Cheryl! Thanks for the lorry pictures (I just know you think of me with those! ). You found a few cows, too, I see. Calais looks nice. I thought it was farther between Germany and England. I thought it would, at least be overnight. Gives one a greater respect for the distances involved in WWII!
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But tell the truth here, are they yours or Manuel's? If they're yours, you know I want to see Manuel's as well, especially as he had such a snazzy camera! 
My goodness, it'll be here before we know it! It's already less than two months now... 
You can definitely tell that these photos were taken with Manuel's fancy camera - they are a lot clearer than the ones we take with our point-and-shoot camera. 
- it wasn’t the one we expected. The Netherlands? Cool, we’re going through a sixth, unexpected country on this trip! 
The reason for this is that I hadn’t planned our journey home, figuring I’d leave it to our sat nav to sort out the quickest way. We weren’t in the Netherlands for long, maybe 25 minutes or so, about the same amount of time we were in Austria for earlier in the trip, and if we’d taken the lower motorway, which I thought we might, we would have missed the Netherlands altogether. 
: 
At least we saw the sights of Calais on the way and I don’t think either of us had ever seen some of them before, so that was something. 
It just seemed too quiet, with very few cars around. As we pulled up to Cite d’Europe, you could easily see that it was closed, with about half a dozen cars in the car park. 
That done, it was into the shop to stock up with wine, as my favourite White Zinfandel was on special offer, buy three, get six. 
That left us free to head straight for the train and we did – literally. 
We lucked out and were one of the last cars (there were literally only two more behind us) to be allowed on to the lower level, which was great news, as we both hate travelling on the upper level, as you feel the movement much more. 
). You found a few cows, too, I see. Calais looks nice. I thought it was farther between Germany and England. I thought it would, at least be overnight. Gives one a greater respect for the distances involved in WWII! 
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