Adelle and Ron's RV Travel Adventures in Europe

2008TripBlog1

2008-04-27T06:35:00.000-04:00

Friday April 25, 2008

Hello everyone!

There has been a long lapse between our last trip letters and these new ones. Last year several things happened to keep us in Connecticut so long that we decided it was too late to go to Europe. But this year we made it.

We left the U.S. on Wednesday night at 9:40 p.m. …no, we left at 10:15 after a long delay on a runway in the back of Logan Airport. About 10 p.m. the captain came on the loudspeaker to say that they had a computer malfunction that had just been fixed, and apparently he was correct, because once we took off we had a trouble free flight.

On the other hand, Ron wants to write to Northwest and tell them that although we do understand that there are big problems in the airline industry, the way to compete is not to buy small planes and put too many seats across them. These were the worst we’ve ever experienced. Also very annoying was the fact that although we asked for two aisle seats in the same row, and were assured that was what we were assigned, we had tickets for the aisle and the center seat. Then a tall Dutchman came along with a ticket to the center seat that Adelle was in! He squeezed into the window, but his long legs bothered Adelle all through the flight.

There weren’t many people on the plane. I believe that we were almost the only set of tiny seats with three passengers. We were certainly more uncomfortable than many on the flight who were all alone and could “stretch out” on their seats! Ron did manage to sleep a little – but though I shut my eyes, I remained wide awake all night. Got into the airport, took money out of the wall and bought a sim chip to put into the new European cell phone that Dick van den Berg (Sjef’s brother) brought me from The Netherlands. Then we called the DeWits (our RV landlords) to say that we were in. Arend came to get us and brought us to our old Dolphin, bright eyed and bushy tailed, standing there waiting for us, all ready to go off and explore some old and new venues. It’s a brave old thing. It has no idea that this next trip for which it is anxiously waiting in all probability will be its last with us in its care.

Arendt and Ineka gave us lunch. Afterwards we went grocery shopping with Ineke in her car, and then to the campground where we unpacked and took about an hour’s nap.

Right off we found that it is really thrilling to be here with the Euro worth $1.59. And there has also been inflation here. The result is that campground fees are in the $40 per night range instead of $25 on our last. And gasoline, at 1.59 +- Euros per liter, nets out at almost $10 per gallon, ( 1.59 x 3.84 per gallon x 1.59 dollars per liter=$9.70 ) instead of about $6 on when we were here last. In short, we get to feel like big time spenders while roughing it. And roughing it is a hell of a lot better than the $300 per night for hotels we hear is normal now for a 3 star.

How did we feel otherwise? Well Adelle was planning to call home at 9 p.m. our time (3 p.m. at home) to give every one our phone number but couldn’t stay up that late! She’s never been so tired when we arrived. Slept from about 8:45 p.m. to 8:30 this morning. And we still feel tired.

We didn’t walk around today. We ran some errands, did a little more food shopping, and worked on various projects on the motor home. Can you believe that it has been in storage for just short of two years and is still dry and comfortable? That’s greenhouse living for you. It was pretty dirty of course, but we have spruced it up a bit. In rummaging around we discovered a third of a bottle of red wine left from the last trip—over two years ago. Wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good either, but it still had some alcohol in it. Also lots of little black flakes! And today we had some instant coffee left from the last trip. Instant coffee does not taste too good when it’s fresh, but it does not taste worse when it is over two years old.

The business on Friday was to check out what needed to be done to conform the Dolphin to European standards before it could be sold here. So we visited a garage owned by Patrick van den Berg—no relation to Sjef—who checked it out. Just one thing—different parking and turn signal lights, which was not problem. But two mechanical things also—ball joint seals, and brake lines in the front. Estimate—700 Euros (=$1113). That’s a good price—for Mr. Van den Berg, but not for us. But then, in addition, we would have to pay an import tax which he estimated at 10 % of the cost when the RV was NEW in 1985! What? How can we determine that? And why when it was new, when it is now 23 years old? We decided to visit the tax office on Monday and discuss this with them.

It is getting to look more and more like we are taking Dolphin home.

We stayed overnight at the campground closer to Schiphol Airport because we’d like to try the new transportation to town. If it is as advertised, it’ll take only twenty minutes more. On Saturday we’ll be at our favorite street market in Amsterdam where we’ll buy too many vegetables and fruits, lots of cheese and beautiful flowers. We’ll also have the chance to put out first letter on our blog from our favorite internet café. Life is good.

We haven’t begun to think about Sunday – but on Monday we have some additional errands to run, so we’ll remain in the Amsterdam area. We’ll move to a new campground on Monday evening so we can go on
Tuesday to Keukenhof Gardens to see what the Dutch planters have planted. Then who knows? If all goes well, our friends will meet us on Tuesday and what is more, join us on Friday in their new camper. See, I told you life is good.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

The season here is much advanced over what it was in Connecticut when we left a few days ago. There are leaves on the trees here, and the first thing we saw when we left the airport terminal building was a large expanse of deep, dark red tulips. Today we passed a chestnut tree with at least six inch leaves. It rained our first day here and the RV was pretty cold on Thursday and Friday nights – but on Saturday morning, after sleeping from about 9:30 to 8:30, we woke to a glorious day. The birds were singing, the sun was shining and the weather is now perfect. Just the right sort of day to go to market, the Albert Cuypstraat open air market in Amsterdam, of course. Besides the fresh olives, fruit and vegetables and candy and nuts, we bought enough cheese for six people (we of course are only two) and beautiful yellow tulips and some other greenery with yellow flowers. Now we can face both the flower and the cheese police. We’re loaded with goodies. Prices seemed about the same as last time, perhaps a little higher. But with the dollar being so much lower in value, everything cost us much more than the last time we were here.

The market on Albert Cuypstraat St. is huge – four very long blocks. We walked then four times up and down before we came home. Ron had his usual lunch of new herring and chopped onions—it is strawberry season so it really is new herring, which means it has been very recently caught and lightly salted-- and a little dish of kibbeling—small pieces of fried fish, with a garlic sauce. Delicious! With all that walking and with the load of cheese, fruits, etc, packed into two backpacks, we got very tired. Called it a day at four, got home at five, and collapsed.

The trip into town took a bit longer than it does from the other campground, but it was quite convenient and we decided to stay where we are for now. Another thing we left in the RV was a strip of tickets for busses and the metro—enough for the trip into town. The bus driver noticed that it was old, but allowed it. Had to buy another set for the ride home. Tomorrow and Monday we need to remain in Amsterdam.

We still don’t have a real itinerary. You’ll know when we do decide where to go! Till then, good night.

Ron and Adelle

Last letter, 25, from Europe RV trip

2006-08-01T14:01:00.000-04:00

We’ve had a wonderful trip. And it ended on an up note.

Our last day in the Netherlands was an unexpected pleasure. It has been as hot in Europe as in the U.S. so we had stayed close to our motorhome and did not plan to go back to downtown Amsterdam. But on Tuesday morning, we moved from our campground to a spot just outside the storage greenhouse. The DeWits had arranged a wonderful day for us. First stop was a tour of a rose growing greenhouse that produces 3,000,000 roses every year. Plants are grown in what looks like pallets of fiberglass insulation, not earth. Sensors monitor the amount of liquid nutrition and water needed and computers control the flow. There were millions of plants in huge greenhouses with automatic lighting and watering and tanks of carbon dioxide. The latter is pumped into the greenhouse atmosphere to help growth. Flowers are cut by hand, brought into a different area, and a person goes through every rose to make sure it will pass the criteria of size and shape that the flower auction requires. If it is good, it goes onto a hook on a conveyor belt and into a machine that automatically bundles them by size of stem. They are then wrapped in cellophane and placed in a small amount of water in plastic boxes in the refrigerator. In the middle of the night, a truck comes and takes the blossoms to the auction to be sold. Flowers that are too far open or otherwise not acceptable, are thrown away. There was a huge dumpster filled with rejects!

After lunch under the arbor, we went to visit a historical garden in the town of Aalsmeer, that is, a garden which still has plants that were brought to the Netherlands hundreds of years ago and are no longer grown. Ron’s favorite was a rose that came to Holland from China in the 1500’s. There was also a display showing how the Dutch dug up the peat at the bottom of the huge lake in Aalsmeer and deposited it behind bulkheads, making hundreds of little islands. Truly, as the Dutch saying goes, God made the world but the Dutch made Holland.

Next stop was a canal in Aalsmeer where the DeWits uncovered a run-about, and we began a several hour journey through the canals and the huge lake named Westeinderplassen, past those man-made islands which the lilac growers still use. How? They put row after row of one year old lilac bushes into the rich soil, and allow them to grow until they are mature. Then, in the fall, the lilac growers dig up the bushes, put them into greenhouses, and force growth during the winter. In the spring, they harvest the lilac flowers for sale and as soon as the ground is ready, replant the bushes on the islands. They stay there until the fall, and then the process is repeated. And there are literally thousands of bushes!

Last stop on our wonderful last day was dinner at a lovely lakeside restaurant.

In the morning, we got ready to fly home. The flights were fine, but in some ways, we had a pretty awful homecoming.

We went through security in Schiphol Airport and were very impressed with the way it was done. Every gate had an x-ray to walk through and a crew to do the checking. Therefore, there were no long lines at security checkpoints.

When we’ve done this in the past, we were sent directly from our Amsterdam to London flight through a closed off area in the airport to the bus service that takes you from one terminal in Heathrow to another. This time, they sent us through another security check before we were allowed to get onto the airport terminal bus. Since there were several hundred people ahead of us – all “in transit” – we were held up about a half hour. There was no attempt to manage the screening process. No matter what time your connecting flight was, you waited in that huge, slow line. The result was no surprise. We missed our connection, although there was an hour and a half between flights.

When we finally arrived at Terminal Four, we went directly to British Airways Customer Service Desk. There a pleasant young lady was ready to put us on standby onto a flight that left after eleven, instead of the 4:35 flight we had been scheduled to take. She had no problem with the fact that Jennifer and Glen had to pick us up in Boston and such a plan would have required them to take a day off work. Adelle, however, did have a problem with that idea and she went into aggressive mode. Lo and behold, suddenly we could fly standby on the next flight, which was at 7:30. Although flying standby was chancy and did not totally solve our problem, it was certainly better. She assured us that our luggage would be on that flight.

So we called Jennifer and told us that if she didn’t hear from us again, she should meet the flight that got in at 9:45, and settled down to wait to see if we really got onto the flight. Think we were a little stressed?

Fortunately, we were able to get onto that plane. Otherwise, we would probably have had to stay overnight at a very expensive airport hotel and then sit in the airport until evening, when it would have been possible for Jennifer and Glen to pick us up.

We got into Boston and were held up in the usual lines for passport control and baggage arrival. Except that our luggage didn’t arrive. In fact, it didn’t arrive until two days later. Most of the things in the luggage were not important – but we were concerned about the huge amount of cheese we had bought in Amsterdam before we left! Glad to report that although the cheese must have been subjected to long periods of heat, there was no problem with it.

So, now we are home. It only took six telephone calls to get our phones working, a situation that defies belief. A digital network indeed. After only a few days, we were back to “normal”!

We’ve had a wonderful trip, and thank all of you for “joining” us. We hope that someday we may even meet some of our readers while we’re in a European campground. In the meantime, we would love to hear from you with any comments, questions or suggestions for future letters, should the spirit move you.

Letter 24 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-27T16:49:00.000-04:00

Once in the town of Maubeuge, we were very close to the Belgium border. We happen to be big fans of Belgian cities, but we had a different agenda. This year Ron thought we might need brakes. After all, we bought our motor home in 2000 and we’ve traveled a bit since then. The brakes had never been reworked while we owned this motorhome. As a precaution we bought brake shoes and pads in the US and took these with us just in case such parts for a 1985 Toyota pick-up cum motor home could not be found here.

When we figured it out, we’d done a lot of driving on those brakes. We traveled 11,500 miles across the U.S. in 2001; traveled to Connecticut from Florida and back, driving an additional nearly 3,000 miles; toured the Continent in 2002, a total of 4,500 miles; traveled all over the UK in 2003, another 3,500 miles; were all over the Continent again in 2005 for another 4,500 miles; and we’ve driven an additional 3,000 this year. That makes 30,000 miles that we drove on the brakes and we have no idea how many miles those brakes were used before us!

So, we needed to return to Amsterdam early, so we could make arrangements with the mechanic who always changes our oil to also change our brakes. And since we are leaving so soon, we had better get there as quickly as we can, so there is time to make arrangements. No Belgian stop-overs on this trip.

We drove directly from France, through Belgium and into the southern part of the Netherlands beginning about 11 a.m. We stopped on the side of the road for lunch, and to buy gas, but that was all. We were entering the Ring Road around Eindhoven by three o’clock, but that was too early to stop. If we stopped then, the motor home would be very hot and uncomfortable, since the heat was so intense. Those of you who have followed our travels or read our book know that we lost the air conditioner early on. So we drove on, choosing a campsite just off the Ring Road of another Dutch city, S’Hertogenbosch, which was even closer to Amsterdam. It was a very nice facility, loaded with Dutch families on holiday and lots of children in the playgrounds or in the pool.

By the time we drove in, the heat was less intense – and it did cool off somewhat at night. On Wednesday morning, we set off for Amsterdam. Instead of driving directly to the mechanic, we stopped off a few blocks away at DeWit Caravan Stalling, where we store our motor home. We wanted to ask the DeWits to call the mechanic for us, so that there would be no language problem. Nearly everyone in Holland does speak English, but not everyone can discuss all the sides of this situation. Fortunately, Ineke and Arendt were able to discuss the problem with the mechanic, and the result was that we got an appointment for Monday morning. In the meantime, we were free to drive to our favorite Amsterdam campground, Gaaspar Camping.

We thought we should mention that in all the time since the day in 2002 when we broke our roof top air conditioning unit by driving under an overpass that was less than three meters high, we have not missed it, except for two days in Italy last year. This year, the extreme heat has forced us to think kindly of that unit, although we still don’t think the electricity available would be able to run it!

So ends our 2006 trip. We took the metro into the city Thursday, Friday and Saturday, partly to visit internet centers but mostly to go to street markets to pick up some things we want to have in the RV for the next trip – and to buy cheese to take home. And, of course, to eat lunch. Ron is a big fan of the fried fish (a.k.a. kibbeling, lekkerbek, and heekfilet) that is sold all over the Netherlands. And don’t forget the herring that is almost brand new now that it is just after the strawberry season.

During our Saturday excursion, there was a big thunderstorm, and the heat wave seemed to have broken. By Saturday evening it was comfortably cool.

On Sunday, we’ll move to a campground only about half a kilometer away from the mechanic, and in the afternoon, we’ll do our laundry. On Monday, our day will be spent hanging around while the brakes are replaced and the oil changed. Fortunately, we have an invitation to sit in the DeWit’s backyard under the umbrella if needed. On Tuesday, we have a date to take a boat ride with the DeWits. And on Wednesday, we are heading home.

We have had another great trip with no major mishaps. Our old but faithful chariot-home had taken a terrible beating on some very rough roads, and in the awful heat that has plagued Europe these last few weeks and has stood up to it, never complaining or acting up. We are extremely lucky to have this motorhome. The way things are now, we can look forward to it being ready and anxious to get on the road again next year. We hope that that we also will be in as good shape as the motorhome come Spring. If we are we will return. Indeed, when we started out this trip we had made no plans to return for another year. As we did last year and the year before, we postponed that decision until we experienced being on the road again. This year, we made the decision in about the fourth week of our trip to try to make another one next year because we felt that it was still fun, and that we would not run out of interesting places to visit. Europe is replete with places whose history has shaped our own, and are beautiful and a joy and privilege to visit. One never knows how we will feel when next spring actually rolls around, but if we decide that we had better not go, we would deal with returning the motorhome then. The fact is that we both feel better now at the end of this fine trip than we did when we started. This kind of travelling seems to be very good for our health.

We would like to thank everyone who has been traveling along with us – especially those who have contacted us either to say hello or make a comment or to ask questions. It is always a great feeling to know that other people are interested. Indeed we feel that you are a presence on our trip, sort of lurking in the background, expectantly waiting for us to tell you what new things we encountered every day. It is because of your presence that we always try to notice things that are interesting to us and that you might also like to know about.

We’ve been unable to send pictures for many letters, but all will be remedied on July 27, when we are home!

Letter 23 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-22T08:10:00.000-04:00

We had stumbled into a very nice campground after having been turned away from several we found while we drove away from Calais. Most of the campers were “statics”, but there was at least one other transient. Actually, we really thought that we two were the only transients. There was a café-bar-restaurant that was so busy that the proprietor did not have the time to check us in. Told us that we could do that the next morning.

Saturday morning, of course, we checked in and out simultaneously. We had decided to visit an area of France that was quite far away and would require a great deal of driving (for those of us who think 100 miles is very far!). So we started off, watching the supermarkets signs that usually appear just before the “centre commerciale”. Neither of our favorite markets appeared, so we opted for a Geant Supermarche with an attached less expensive gas station in a town called Wizernes. Never heard of it? Neither had we – but we know that Geant is a good supermarket. In fact, it is embarrassing but true, that we spent a full two hours there.

Then we put everything away, had our lunch, and left to drive to a city near our objective, the town of Giverny, on the Seine northwest of Paris, where the artist Claude Monet lived and where his garden still flourishes. We had begun our journey after ten in the morning – and had spent all that time shopping. We didn’t start out again until after 2 p.m. After driving for a few hours, we found our way to a campground near Beauvais. When we got there, there was a big sign: “Ferme”(Closed)! That’s not the word a couple of tired travelers want to hear. But we consulted our book again, and found that there was a campground in a nearby town called Dangu, just outside the town of Gisor which claimed to be close to Giverny. Not only was it a really nice campground, right on a beautiful lake, but it really was a short drive to Monet’s Garden.

Despite the fact that it was only 10:30 when we got there – and the place didn’t even open until 10 – the complex was jammed. We stood in line about twenty minutes to get tickets to the garden. We had seen the house in May 2002, so we were more interested in seeing how the garden looks in July. Except for the famous water lilies, the garden was not as beautiful as Adelle had hoped. It was quite overgrown and in need of some care. The water lilies had not been open when we were last there, and that part of the garden was really beautiful. We spent a couple of hours there and then were on our way again.

We had decided to stop in at least three more places in France. The town of Chantilly is famous for its chateau and its incredible horse stables (of which more later), and is within ten miles of the town of Senlis whose cathedral and ancient buildings are also justly renowned. Last stop would be the city of Reims with its enormous cathedral.

So, off we went. We readily found signs indicating non-toll roads to Chantilly, and started driving. It seemed to us that we were being routed around Robin Hood’s barn but we were committed and continued. As it turned out, that was the most direct way to Chantilly. We entered the city on N16 from the south, drove a little way, and saw the signs for the Chateau and stables. We followed the signs and found ourselves on a cobblestone road around two of the most fabulous buildings we’ve seen. But the parking spaces seemed to be all taken, and we found ourselves out of the complex onto a city street with absolutely no idea of where we were or how to get to the campground. After taking a short scenic tour, Ron sensibly figured out in which direction we should head, and within a couple of blocks the name of the town we wanted to find appeared. It was quite a name: St. Leu d’Esserent.

As we drove across the bridge as directed, we saw what looked like an Abbey with gothic circular towers. That was a good sign! We followed the instructions for the campground, past houses, through fields, and up a steep hill – and eventually our patience was rewarded with a reception building. It took a while for us to find a space since the campground is on the grounds of a former quarry and it is up and down hills and into forest. It was brutally hot, and Adelle was moaning that she would have liked to be back in her air-conditioned house, when Ron said that we had to move our chairs. Why? He wouldn’t say. But he did guarantee all would be well. So we moved across the path and down the road – right next to an actual quarry site from which emanated really cool air. Natural air-conditioning.

Those few hours spent reading in front of that man-made cave were the only hours that we have been really comfortable for weeks. It is terribly hot in Europe. It was miserable in Britain, hot in Sweden and then very hot in France. This is not the usual weather pattern. Global warming, anyone?

Next morning we went into the village and looked at its 13th century church, but didn’t bother to go in. Then we drove back in Chantilly and turned into one of the parking areas. It listed prices: one euro for a car, two euros fifty for a van. We figured ourselves for a van, but when the lady appeared, she pointed out the bottom price category: ten euros ($12.50) for one hour for a camping-car. Of course we left, but Ron managed to get some photos of a really fabulous chateau. And the stables. The man who built those stables gives new meaning to the phrase “eccentric rich country gentleman”. He decided that after he died he was going to come back to life as a horse. And being used to luxury, he therefore wanted to build the most enormous, beautiful and elaborate stables in the world for his future comfort! He certainly succeeded in doing that, but we don’t know for sure if he ever lived there as a horse. We did not go in so we did not have the chance to interrogate the horses living there about their ancestors.

So, we were off to Senlis. Would you believe that we not only drove into the center of a really old city, but turned a very tight corner lined with concrete posts, drove one block and found a place to park. We did just that. We saw the cathedral, walked around the town, declined to visit the Royal Chateau and left – although leaving was a lot harder than getting into the center of town. We missed the correct road that would take us onto the ring road and it took a while before we found another exit. Nevertheless, we were on our way to Soissons and then to Reims.

Got there without a problem. Found the sign for the cathedral right away. But when we tried to park at Cathedral Parking, we found it was a three story garage and not suitable for us. As we stood waiting for the light to change, a policewoman walked over – only to ask us where we were from and to tell us that her friend lives in Jacksonville, Florida. She suggested a parking place, but it was too far to walk in that heat. So Ron turned around and came back to the cathedral area and found a parking place on the street only a block or two past the regular parking! We fit exactly into the white lines.

What a huge Cathedral! Imposing, beautiful and vaguely familiar. Ron pointed out that we’ve owned a framed print of that particular cathedral for more than forty years. No wonder it was familiar.

When we had visited the cathedral, we stopped at a restaurant and asked if they could make us a glass of iced coffee. Indeed they could, and we cooled off as we got hopped up by drinking a large iced espresso each, and began our drive out of France.

Shunning the fancy (and expensive) autoroutes, Adelle picked out a local road. It went through miles and miles of beautiful farmland without either villages or services. All we saw were the green and tan carpets of crops on all sides. Our destination for the evening was a town called Maubeuge, which is only a short way from Mons in Belgium and therefore on our way back to Amsterdam. The instructions to get to the campground were from the north. It said that the site was on Route N2 just north of city center. We were south of the city on Route N2, so that looked very promising. Only when it came time to get into the city center, Route N2 disappeared. We took another route in, and couldn’t find the right road. We finally stopped at the equivalent of a Home Depot and asked the cashier about the site, and she told us to reverse direction, go the first round-about and take the third road. We were there in ten minutes, somehow back on Route N2 on our way to Mons.

Of course, we spent the night in the campground first, and of course, stopped at the Carrefour Supermarche to buy the last things we can buy in France. You wouldn’t want us to go hungry, would you?

Letter 22 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-22T08:07:00.000-04:00

We had no high hopes for the city of Rochester, and were we surprised by it! There was a castle, a cathedral and lots of interesting buildings. One of the things that caught our attention in the cathedral was a plaque commemorating the deaths of English military men killed in campaigns in India and in Khartoum.

The buildings were interesting not only because of their architecture, but because Rochester’s buildings figure heavily in Charles Dickens’ work. He lived near this city as a boy and close to it once he became a major literary figure. Many of the stores bear names from his books, of course, but even more than that, some of the buildings he described in his books are still there. Since Ron is a great fan of Dickens, this turned out to be a great day.

We saw was the mansion, Restoration House, that served as Dickens’ model for the mansion owned by the demented jilted bride, Miss Havisham, in “Great Expectations”. Down the street was the huge house, named Eastgate, that was the model for Westgate House in “The Pickwick Papers”, and also for the Nun’s House in “Edwin Drood”.

The Guildhall Museum had a very nice exhibit of Victorian life and artifacts, and , in a separate wing, it also had a very extensive collection of neolithic and later artifacts, including a 200,000 year old huge flint axe head that one could actually touch.! The edges were still very sharp.

We had a late lunch “at home” and headed for the small market town of Faversham, which we know to be a lovely town with 500 buildings interesting enough to be “listed” as historical. We found the campground without a problem and settled in. It was on a farm with a farm house dating from 1547. That campground had many cherry trees with ripe cherries still on them. You were not supposed to pick any, but we can tell you that they were delicious.

On Friday morning we’d go into town. The proprietor of the campground said that we could park the motor home in town and gave us directions to a lot that she thought could accommodate the RV. But when we did go into town, we found that there was no place where we could put the motorhome while we walked around. That was partly because spaces were too small, but also because it was market day.

We didn’t have a lot of time because we had tickets for a Friday ferry back to France. We simply got back on the road and drove to Canterbury. We followed signs for parking that showed a coach (bus) and a motorhome ikon– and we found that there really was a parking lot where we could park. It was very close to the Cathedral. We’ve been in Canterbury before, so when we saw the cost of touring the Cathedral, we passed. It would have cost nearly $18 for us to walk into the Cathedral! Good thing we saw it in 2003.
Apart from the impressive and very old architecture, this Cathedral also was where Thomas Beckett, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who defied his long-time friend King Henry II, was murdered at prayer by four Knights who may or may not have been ordered to do the dirty deed by Henry himself. The exact spot is identified in the Cathedral.

We walked around and then read the Tourist Office information about Canterbury. There was a Roman museum just a few minutes away from the center of town. We opted for that. The cost was only about two pounds just under $4.00) each, for OAP’s (Old Age Pensioners), and we qualified.

It was very interesting even though we’ve seen lots of the same stuff before. This museum had a couple of tricks up its collective sleeve. First, they have a very good idea, from excavations, of how the town looked in A.D. 150 and how it looked when the year A.D. 300 rolled around. There were excellent illustrations showing how the town had grown and prospered.

Second, many of the artifacts that they found were incorporated into displays showing people in their shops. Mannequins were dressed appropriately, and the craftsmen’s wares were shown. Then we came to what is called “the Roman villa under your feet”.

It turns out that while everyone has known for a very long time that Canterbury was a Roman town, the big impetus to finding the remains of a villa was the bombing of the city in WWII. When repairs were being made, they discovered the villa under the modern buildings that had been destroyed. The town then put a building up over the villa, and that is the main display in the museum.

Finally, the museum used a computer program to show how the house had looked at its beginnings, and how it looked 300 years later when it apparently was abandoned when Canterbury was no longer associated with Rome.

We left after seeing the museum. It seemed to us that if we just showed up at the ticket office at the ferry to Calais early, they might get us onto an earlier sailing. Otherwise we had tickets for a six o’clock ferry which got in an hour and a half later. To make matters worse, English time is one hour behind European time. That meant that we’d be getting in at 8:30 p.m. It is still light then, but finding a campground so late at night would be much more difficult.

There was some difficulty, but the charming man at the check-in counter arranged for us to take the ferry that left at 5 p.m. Now we reached shore at 7:30 p.m. – much better! We decided to try for a campground only 30 minutes away. We got to the town of Ardres at 8:15 – and were turned down at five different campgrounds – all of which were full. We had realized that there might be a problem since July 14 is Bastille Day – France’s biggest holiday – and the beginning of a week-end, but five turn downs seemed like a lot. It was after 9 when we finally got to a suburb of St. Omer and saw a sign that said that the Mayor welcomes you to the municipal campground that can be found at the Café. We drove on, following the signs for what we thought was a long way, and were convinced we’d either missed it or it was closed, when a campsite sign appeared. We had found our safe harbor for the night.

Letter 21 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-22T08:05:00.000-04:00

There’s really no way to describe the two museums,(The Natural History and the Pitt-Rivers) except to say “Wow”. We stopped at the Natural History Museum first because we wanted to see the Stonesfield Meglasaurus. Yes, it was found in the village where Nicky and Harry live. Long ago, that town had been the source of very fine slate for roof tiles. The fossil bones were found in the early 1800’s but not named for another decade or so. It was, in fact, the first set of fossil bones to be called with the identifying “saurus”. At the time, no one knew what it was or how old it was.

Coincidentally, Ron just read a book about the amateur scientists who collected these specimens in the early 1800’s. (The book is called “The Dragon Seekers”) For quite a while these discoverers tried to fit the fossils into the Bible’s view of the origins of life by theorizing that God had made the most primitive animals first, progressing ever onward through the reptiles and then the mammals until His crowning achievement of man. But later, when the bones of a human were found in a layer that also contained the bones of a mammoth (indicating that they were alive at the same time), people were forced to rethink the ever onward and progressive theory of the creation of life. The bones of both the human and the mammoth that made up the challenging find were also there in the Natural History Museum. All this was pre-Darwin.

There were a lot of great exhibits of dinosaurs, geology, mineralogy etc. and a great description of the meeting of the Royal Society of Geographers in the 19th century when Charles Darwin’s ideas were expounded. It was apparently a very raucous meeting. That’s no surprise!

Then we wandered into the Pitt-Rivers Museum. This is an experience, not a visit. Pitt-Rivers was an archeologist and he collected things. Lots and lots of things. So many things that his collection alone numbered 20,000 items! Now the museum owns over half a million items! What kinds of things? Musical instruments, canoes, sleds, religious artifacts, things pertaining to death rituals, war items, clothing, paddles, crafts to name just a few. Theses came from all over the world. It was overwhelming. We’ve never seen such a huge collection of material. It was displayed in glass cases, each containing similar items and there were hundreds of cases. We agreed that you’d need a week just for that part of the museum.

When we were getting really tired, at about 3:30 p.m., we took the bus back to the Park & Ride where we had left our motor home and Nicky’s car, and said good-bye to Nicky, who returned home in her car. We got into the motorhome and left to drive to Henley-on-Thames, where we knew there was a campground. It wasn’t a long drive, and we could relax a bit after a very hot day touring Oxford.

In the morning, we took the RV to the parking lot of a large supermarket and paid the fee to stay in the lot for two hours. We have found this is a new wrinkle in England. Many supermarkets have combined with the town authorities, and made their parking lots into “Pay & Display” lots. You pay for as long as you want – and the supermarket gives you credit for an hour’s free parking if you actually shop. Then we walked the short distance into town.

It was a very pretty little city on the Thames above London. We walked down to the river. There were some nice buildings, and the river (even without the regatta sculls) was lovely. On the street, we saw a very rare, Ron thinks, Jaguar sportscar with a raised backfin in back of the driver’s seat, took some pictures, got back into the car and headed east for the city of Rochester.

Letter 20 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-20T06:15:00.000-04:00

We arrived at the summer house in late afternoon on Friday, were given a tour of the house, and then had dinner. That night, we watched a movie the modern way – on a home entertainment screen. On the schedule was the new version of “Pride and Prejudice”. Verdict: two approvals (from both men) and two disapprovals (from both women). Those two women of course are big Jane Austin fans – and they weren’t happy with the so-called “modernization” of the story. Still aren’t! Too many extraneous “art movie” scenes! Some people are never happy.

Saturday morning was spent in the house, working on letters and pictures on the computer. Afterwards, we went just a short distance down the road to a museum. The barn red farm buildings dated from as long ago as 400 years. There were 6 or 7 buildings, including barns, and one out-house that seemed to be communal since it was a five holer. (Incidentally, Swedish barn red color is derived from paint with cuprous oxide, a very good preservative and anti-foulant. In the US it was used to mix in paints for boat hulls when boats were made of wood. That’s why the norm for houses all over Sweden even now is a red brick-colored wooden house with white trim and a reddish-orange tile roof). Once there had been a farm village on the site, but the government had decreed that villages had to break apart because there were too many fires when the houses were close together. So farm houses were built fields apart. These were then used for many years by employees of the local iron mill. When the mill closed, the buildings were turned over to a local preservation group. Mats and Helena had walked around the grounds of this museum several times. This time, as we looked in the windows of the houses, a lady approached us and asked if we’d like to see the inside of the buildings.

Of course, the answer was yes, so she went into the main building and returned with a bunch of huge, antique keys. The oldest house had belonged to a poor farm family. One was fixed up as a cobbler’s home. Another was newer and the residents had been wealthier. The museum’s collection included lots of donated artifacts – such as the pole with a neck manacle at the end of it that had been used by a resident policeman to control perps. It had a metal circle that could be positioned on a prisoner’s neck to keep him from escaping. There were dishes, pots, beds, and everything else people owned, including musical instruments. Perhaps the most interesting artifact was the nail violin. This was a board with nails in particular patterns. It was held close to the body and played by pressure from a bow against the nails. Never heard of such a thing before.

One house had a series of paintings made by a local artist whose name is still well-known in Sweden. Some of them were illustrations of bible stories, but others were more about life at the times. Even less wealthy people used wall paintings to decorate their homes. There were decorations in all the buildings. The entire complex was very interesting, and we enjoyed seeing it, but it really reinforced our basic thankfulness at being born at a good time in a good place! The Swedish peasant had a very hard life.

Another house had two beds built into a curtained inside wall for adults and several small window seats on the outside wall. The children slept in those window seats, snug as a bug could be sleeping against an outside wall that had very little insulation.

Before we left the museum, we had coffee and ice cream. Gotta keep up traditions (especially about ice cream). Then we returned home, had dinner and watched another movie. This one was a French movie about World War I. It was called “A Very Long Engagement”. It is a very interesting mix of a war movie, a love story, a mystery, and a historical account of WWI, both funny and sad. Very nice.

Sunday did seem a bit cooler and Mats and Helena offered the possibility of a flea market after Ron brought up the subject. So off we went in search of a few good fleas. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any markets open. In Sweden, flea markets apparently are open on Saturday, but closed on Sunday. But we did find an abandoned iron mill that had been made into an industrial museum. After that visit, we went out for pizza! As a matter of fact, the Swedish pizza made by an Iranian immigrant was very good. Afterwards, we went shopping in the supermarket next door to the pizza parlor, and then returned to the summer house. After dinner, we decided to walk through the national park just across the street.

It was also an abandoned mill site. It consists of a large collection of really beautiful buildings and including the remains of the steel mill, the remains of a flour mill, stables, a mansion and more. Most had been built on the river in the 1800’s. They were rescued from deterioration, repaired and painted white and now are a busy conference center. Very nice, indeed. The only untoward note was the presence of large numbers of mosquitoes and other flying insects. They didn’t bother us, because we had sprayed ourselves with anti-insect spray, but they sure were a nuisance. It’s not at all surprising that there are so many. There are rivers, lakes and other bodies of water everywhere in Sweden. There is no way to avoid standing water.

By the time we had finished our tour of the mill area, it was late. We knew we had to go to bed early, because we needed to leave for the airport at 6:30 A.M. so there was no movie that night. Of course, we didn’t go to bed early because we were talking, but we did try. Our week in Sweden had been even more enjoyable than we had expected, We are going to miss our Swedish friends.

Getting back from Sweden was quite easy. Mats and Helena drove us the long distance to the airport. On the way, Mats had to fill the gas tank on his VW sedan. The pump stopped at 800 Swedish crowns because that is all the credit the pump allowed. That is over $100 in American money and it was not enough to fill his tank! Talk about a thrilling experience.

We had time for coffee before our plane, and went through both security and passport control easily, although Adelle set off the buzzers as usual. That is an unanticipated result of two knee replacements. When we handed the passport to the Swedish official, he remembered us from the flight from England, and he asked how we had enjoyed our week! The plane took off on time and landed at Luton Airport on the dot. Then we walked forever to get to the English passport control officer. English airport designers seem to be excessively fond of long corridors leading only to more long corridors.

We didn’t have too long a wait for the bus that would return us to Oxford, but it was ten minutes late. When the driver made his announcements, he said that the highway situation was worse than usual and he expected to arrive in Oxford about forty minutes late. As it happened, he was only thirty minutes late, but before we figured out where to catch the bus from Oxford to Stonesfield, the correct bus had left the station. We had a cup of coffee and waited for the next one, and arrived back in Stonesfield at about 5 p.m. We had spent an entire day traveling.

We had dinner with Nicky, Fay and Lily, and then talked for a while about what we’d done while we were away, what they’d done in our absence, and what we planned to do in the morning. Nicky took us to task for not mentioning the most outstanding part of our visit to the ruined manor house that we mentioned in Letter 18, and so we are going to describe the dovecote of what was once called Minster Lovell.

We only remembered the name of this place after the later conversation. While sitting in the living room, we looked up information on the ruins – and this time, the name stuck at least for a while! Perhaps that’s because at least one of the owners of the house was described in the booklet as a powerful and well-known “lord”.

The dovecote was the only part of the complex that was not in ruins. We’ve always heard the term “dove cote” but never had any real knowledge of what it is. This one was an enormous stone and brick circular building with nesting spaces—literally holes in the walls-- for probably 1,000 birds on the inside. There was a roof but it didn’t close the space off. The birds could certainly fly out. The size of the whole thing was amazing. We still can’t get our minds around the idea of “keeping” so many birds. We assume that they were raised for food – but for how many people?

Then the conversation turned to the next morning, and Nicky offered to accompany us on a tour of Oxford. We gratefully accepted. Good thing she came with us. We’d never had had time to see all we did if we’d been on our own. Oxford is crowded, confusing and beautiful. We walked past some of the many colleges (which were handsome); saw the Oxford Camera (a circular building open only to students); and the Bodleian Library (probably spelled wrong), which was enormous. The buildings were old and beautiful. We couldn’t help feeling that they added panache to the education. We went into the Cathedral that had been the original Oxford College, now St Mary’s Church. As it got bigger, so many centuries ago, “new” buildings were added and the Cathedral returned to being a place of worship.

This Church played a very important role in the history of modern Protestantism. John Wesley first preached about his conversion in this church after which he became persona non grata here but still managed to found Methodism. John Keble started the Oxford movement here. It moved the Anglican Church closer to Catholicism by preaching the return to the orthodoxy of the “old church” and a renewed authority of the priesthood, both things that had been anathema to the thinkers and doers who had produced the Protestant reformation.

A person would need a week to see everything in Oxford. We only had one day, so we only visited the Natural History Museum and the Pitt-Rivers Anthropology Museum, since they are housed in the same building. We’ll try to describe that experience in the next letter.

Letter 19 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-13T07:31:00.000-04:00

We didn’t get into Vasteras Airport until 9:30 p.m. Swedish time – which is one hour later than English time. We’ve been in Stockholm before, but we had come by ferry. We had never seen the green fields, huge stands of trees and frequent bodies of water from the air. The landscape looked very much like flying into Minneapolis.

We flew in on RyanAir, an airline that provides a new and pretty good definition of “no frills”. The plane had only coach seats and these were leather but did not recline at all. And there was no pocket with an airline magazine on the backside of the seat in front of you. You bought any food or drink you needed. But it was extremely inexpensive—about $250 for the two of us round trip for a two-hour and 10 minute flight. Almost half of that price was tax! And everything was on time—check in, and take off and landing was 5 minutes ahead of schedule.

Our Swedish host, Mats, was there to meet us, and we drove the 10 Swedish miles to his apartment in Stockholm. What’s a “Swedish mile”? A metric mile or ten kilometers, which is really 6.2 miles! That means this remote airport is about 60 miles from the city! Although it was 10 p.m. by the time we started driving, there was still ample daylight for us to see the heavily wooded area that we drove through. This part of Sweden is farther north than England.

Mats and Helena had arranged for us to stay in an “overnight room” owned by their apartment complex for the use of house guests of the tenants. This was part of an apartment that had been turned into a multi-use conference area for the tenants’ use. We’ve never seen a common room like this one. It had a fully equipped kitchen, including matched dishes for at least thirty guests, a full line of glasses of all kinds for a large group, and everything in-between. We had use of these other rooms as well. Our bedroom had a lock on it, which came in handy when we left for the day. After arranging to meet Mats at his apartment in the morning, we opened the dinner we had bought in Marks & Spencer in the Luton airport before we left England, ate in the kitchen and went to bed. We got up next morning to find that summer had really come to Sweden. It was very hot all the time that we were there—in the nineties.

Mats and Helena live in a suburb of Stockholm, about a 30 minute subway ride into the city center. Their apartment has a balcony and overlooks a lake that is open to the Baltic Sea. The view from the balcony where we sat after dinner is very pretty and also interesting due to the boats traffic, both recreational and commercial, that is almost constantly passing by. The evenings were cool and very pleasant. We would sit there talking until 10 or 10:30-- and it never got very dark. Then we would take the short walk back to our room at the other end of the apartment complex.

On Tuesday and part of Wednesday, Helena had to go to work, so Mats was our tour guide. On Tuesday morning we set off with Mats to catch a ferry that would take us to Birka – a Viking settlement on an island not far from Stockholm that once had been a thriving trading community but had been abandoned a very long time ago. Our fare included an English speaking guided tour, the museum and anything else that the park offered. The guided tour began at 1:15, and it lasted for about an hour. It started out to be all up hill – but of course, the way back was much easier – all downhill. The guide explained about Viking burials, walked us up a steep hill to several mounds that are really burial mounds on the hillsides, talked about the known history, pre-Christian and Christian. There was also a Viking village on the site, with costumed interpreters making (and selling) Viking goods.

Although we had already heard many of the things that the guide talked about (such as Viking burial practices where the deceased and his goods, including even a ship were cremated), there was a lot that was new to us. One of the most interesting of the things that we learned was that only a very small percentage of the Nordic people could be called Vikings. Ron remembers a 2 or 3% figure. Vikings were really only the warrior class – but they sure made their presence felt. Most of the people in Scandinavia were just like anyone else – farmers, carpenters, artisans, etc.

Much of what is known about the society that the Vikings created in Birka comes from the written descriptions of an Arab traveler. He was clear that they were barbarians, citing such practices as their morning ablutions. The chief got the bowl of water for cleaning faces first – and he cleaned his face, spit in the water, sneezed in it and passed it on to the next man who did exactly the same thing. The last Viking in the row didn’t exactly get a clean bowl of water! We also learned about their slow conversion to Christianity and were able to view a large number of really beautiful artifacts that have been uncovered.

On Wednesday, we took the subway into Stockholm so we could walk around Gamla Stan – the old city on an island. First stop was the basement of the palace where there is a museum about the kings of Sweden. We learned a lot about them, and about the wars that Sweden participated in. Then we walked to a square that we remembered from our last trip. We were just in time to see the equivalent of the changing of the palace guard. It was a hoot. Music was provided by a terrific military band. The uniforms of the soldiers were antiques, and the marching in double time and goose stepping was fun to watch. Then, lunch time.

Before beginning our long walk along the waterfront into the modern city, we had what would become our daily ice cream break. A little after three, we met Helena as she left work to begin a four week vacation. Next stop was a museum that had been willed to the city by the wealthiest woman in Sweden in the 1930’s. She gave the city the enormous building and all her collections which included porcelain, weapons of all kinds, paintings, a Steinway piano with a specially built box with gold trim, remarkable marquetry on walls (one beautiful composition in one corner of a room consisted of over 40 different woods) and furniture, painted ceilings and walls, etc. It was a palace without a queen! After a cup of coffee to revive ourselves, the four of us went “home” by subway.

Next morning we were off to the king’s “other” palace, Drottningholm (as opposed to the one in the center of Stockholm), the grounds of which are open to the public. We did not even attempt to go into the palace (although it is apparently open). We had all we could do. First stop was a theater that had been built by the king in the late 1700’s. That particular king was really stage struck. Not only did he act (and direct) in this theater, but he organized huge “tournaments” in which members of his court dressed up in costume and played out a rescue-a-damsel-from-a-tower play. There were paintings of such an event in one of the rooms of the theatre, showing large numbers of dressed up courtiers in front of enormous painted scenery.

But that king’s politics was not well liked by members of the nobility. At a masked ball in Stockholm, the king was assassinated. The royal family soon closed up the theatre and it just sat there on the grounds of the palace. As a result, when it was opened in the 20th century, it was a time capsule, a 1760 state-of-the-art theatre, unlike any other. It has never been upgraded, modernized or changed.

They now stage operas and ballets in the theater. As one was in rehearsal, we couldn’t go backstage, but we toured the rest of the rooms, and saw a movie showing how they change the scenery by turning a huge capstan underneath the stage that worked a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. Still works fine! We also toured the rooms in the theater that had been used as bedrooms by various people involved with the theater, from the architect to stars of productions. Wallpaper, decorations, all was more than 250 years old.

The theater wasn’t the only thing on the grounds, of course. They were French gardens (very formal), English gardens (more natural), fountains, a Chinese palace with a pseudo-Turkish guardhouse, thousands of linden trees on paths, and miles of walking trails. By the time we got back to the apartment complex, we were ready to rest before dinner.

On Friday we began the journey to our hosts’ summer home. Our first stop was the largest private palace in Sweden. We didn’t tour the inside, but we did spend quite a while on the first floor where there were very interesting displays of things that the first owners had collected. Most interesting to us were the maps and information about the Swedish Colony in the New World (around Delaware Bay), but there were maps, globes, navigational tools, antique books and more. Then Ron and Mats went to view a collection of antique cars – while Adelle and Helena sat and talked in the shade of the trees.

There was one more stop before the summer home, the Swedish city of Uppsala. After visiting the Cathedral, we stopped for our daily ice cream tasting. The Cathedral had begun life as a Catholic institution, but had been turned into a Protestant Cathedral when Sweden changed its religion. Although there are many ancient tombs in the Cathedral, more modern people were honored, like Dag Hammerskold.
It was quite beautiful but different from any cathedral we’d seen. No damage done by religious extremists and considerably less decoration than others.

Letter 18 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-09T11:52:00.000-04:00

Our hosts had a busy weekend planned for us. We got to Stonesfield on Friday afternoon. We had a few hours before dinner, so we got a tour of the village and a look at the scarecrows that had been made by people in the village for a scarecrow contest to be judged the next day. We went with Nicky to see her “allotment” – parcels of land that people in the village were given to grow vegetables. Luckily, Adelle even was able to get a hair cut at a beauty salon in the village. Then, after dinner, we were off to the first planned event – a musical evening at the church. Anna, the Holland’s youngest daughter was going to be playing a cello solo.

We enjoyed the concert. The fact that such a small community (600 houses) was able to provide so much talent was a little surprising. Some of the performers, however, did come from nearby communities.

Saturday was very busy and very hot. We were scheduled to attend the village fete from one p.m. to half past three, and then we needed to hurry home to watch the England-Portugal soccer game of the World Cup Series with Lily, Faye and Anna, all of whom are rabid fans.

The fete was similar to a school carnival – except that different charities and local organizations ran the booths. There were all kinds of games, a barbecue tent, homemade goodies and a booth serving a cream tea. Nicky had volunteered to be part of a booth running a game where there were lots of prizes. At 30 pence per throw, they raised about 58 pounds for a charity which pays to educate orphans in Africa (Cecily’s Fund). Both Lily and Faye helped at the booth part of the time.

We had no “jobs” to do, so we just wandered around with Harry and Anna, ate ourselves silly, watched everyone having a good time at the various booths and talked to people. We were really pleased to have struck up a conversation with a couple from Hertfordshire (pronounced Hartfordshire). We had wondered if Hartford, Connecticut, where Ron was born, had a connection to Merry Old England. Now we knew.

The local fire brigade was at the fete so that the children could sit on the fire engine. About an hour before the fete was slated to end, the firemen put on protective suits (which must have been very hot indeed). Then they took out the firehoses and turned them on. With much joy and much screaming and shouting, the kids ran in and out of the showers the hoses made. Then the tugs-of-war began on the wet lawn. Again, much excitement. Everyone seemed to have had a good time. The last “event” of the day was the announcement of which scarecrow had won the contest, and the names of those who had won the various lottery prizes.

By 3:30 we had walked home and were arrayed before the TV set to watch England lose to Portugal in an overtime match that ended up being decided on what amounts to “free throws”. There were a lot of very disappointed young people in that house and all over England.

On Sunday we had planned to spend the day exploring Oxford. We decided not to leave the house after realizing that the temperature was going to be in the 90’s all day. Too hot to be a tourist. Instead, we spent a quiet day at home, only leaving in the evening to drive through some lovely off-the-beaten-path villages in the area, and visit the ruins of a 14th century manor house. We had a drink in a pub overlooking the entire valley and then brought in Chinese food for a very late dinner.

On Monday, we got ourselves ready to use public transit to get to the airport in Luton which is north of London. We had tickets on a 6:40 p.m. flight on RyanAir to Stockholm. Since the areas around the airport are subject to long traffic jams, we planned to get there early. We left Stonesfield at 10:40 a.m. on the bus to Oxford. We had ten minutes to catch a bus (to the airport), and a chance to get the next bus in an hour. After that, the service became less frequent, and we might not have made it to the airport on time. So, of course, we made the first bus and got to the airport at lunch time for a 6:40 p.m. flight! No problem. We had lunch, read our books, etc. and at 4:40 p.m. when RyanAir opened its windows for that flight, we were in line. Then we had to go through the departure process. At 6 o’clock, we were in line for the flight.

Letter 17 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-06T04:21:00.000-04:00

Before we bring ourselves up to date, we each have a favorite road sign that we’d like to share. Ron’s favorite is “Road Repair. Cats eyes removed”. Adelle’s is “Heavy Plant Crossing”. She can’t help wondering what kind of a plant is so heavy!

On Tuesday we drove the first leg of our journey from Lincoln, and stopped at a campground near Boston. By the time we got there it was afternoon, and we decided to wait until the morning to visit the city. So next morning we were standing outside the reception area, waiting for the bus. A permanent resident of one of the mobile homes in another part of the campground was talking to us when a car pulled up to offer her a ride. Then the lady who was driving asked if we’d like a ride as well. We thanked her and got into the car. That was an unexpected bonus.

She left us in central Boston, whose church, St Botolph’s (not a cathedral), is known as The Stump! Why? We asked lots of people and got a shrug for an answer. We went because we were told that many of the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Colony in the New World came from this Boston. In fact, John Cotton, who was the first governor of the Massachusetts colony, had been the preacher at St. Botolph’s Church for some years before coming to America. The church’s distinguishing feature is a very tall bell tower that can be seen for miles around. It also is a lovely church – and very ornate. In fact, the pulpit from which John Cotton preached (apparently for four hours at a time!) was very prettily carved and gilded. What a difference between that church and the plain style of New England churches!

On a wall in the church are the family shields of many American families under a sign saying that the families listed had helped the church with some repairs in the 19th century. Many of the names listed would be very familiar to most Americans and indeed include distinguished families who played very important roles in American history – Cotton, Lowell, Adams, Quincy, Warren, Eliot and Sears, among others. As we walked around we found references to the Founding Fathers! We were told that some of these men returned to England to fight with the army of Parliament in the English civil war. Never heard that before!

Another American-related tourist site in Boston was the prison in which the American Pilgrims were held before they left first for Leyden in Holland and then for America aboard the Mayflower. We didn’t get to see it because the city government is fixing it up, but we understand that most of the leaders were there because, as Puritans, they were not Church of England friendly.

The Stump owns quite an extensive library of old books and they had some books in cases against the wall. One of them was a copy of “The Canterbury Tales” published in 1598.

After walking through the old part of the city, reading our e-mail at the library, and checking out the shops, we were tired. We decided to have a cup of coffee in the church shop. It was the most beautiful part of the city. We enjoyed our day in Boston, so far from home.

We left Boston the next morning to drive to Peterborough. There is a cathedral there, of course, and it is known as one of the most beautiful Norman cathedrals in England. We couldn’t leave without seeing that, could we? As advertised, it was beautiful, with huge round pilings and rounded arches. Among its other “sights” was the tomb of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon to whom he had been married for 20 years. You may remember that the brouhaha over his trying to get a divorce from her is what set in motion England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. When she died he couldn’t ignore her death, and he certainly didn’t want to bring her to Westminster for burial, but he figured out a face-saving move. He ordered that “the Princess Dowager, widow of Prince Arthur” (Henry’s older brother to whom she had been married first) should be buried at the cathedral at Peterborough.

Only a short distance away is another cathedral that was on our list. Ely is in The Fens – an area of absolutely flat land that is almost all farmed, with very few real villages to be seen. We looked around and decided we didn’t want to see the inside of the cathedral, but we would go see the house where Oliver Cromwell and his family lived in the 1640’s. On our way, we found a sign for the Thursday morning coffee at St. Mary’s Church, which was right next to Cromwell’s house. It advertised a very inexpensive cup of coffee, so we stopped there. Ron asked the lady who served us a few questions about the cathedral, and she said, I’ll get someone who really knows to talk to you. Another volunteer was also a guide at the Cathedral, and she told us enough about it to change our minds. We’d go first to Cromwell’s house and then to the Cathedral.

We didn’t go into the museum part of the house, but were interested in seeing the rear window of the “cottage” (it was pretty big for a cottage). Ron has been reading a history of England. One of the things he discovered was the fact that before Cromwell went to war with Charles I, he had been Collector of Tithes for St. Mary’s Parish Church, a post he inherited from his uncle. Apparently he collected these donations by leaning out of the window of his house.

We paid the entrance fee for the Cathedral, and were delighted that we’d decided to go in. Ely is a highly decorated Gothic building, as beautiful as any other cathedral, but it suffered less damage to the building than many other churches. The damage had been done in two parts. Henry VIII’s campaign against the monasteries had damaged many churches, especially those that were associated with monasteries. The lady who told us about the Cathedral said that there were only seven monks lefts in the monastery in 1540, and all seven decided to become Church of England officials. The Bishop of the time was also ready to convert and was apparently friendly with the officials in charge of destruction. Under those conditions, they destroyed only statues and decorations, and left the building intact. Damage to Ely by Cromwell’s army was also minimal. The volunteer who told us about the church said that the bulk of the Parliament Army was largely from the area near Ely, and no one wanted to deface the church and then have to face his grandmothers. As a result, these two incidents did not really hurt the church, though there are still a lot of headless statues.

When we left the town of Ely in the early afternoon, we began our lon-n-n-g journey to Stonesfield, near Oxford. (We are getting very lazy about driving.) It would have taken us only about three hours, but Adelle made a slight miscalculation as we were ready to switch to the last local road to take us to a lovely campground on the grounds of Blenheim Palace near Woodstock, causing us to take twenty minutes more. Up till then she had been all excited about not having directed us to “the scenic route” for a while!

In the morning before we left the campground, we walked through the town of Bladon to see the burial ground of the local church – where Winston Churchill and much of the rest of his family are buried. Then we walked back to the campground, had our lunch and were off to drive the five miles to Stonesfield where Harry and Nicky and their three daughters expected us for the weekend.

Just so you’ll know, we may have to make a list of oddities in the shops we’ve seen. On our first trip we noticed a store in Holland that sold only umbrellas. That struck us as a bit odd. Since we’ve been in England, we’ve noticed another phenomenon. There are always five or more charity thrift shops in the downtown shopping area in every medium size city. Ron has even been dragged into more than a few!

Letter 16 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-01T03:48:00.000-04:00

We found the campground in Lincoln with no trouble, and pulled into a place. It was Saturday, and the facility was packed, but there were a couple of spaces left. This is a city park but it has more than adequate facilities and will be very convenient for seeing the city.

On Sunday we opted to go to what turned out to be the largest flea market either of us had ever seen. We got there at 9 a.m. and left at 2:30 p.m. but hadn’t quite finished touring all the aisles. Of course we bought things. There were farmers with freshly dug potatoes (which are supposed to be better than what we normally get), cauliflower, sweet potatoes, carrots, and beans. Many of the vendors had books – and we picked up a number of booklets about various places in Britain. One farmer had delicious cherries for one pound a kilo ($1.85 for 2.2 pounds). Ron told her that was the only genuine bargain in Europe. But he tells that to many vendors.

The butcher stalls, operating our to refrigerated trucks, followed the old custom of hawking their goods. One of the men in each truck wore a microphone and kept shouting about what he had for sale. We came home with an assortment of things.

For those of you who may want to look at a map, here’s a description of our travels in England. We don’t have the ability to present a map of our route now, although we will post one when we get home. In the meantime, it may be helpful to describe our route. We started at Dover, on England’s east coast at about the same latitude as London. From there we traveled west toward London, first to Maidenhead and then southwest to Chartwell, and then north to London. When we left London we traveled southwest to Hampton Court at Kingston-upon-Thames. Then we continued further southwestward to Winchester and then northwest to Salisbury. We continued further northwest to the village of Crowcombe, Somerset, which is very near to the Bristol Channel, and southwest of Bath and Bristol. By the time we reached Crowcombe, we were close to England’s west coast. When we left Crowcombe we headed north to Gloucester and Tewksbury. As you know, we used the bus to get to Gloucester and back. When we left Tewksbury, we headed west to a small town called Ledbury, then further west to a campground near Hereford. After visiting Hereford by bus, we drove to a tiny village, Pembridge, northwest of Hereford. From Pembridge we visited other nearby towns: Weobly, Leominster, and Ludlow, all by RV. We left Pembridge intending to head straight east to Worcester to see its cathedral.

Of course, in the end we didn’t stay in Worcester. Instead we kept going east and then north to Lincoln. This city is just northwest of a bay called “The Wash” which is all the way over on England’s east coast. This leg of our trip in England was as long as the trip from Salisbury to Crowcombe – 3 ½ hours for our slow chariot. All the other hops were about an hour each. That is one of the great things about driving here. You generally do not spend much time getting from place to place. The short distances also keep costs down and these otherwise would be quite substantial. Gasoline costs are in the neighborhood of 50 cents a mile. We would not be here if England were as large as the U.S.

Speaking of gasoline, i.e., petrol, we have been paying between 93 pence per liter and 97 pence per liter. Converting the pence to dollars and the liters to U.S. gallons, these prices are the same as between $6.40 per gallon and $6.82 per gallon. While we are on the subject of prices, an average sandwich of 3.50 pounds is $6.37 and an average cup of coffee of 1.20 pounds is $2.18. And campground fees that have averaged about 13 pounds are equal to about $24.00. We are talking prices in small towns, not London where prices generally are higher. Except for the price of gasoline, these prices are a tad high, but not extraordinary. However, they seem to us to be decidedly higher than prices for the same things were in France. Why? Don’t know.

We stayed three nights in the Lincoln campground. After the flea market, we were, as they say in England, “knackered” and we just relaxed the rest of the day. On Monday, we took the bus to the center city and walked from the bus station, through the High Street and up an aptly named “Steep Hill”. There was an electric bus that runs up that hill, but we had time before we had to meet friends from Consett (150 miles away) in front of the Cathedral. Steep Hill is also part of the most interesting section of Lincoln, and if you do take the bus, you’ll miss most of it. What we found most interesting were two houses, built in 1190, and purchased in the next century by a Jewish merchant. He didn’t own them long. In 1290 King Edward I expelled the Jews. Nevertheless, it is still known as “The Jew’s House”.

We met Coral, Tom and their daughter Arwen in front of Lincoln Cathedral. As we waited, we sat on a convenient bench and opened a little booklet about the Cathedral that we had bought the previous day at the flea market. We’d both read it after we bought it , but it didn’t make a lot of sense until we were actually looking at that beautiful building. The Cathedral was built over many years, but the predominant style is “Decorated”. And is it ever! It is also huge – the third largest in England. Lincoln Cathedral is also where parts of the movie “The DaVinci Code” was made, so if you see the movie, you’ll see the cathedral.

Across the street is a row of beautiful Georgian houses built to accommodate the staff (and still used that way). They are known as the Numbered Houses because they were the first in England to be given house numbers in the 18th century! Before then, houses had names but no numbers.

When we finished touring the Cathedral, the Cloister and the Chapter House (a circular building where the monks sat along the walls to discuss the Cathedral’s business), we walked part of the way to their car with our friends. After we said our good-byes, we continued walking until we found the New Port Arch – which “was old when William the Conqueror walked under it” as our booklet said. We also looked at the remains of the Roman wall, and the Roman stones in the street. By this time it was time to walk down that terrible hill, but we admit that it did seem a lot shorter going down!

After Lincoln, we had only four days before we were scheduled to visit another friend in a village near Oxford. We made a list of places between Lincoln and Stonesfield – Boston, Peterborough, Ely, and Stamford were on the short list. In the end, we decided to take a look at Peterborough’s Norman Cathedral and the Gothic cathedral at Ely (pronounced as if it were spelled ee lee). We skipped the market town of Stamford, which is apparently so lovely that it has been used as background in many a filmed production.

We can’t see everything. We may have to leave some things for the next time.

Letter 15 from Europe RV trip

2006-07-01T03:26:00.000-04:00

Remember the mantra that Henry Higgins forced on Eliza Doolittle: In Hampton, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen? Well, we’ve been to all three. Hampton Court Palace, Hereford and several towns in Hampshire. We can vouch for Henry. No hurricanes here. The weather has been outstanding. There’s been intermittent sun, just a few sprinkles, and the temperature has been between 60 and 65 Fahrenheit.

The morning after we arrived in the campground near Hereford we set off by bus to visit that city. None of the “cities” that we’ve been visiting are very big. They are called cities only because they have a cathedral in them. Most of them were cities when the cathedrals were first built – in the 12th or 13th century. All of them have very old areas, with 600 or 700-year-old buildings that are still in use as residences and as businesses.

There is still a cattle market in Hereford (they don’t call those beef cattle Herefords for nothing), but it is now used as an open-air market. There is also a cathedral and several government buildings from long ago. Both of us are very interested in architecture and history – and cathedrals combine both. It may sound as if we are on a religious pilgrimage, but we are really on a historical hunt. There are all kinds of shops in all these towns, but we aren’t really interested in shopping (although Ron has never seen a supermarket that he didn’t want to visit). We like to walk the streets, see the really old buildings and listen to the voices around us.

Back to Hereford. This is a very old cathedral, built by the Normans back in the 11th and 12th centuries, using huge circular columns. Perhaps the most pleasing part was the so-called Lady Chapel, which has beautiful stained glass windows, but it was all interesting. There were the usual groups of school children. One group was middle school age, and they were all dressed in medieval costumes and were being instructed in how to conduct a medieval pilgrimage. As the lady next to me said, school was never like this before.

We decided not to view the Mappa Mundi (the very first map of the world) which is owned by the cathedral. We looked at the tomb of a knight whose name was Pembridge (which turned out to be the name of the next town we saw) and who fought in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. This was very interesting to both of us because Poitiers and Crecy, both in France were places where battles occurred that permanently changed the way wars were fought. In both places, English long-bow archers decimated the French chivalric knights who fought in armor on horseback with lances, swords and axes. These battles marked the end of that sort of fighting.

We were ready to leave, when Adelle asked the Verger about the dispute during the English Civil War about altars made of stone. Why should the Puritans demand that they be taken away and replaced by altars made of wood, preferably a wooden table. The Verger stopped a volunteer guide, and asked that the guide tell us about it. He never did really explain why the Parliamentary Army and Cromwell got so incensed about an altar of stone. However, he did explain a lot of other things about the cathedral to us, pointing out the pagan images that are sculpted in stone in various places. And showing us the 26,000 stone flowers that were used to decorate the arches as well as the bell tower. These were quite expensive, since it took a mason one full day to make three! The cathedral had to negotiate a loan from the Vatican sometime in the 15th century just to pay for them!

As we go through these buildings, we consistently see the names of the men whose exploits are described in the histories we are reading. Sometimes they paid for parts of the cathedrals, or donated something to them, and sometimes they are buried there. In any case, it adds interest both to the building and to the history book.

As we walked through the town, we noticed a Market Hall in a beautiful old building. Of course we walked through. That is the first time we saw a cheese called “Smelly Bishop”. It boasts that it is washed in perry. We didn’t buy it – but it made an impression. Afterwards, we mused about what all that means. It wasn’t until days later that we learned from a woman washing dishes next to Ron that a smelly bishop is type of pear, as well as a type of cheese, and that the cheese is washed in a cider made of pears (hence perry).

We wanted to get back to the RV early, so we could leave to drive to Leominster (pronounced Lemster with an “e” like lemon). We drove through the city but we didn’t tour. The campground we had picked out was supposed to be only six miles from town. This is a little longer than we like, but we decided to try it. The campground in the town of Pembridge turned out to be a beautiful, modern facility but we were concerned about bus service. In England, service from rural areas into the towns is quite expensive and not “brilliant” as the lady in the campground said. She suggested that we take the RV into town and use the car park, which she assured us had no barrier keeping out motorhomes.

So that’s what we did. We got up early and drove into the village of Pembridge (remember the tomb of the knight?). It is a small place but notable for the large number of half-timbered buildings referred to as black and whites built between the 1300’s and the 1500’s and still in use. It also has a 13th century church with an even earlier bell tower. Not a cathedral, but just as interesting both architecturally and historically. After walking around for about an hour, we were ready to move on to another black and white village, Weobly (pronounced Webley). While it is a bigger village than Pembridge, it is not very large. It also has a very old and beautiful parish church, which we visited. Then we stopped to buy a few groceries, and we drove off. We were going to take our chances with parking in Ludlow, which is in nearby Shropshire.

Ludlow is a small city, and has a large assortment of black-and-whites. The best by far was The Feathers, which was built in the 16th century and first turned into an inn in the 17th century. We walked into the lobby, and a young lady asked if she could help us. When Ron told her that we just would like to see the inside, she suggested we go upstairs to the James I room, and the Charles II writing room. These are the oldest rooms in the Inn. Both were full of beautiful carved furniture of the period. There is a large beam going across the James I room that exhibits a decided downward sag, and a King James I crest in plaster in the ceiling. At first, we got a big charge out of the fact that we were in one of the very tilted gables that we had seen from the outside. It didn’t feel tilted! Then we realized that the tilted gable was the third floor! Incidentally, we were told with pride by a lady we met on the street that the Prince of Wales stays in this hotel in a suite named after him whenever he is in town.

The first thing we did in Ludlow was ask at the library if we could use the computer. A very nice librarian told us that they had no objection to nomads like us! After we read our e-mail, we walked around the downtown area of Ludlow, saw Ludlow Castle (started by William the Conquerer) and went to the supermarket. By then, we were really tired. Three places in one day is quite a lot. We had tea and then drove back to the campground. But there’s more to the story than that.

As anyone who is reading this knows, we’ve been having a terrible time with the internet service in England. Fortunately, we can often read our mail and post letters to the blog even if we can’t post our pictures. To make it all worse, we’ve been in quite a few places that didn’t have public telephones. British Telecom maintains the most phone booths of any country in Europe, but there are still places without the ubiquitous red phone booth. Adding to our confusion, Adelle had misplaced our communications bible. She had a little address book that has everything in it, but it has disappeared. Fortunately, before we left home, she had copied all the addresses into a new book – but of course she missed some, and made a few errors. When it came to calling people, we had a problem.

We had received an e-mail message on Wednesday in the Ledbury Library where we had been reading our e-mail. It said that we needed to be available for a radio interview from the U.S. on Friday evening. We weren’t sure that the campground phone would take incoming calls, so there was a big flurry about that vs. the cell phone. Fortunately, the telephone at the campground would take incoming calls, so we were able to make arrangements to be called at that number. All of this added a fillip of tension to the last two days. But we are glad to report that we finally figured everything out and the interview went without a hitch. Of course, we had to eat dinner at 9 p.m., but that was no problem.

Our next stop was to be Worcester (as in Worcestershire Sauce). We drove into town but found it very difficult to park because all the lots had height barriers. Rather than fight the terrible traffic, we decided to go on to Lincoln, which will be the furthest point of our journey this time. That 125 miles or so that we drove was by far the longest trip we’ve made. It was considerably easier driving than some of the short hops we’ve taken. Single lane roads with lots of curves are more difficult than straight motorways where faster traffic can pass in the other lanes. Anyway, we can always go back to Worcester on our way south.

Letter 14 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-23T09:10:00.000-04:00

We were leaving the Salisbury area on Friday, but we didn’t need to leave early. We spent the morning on our computers, and then left for Crowcombe, a village of 200 houses in Somerset. We have friends there and had made plans to stay with them for the weekend. Again, we had no problem finding our way. The signs left no leeway for mistakes! We pulled into the driveway of Peter and Valori’s home before four o’clock and didn’t leave until Monday afternoon.

On our way through England, we again enjoyed the names of some of the villages we either passed on the road, or saw on the map as we plotted our course. Tooting was quite near London, as was Twickenham. In other places we found Ockham, Burpham, Mousekill, Itchen Stoke, Wrecclesham, Abbots Worthy and Over Wallop, Nether Wallop and Middle Wallop.

On Saturday, Peter drove us into the lovely town of Wells. We visited the Cathedral (of course) and also a row of 14th century houses called the Vicar’s Close. These were built to house the choir of the Cathedral and have been occupied ever since. We walked through the town and were absolutely astonished at how many people were on the street. But we soon realized that it was not only a Saturday in a rural area where many people spend their Saturday on The High Street in the nearest town – but a day where young families could come to a carnival, a book sale, a street market and probably more.

Welles Cathedral is a 13th century building that has an unusual “scissor arch” which is often mistaken for a modern addition. In reality, it is a 14th century solution to the sinking foundations of the tower. Off to the side of the nave is an old and very unusual clock. It shows the month, the day, the hour and the minute on the four faces of the clock, with the month face being the largest. At the hour, jousting knights ride round and round and a seated man above the clock face rings the bell with his hammer. There are sculptured figures everywhere inside and outside the cathedral, although some of them have lost their noses and their feet to the “Roundhead” army of Cromwell. In fact, there are many spots in easily accessible places where you see a base that must once have held a statue. Those were obviously toppled by the Puritan troops, but most of the medieval sculpture was too high for them to reach. A huge, heavily worn stone staircase leads to the Chapter House – a circular tower where the business of the cathedral was conducted. We enjoyed our visit, and considered remaining to hear the Norwegian Men’s Choir that was scheduled to give a concert at 1:00, but hunger won out. We went out for lunch instead.

The Cathedral was the only sightseeing event of our weekend. The rest of our visit consisted of social visits, lots of laughter, or eating and drinking tea and coffee. We toured Valori’s huge and beautiful garden, talked ourselves silly, and generally had a wonderful time. To tell the truth, that was the only “campground” we really regretted having to leave! To complete the experience, we found that Peter’s new computer allowed us to send out our pictures and in return, we helped Peter and Valori with a little bit of computer tutoring.

On Sunday evening, Peter was part of the choir in a beautiful, little local church. Ron stayed home to work on the computer, and Valori stayed home to make dinner, but Adelle decided to go to the service. Having read all those novels about England where someone always go to church, she decided it was time to see the real thing. It was a good thing too, since there were only four or five people in the church, including her.

Monday morning we worked on the computer training a bit and then we left for Gloucester to see yet another beautiful cathedral. We started off after lunch – and made only one stop – at a supermarket in the city of Taunton, on our way out. We were driving along the Motorway (M5) when traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl. We spent an entire hour in a terrible traffic jam – apparently caused by the juxtaposition of a number of problems within an arm’s length of each other. All three lanes of traffic were very heavy, and just when an additional two lanes entered on the left, road repairs cut off the right lane. And that is where a caravan (trailer) was overturned. We were lucky it was only an hour.

We followed the directions to the campground we had picked out in Gloucester and found nothing. So, we changed our minds and drove on – to a city called Tewkesbury, where the campground is right next to the ruins of the Abbey. When we woke up the next morning, it was great to see the Abbey against the sky.

Tewkesbury is a particularly nice campground because the old town is a very short walk away. In the morning we set out to explore the so-called black-and-white village. The black-and-white refers to the large number of 16th and 17th century half-timbered buildings left in town. It’s a small area – just three main streets and by the end of the first morning, we’d seen it all. So we walked back to the RV, ate our lunch and set out to catch the bus to Gloucester at 1:23. That allowed us to visit Gloucester Cathedral and walk the area around the city center. We even had time for a cup of coffee in a pub that we heard about from a fellow camper. Usually a cup of coffee or tea is one pound 35 pence or more. In the chain of J. Wetherspoon Pubs, it is only 69 pence. That sounds really cheap, until you remember that really costs about $1.35. It was good, and reasonable, and kept us awake through the afternoon.

In the morning we got up and went to the open-air market, where there were some genuine bargains. We bought far too much fruits and vegetables for either the space available or the appetites available, but we enjoyed the market and will continue to do so for many days in the future.

We left the campground at about 10:30 and set off to see the town of Ledbury – another black and white village. We found a parking place for the RV just off the main street, and walked around. The library allowed us to check our e-mail. A lovely old tea shop on an ancient street offered a “Cream Tea” – that is, a pot of tea with a scone, clotted cream and jam – for only three pounds – and it was as good as that treat gets! Then we were off again – to see what the city of Hereford is like.

Our new map book has a great feature. It shows some campgrounds on the map. We decided we’d try to find our next night’s “lodging” by following the map. The first campsite shown was at the horse racing track and it was closed until the next race in September. But the second site shown was open and had good public transit to Hereford. By four in the afternoon, we were parked and ready to take out our computers.

Letter 13 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-23T09:06:00.000-04:00

Again, it turned out to be easy to get to Winchester. English roads have very good signs, and always give you the opportunity to figure out where you are going in advance of your having to make the turn. We found the city and the campground with no trouble.

The contrast in price between the campground fees in London and Winchester was striking. Because it was mid-week, Hillside in Winchester only charged us nine pounds a night. That translates to about $16 instead of $28. Both are run by the same organization – The Caravan Club of England – and both have up-to-date facilities. London is really expensive.

Winchester has a lovely cathedral and a center that is full of old buildings from various centuries. We drove the RV to a near-by Park & Ride, and took a bus into the inner city. Park and Rides are a real bargain, especially in expensive England. For 2 Pounds, about $3.70, we parked the RV for the whole day and rode the bus into Winchester and back—the two of us.

We had a brochure that laid out several walks. We decided on one that took us through the old city, past the mayor’s house where we saw a trout swimming in the stream right in front of it, and many really old buildings, the remains of the Roman wall, and the medieval wall along the river. The walk was about a mile long. We passed Winchester College, founded in the 1300’s, the house in which Jane Austen died, and the ruins of the castle at Winchester, which had been dismantled in the 14th century by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester. He was the brother of King Stephen who was waging war with another heir of William the Conqueror, his cousin the Empress Maude. All fans of Brother Caedfael (by Ellis Peters) will recognize these dramatis personnae at once. We walked around the ruins and even took a picture of the ruins of the room where the last “big” event took place in that palace – the meeting of the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor and Prince Philip of Spain and their wedding breakfast!

We did not go into the cathedral, although Jane Austen is among those buried there. Instead, we decided
to walk around the city. When it came time to have lunch out, we picked a coffee shop on the second floor of a homegoods shop. It wasn’t so much the price of the lunch that incensed Ron – it was what they served. He asked for a toasted ham sandwich and he paid quite handsomely for it. There was only one thin slice of ham in the middle of two thick slices of white bread – and the ham was tasteless and salty. Adelle had opted for a Cornish pasty – which turned out to be much tastier.

After lunch we continued our walk on the High Street. In England, many towns have a High Street where all the shops are. Why High St. rather than Main St.? Why is it always The High Street? Who knows? We passed a street seller of flowers who had a lovely bunch of flowers for only two pounds. After we bought them, we asked her if she would keep them for us. She said she would do so until 3:30.

We went on to the little town museum, which we walked through in a short time. This museum had a great but small collection of artifacts dating from England’s stone age through recent times, including some prime examples of decorated bronze and iron-age pottery. Then we consulted the list the Tourist Office had given us, and looked for internet places. The first had only one machine and it was in use. The second had only one machine, but it was free. It wasn’t possible to post our pictures, however, so we checked our mail and moved on. By then it was 3:15, so Ron went on ahead to pick up the flowers. He got to the place where the stand had been, and it was gone. But in the corner of the arcade he found our flowers, in a tub with a little water. We could hardly believe that no one had simply taken the flowers before we got there. We gratefully took our flowers, and caught the bus back to the Park & Ride.

In the morning, we discussed driving to Chawton, where Jane Austen had lived for much of her life. But Adelle decided against it, and we instead drove a short way to Salisbury. Here again the public transit was sparse. There was a bus every two hours. We got into the campground in the morning, and took the next bus into the city. As we got on the bus, Ron asked the driver if this bus would take us into the center of Salisbury (pronounced Sal’s bury). The bus driver seemed very confused and Ron repeated his inquiry. Finally, the driver said. “Oh, you mean Saul’s bury” and told us to get in. Sometimes even though you speak the same language, there are considerable differences.

We walked the short distance from the bus station to the Cathedral. As we walked into the Close (the area where a cathedral is located), we both exclaimed at this building. Because it was built in only 50 years or so, there is one design, one plan for the entire building, and it is breathtaking. So beautiful, that we paid the fee to get into the building – which is equally spectacular inside. In addition, Salisbury Cathedral owns one of the original four copies of the Magna Carta, which is on display in the Chapter House. Next to the original is a translation into modern English of the document, and we learned a bit more about it.

Before we even entered the Cathedral, Ron had been taking pictures from as far away as he could get from the building. There’s no other way to get it all in. Therefore, he had been in front the museum across the street. There was a big sign outside quoting Bill Bryson (author of “Notes From a Small Island” and several other very funny books) as saying that this was a terrific museum and he urges us to go there immediately. Since we are big fans of this author, we decided we had to do what he said. And were we ever glad. It was a great museum – much larger than we had thought. It had a large section on the pre-history of the area, another section on an archeologist named Pitt-Rivers, a section on the history of the city, and a gallery which displayed costumes and china among other things. We walked until we were exhausted, had coffee, went through more galleries and then left.

When the 6:20 bus came, we approached the bus driver with the disquieting information that we hadn’t remembered to find out the name of our stop. He didn’t know where the campground was. Luckily, a very young man who was also on the bus happened to know where the campground was, and we were able to return safely. We won’t let ourselves be in that position again!

Letter 12 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-23T08:53:00.000-04:00

Monday morning we planned to leave London. On our way out, we were headed for Kingston-on-the-Thames, where Hampton Court Palace is located. This is the only castle/palace we are planning on visiting this trip. The warden at the campground gave us a map, which we followed. As usual, that sounds easier than it was. We were to follow Route 205 (the South Circle Road) until we got to Route A3.

There really is no South Circle Road in London. There is simply a patching together of a number of different streets into a vaguely circular pattern. We drove through miles of London streets until we finally reached the A3 highway. Although Hampton Court is not very far out of London, it took us from 9:30 to 11 a.m. to get there. We were pleased to find that there is a large grass area used for a free parking lot close to the Palace so we parked and walked to the Palace grounds.

Hampton Court is a Tudor Palace that was used by the monarchy for many years after. It has over 1000 rooms – not all of which are on display. It had belonged to Cardinal Woolsey and there is a small suite of rooms in the palace which were his. Then Henry VIII decided it should belong to the crown, and he brought his new Queen, Anne Boleyn to live there.

We toured the Tudor kitchens, which were extensive since they fed 200-300 people twice a day. Then we just wandered around, looking lost. A group of VIP’s being given a tour passed us. One of the gentlemen connected to the museum stopped, and asked us if we were having a problem. We talked for a few minutes, and he directed us the King Henry’s State Apartments as a starting place, saying that we should ask his “guys” questions about anything that puzzled us.

The first things we were curious about were the beautiful tapestries hung in Henry VIII’s enormous state room. So we asked the young man on duty in that room about them. He knew all about them, and he was delighted to explain them at some length. This knowledge about the palace and eagerness to explain it was a pattern that we found all through the Palace. Later we saw a painting of a woman that Ron thought must be Queen Elizabeth I. When we asked, we got a lot of information from the young man on duty. No one really does know about the exact nature of the painting, but it is of a pregnant lady (as is indicated by her dress), standing next to a stag, and holding a string of pearls. While it cannot be a portrait of the Virgin Queen, the face certainly looks like hers. Ron’s theory is that it was a political statement. The artist was hoping she’d marry and produce an heir!

We toured the Christopher Wren additions to the palace, as well as other rooms used by later royals. Wren’s rooms were similar to Versailles, but they were considerably less ornate. We stopped at the Privy Kitchen, which had been set up to make the food for Queen Elizabeth I and her immediate entourage, who didn’t eat with the great majority of the court. There is a coffee shop there now. Ron had coffee, but Adelle insisted on tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam. It seemed only right.

We looked at the formal gardens from the Palace, but didn’t really walk all around. The idea of 60 acres of gardens was just a bit daunting. We were tired and still needed to drive to Winchester.

Letter 11 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-19T03:53:00.000-04:00

The next day we opted for a tour of churches. We visited Christopher Wren’s St. James Church on Picadilly. We had visited before. It was, of course, still beautiful. Our picnic lunch was eaten sitting on some steps in St. James Park, there being a great dearth of park benches. Then there were more churches to visit. We went to St. Martin in the Fields, and then we decided to visit the furthest one first. That was Southwark Cathedral. (Another Britishism. You pronounce that as if it were spelled Suthuk.) It was beautiful, of course, and was getting ready for a lunchtime concert. There was a high school band getting ready to play. They turned out to be from Georgia! We didn’t stay to listen because we needed to get back to Brixton Library for another internet try.

We’ve noticed that all the churches have auxiliary activities to help them in maintaining these very old buildings. St. James concentrates on New Age activities and helping the poor in London and all over the world. St. Martin in the Fields also has charitable activities, but it also has a big shop and lots of musical activities. Neither of us remembers any such direction at Southwark, except for charitable work in London and across the world.

The bus we had taken to Southwark Cathedral had left us on the “wrong” side of the river – so we walked across London Bridge and were able to see both the tower of London and the Tower Bridge off to our left. Everyone needs to walk across one bridge in London at least once. But by the time we walked across that bridge, and toured the Cathedral, it was getting late enough and hot enough to cancel all interest in the other places we were considering. We searched the map of bus routes until we found a bus that would take us to a place where we could catch “our” bus home.

The next day we decided on the Natural History Museum. One thing that offsets the high costs of visiting London is that the museums are free, and when you go to as many as we do that is a big offset. When the bus left us off, we were in front of the Victoria and Albert Museum – one of our favorite places. We walked a block and found the museum. We’d never really registered that place before though we should have. The building itself is a not-to-be-missed affair. It is a huge, quite extravagantly patterned-brick building with a number of towers and animal and plant sculptures built in. Very beautiful and very impressive!

It was a terrific museum, with excellent dinosaur displays and information as well as the usual assortments of stuffed birds etc. The English were all over the world collecting stuff before most other western Europeans got there, so the British have terrific museums. This was no exception. The dinosaurs were wonderful but so were the stuffed dodos!

There were a lot of amateur British collectors during the period of the Enlightenment, i.e., the 17th and 18th centuries, and they left their huge collections to either the Natural History Museum or the British Museum, which concentrates on archeological collections. The latter was our next day’s journey. We’ve been there before, but you cannot go there too often!

This trip we tried to see what we had not been able to see before. We did visit the section labeled “The Americas” which was about native American cultures, and we found that the British Museum has a collection of very beautiful artifacts, especially totem poles from the Northwest territories and garments from the Plains Indians. What fascinated us, however, was the series of rooms called “The Enlightenment”. There were case after case of collections donated by the aforementioned 17th and 18th century amateur scientists mixed in with crowded bookshelves of their books. They not only collected things but also invented systems to describe and classify the things they collected. Along with the books were shelves of the things they collected--Roman artifacts, Greek vases, Egyptian ware, Mid-Eastern artifacts, Oriental objects and all kinds of pottery, ancient jewelry--and more. Let me tell you that it was impressive.

One evening during our stay we changed our pattern. Usually we get back to the RV at 5 or 6 pm, make and eat dinner, and collapse. Instead, one evening we went to visit some young friends in their new home in London. We got good instructions over the phone, and went by bus towards London. As the bus turned right onto one of the main streets in Brixton, we got off, walked across the street and got a bus going away from London on a different route. A short ride, a short walk and we were there. Al and Laura live in a part of London called Tulse Hill, which is semi-suburban and remarkably quiet. We had dinner and a lovely evening, and we left early so we could get “home” before dark.

We listen to the BBC every day, getting most of our news from them. The “presenters” frequently refer to the current government of the UK as “The Nanny State”, a reference to the long tentacles of control that distinguish the British system. Al told us that he read that any person in England would find himself on closed circuit television (CCTV) hundreds of times a day. There are cameras on highways and streets and you can’t help being on TV. Every bus in London has a sign saying that there are cameras in the bus. It is amazing to Americans, but the English don’t seem to have much of a problem with it. Ron wants to know how come, if this is a “Nanny State”, the government doesn’t do something about the contents of sausages. We bought what purported to be Italian sausage the other day – and found they were more like wheat mixed with a bit of pork with the wrong kind of spices!

On our last day in England we visited the Imperial War Museum. Ron wanted Adelle to see a display of a 1940’s house which he had seen on a previous, solitary visit to the museum. The museum was very interesting, not the least because there were a number of school classes visiting. Their comments to each other made us aware again of how different the world is now.

We didn’t stay very long because we were planning to visit the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall in the afternoon. We got there about 3 p.m. only to find that the Hall was closed that day. It was too early to go “home”, so we decided that we’d go find one of the churches we had missed the other day.

A number 15 bus would take us close to St. Mary-le-Bow Church. If you are born in London and can hear the bells of the Bow ring out, you are called a cockney. The church had been mostly destroyed during WWII, but had been rebuilt using Christopher Wren’s plans. So it is new and old and lovely. It’s other claim to fame is the huge rood (cross) with sculptured figures that hangs from the ceiling.

When we were trying to find the church, we were a little uncertain about where to turn off the main street, so we asked a young man on the street. He said the church was just ahead to the left, but turn at the next block because that’s a nice, old street. And it was. But it was more than that.

We crossed a side street called Watling Street. Not too long ago, we watched a show on TV where the presenter talked about the Roman Road that went northwest from Londinium, ending near the end of the Roman part of Britain. He said that Watling Street is still the basis for many roads leading north.

As we walked along this ancient street, which goes directly to St Paul’s Cathedral, a huge roar came from the sports pub on the street. There had been a goal in the soccer game of the World Cup that was being played in Germany. It wasn’t even a game in which England had a team. Football is a big and important part of life in the UK! The St George Cross flag, a red cross on a white background and the symbol for England, is everywhere. The media are full of soccer, so full that one radio station promotes the fact that it is soccer free, guaranteed, in prime time.

Letter 10 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-19T03:41:00.000-04:00

We were in England, driving on the “wrong” side of the road again. Ron doesn’t have any problem with driving on the left. What does throw him off is driving from a different side of the car. After all, the car has ended at his left elbow ever since he began to drive. It’s hard to get used to a driver’s side on the right side of the car. That’s one of the reasons we love traveling in England in our own vehicle.

We drove to a campground in Maidstone, where we spent the night. In the morning we left for our first tourist stop. That destination was Chartwell, the home south of London that Winston Churchill had purchased in the 1930’s and lived in most of his life.

Several things stand out about our visit to Chartwell. First, there were hundreds of people on the property, and we probably brought the average age down! That’s a bit discouraging, but it was a Wednesday and school isn’t over yet.

On a more historical point, while the Churchills were obviously a lot wealthier than most people, this was not only what is referred to in England as a “stately home”. It was a very large house with beautiful, extensive grounds, but it was also a home that was designed for a family to enjoy eating meals in, or entertaining, or writing, or painting--all things that Churchill did in abundance. It was full of things that belonged to the Churchill family and Lady Churchill had arranged everything in the house as it had been in the 1930’s. Then she turned the building over to the National Trust. It is perched on a hill overlooking one large pond, and a couple of smaller ones, a perfectly even croquet lawn, and several gardens.

Ronald’s favorite sight was a hand written letter from the Prime Minister to General Alexander, Commander of British forces in the Middle East. In quite elegant language, it told the General in two short paragraphs that he was commanded to defeat and remove all traces from North Africa of the Nazi and Italian forces under General Rommel. Underneath his note, was Alexander’s later handwritten reply. It said something like, Sir, your instructions have been carried out!

Adelle’s favorite was the picture of the Churchills in 1916. They were already obviously middle-aged then. The picture underscored the fact that this man didn’t become Prime Minister until he was 65 years old. While we always knew that, somehow this picture made it more real. And of course, the fact that hit her was that he became Prime Minister at such a critical time in history when he was only five years younger than she is now.

We learned a new Britishism while we were parking the RV. A volunteer helped us fit into a small space. He told us about a brand of auto that they have in England called a “Rolles Canardly”. That is: rolls downhill, can‘ardly go up’em! How appropriate for our aged chariot!

When we left Chartwell in the afternoon, we drove directly to London. This is normally a nail-biting procedure that leaves one ready for a drink. This time it was easy! We passed Biggen Hill, a very famous RAF base in WWII, and the town in which Charles Darwin was born. Just before we had too many roads to choose from, a sign announced “Crystal Palace”, and we simply had to follow the signs. Heaven!

Once in the campground, we don’t drive until we leave London. 500 meters from the campground there is a city bus. It takes a long time, but it takes us right into central London—Oxford Circus. On the route, the bus stops at Brixton – which is a very busy, noisy section of town. At least twice, we’ve gotten off the bus in Brixton and spent several hours on different days trying to post our pictures on this site, and found that our efforts are consistently blocked. Why? It is still a mystery. But the lack of pictures is certainly not from a lack of trying.

We stayed in London for six days. Most of those days we saw things that we’ve never seen before – but we have to admit to returning to past sites occasionally.

One excessively hot day, we visited the National Gallery. We’ve been there before, but we couldn’t decide exactly what to do, and Adelle wanted to do something that didn’t require a lot of walking outside! This building is close to Trafalgar Square and doesn’t require either more buses or walking. We were late getting into town, having spent a long time trying to post pictures.

We had to have lunch so we opted for the least expensive thing we saw. Would you believe that was a Burger King? But we have never spent so much money in a fast food joint. The bill was more than 6 pounds. That doesn’t sound too bad, until you remember that the exchange rate these days is $1.85 dollars per pound. For one double hamburg meal and a Whopper, we paid more than $12! In the US that same meal would not have been more than $7.00. After this, we tried to make sure that we took a picnic lunch with us. It tasted better and certainly was less expensive!

In the afternoon, we spent several hours peering at paintings. There are a great many treasures in this museum, including a lot of Impressionist paintings and a number of wonderful paintings whose artists, male and female, were mostly unknown to us.

London seems to us much more expensive than it was when we were here in 2003. And it’s not just the fact that the American dollar is worth so little against the English pound. When we visited in 2003, the fare on the bus for a single ride was one pound. Four years later, it is one pound fifty. That is a 50% increase! The cost of the campground also seems high, 16 Pounds or about $29– but that is probably because we had been paying much less per night in France—12 to 15 Euros in Normandy, or about $15 to $20. But this is London and one should expect to pay more. Paris would have been a lot more expensive than Normandy was.

Letter 9 from RV trip in Europe

2006-06-19T03:02:00.000-04:00

On a car trip in France in the 1980’s, we had stopped and eaten our lunch on the waterfront in Honfleur, a town on the coast below Le Havre and very close to the resort towns of Trouville and Deauville. We were already familiar with Honfleur because we had seen paintings of it. In fact, Ron had taken a picture of the Inner Harbor that still hangs in our Connecticut dining room. Adelle wanted to see this pretty town again.

There was no trouble getting on the highway after leaving the parachute drop, and it was clear. But when we got off the main road and got onto the roads leading to Honfleur, it got a little difficult. Most of the time it was a normal size road, but there were parts of it that were no wider than our Connecticut driveway – and they were up steep hills and were supposed to accommodate traffic going in both directions. High stress levels again, but we got there. The French drivers who found themselves behind us were probably more stressed than we were.

We drove into Honfleur and tried to follow directions for a city campground. This proved to be impossible because there was so much traffic you couldn’t change lanes even if you knew where you were going. Think New York City at rush hour when there is a visiting dignitary whose presence requires the closing of streets. This town was jammed. Talk about stress! As we made wrong decisions about which way to go. Fortunately, a sign appeared indicating a different campground. Of course we followed the signs and shortly thereafter found ourselves out of Honfleur and into a nearby suburb.

When we pulled into the campground, we couldn’t believe the number of cars parked on the perimeter. This place was as jammed as Honfleur! We were afraid that they would have no room for us. But the man at the reception desk said there was plenty of room, so we registered and indeed found ourselves a pitch. By later that afternoon, many of the people we had seen crowding around the pool and other areas were gone. We had arrived on a three-day holiday weekend, and apparently there were a lot of day-trippers.

In the morning we asked about a bus into Honfluer. Yes there was a bus, but this was a big national holiday so service was not good. Why didn’t we just drive in? We pointed out that the motor home was “large”, but the young man at the reception desk said that there were a lot of parking areas. We decided that if we left early, it probably wouldn’t be quite as crowded as yesterday, and off we went.

As we drove in, Ron noticed an area to our left where he could see some motorhomes parked. That seemed a good place to begin. When we made our way there, we found that it was a parking lot specifically designated for motorhomes. It certainly held at least 50 campers, and probably more. Many had paid the fee to remain there for the night -7 Euros. We paid the parking fee for the day -4 Euros- at the parking ticket dispenser, and walked into the city.

As we walked along toward the harbors, we found that there was a very unusual parade beginning. Wasn’t that nice of them to arrange a parade just because we returned? There were the usual bands and marching groups, but there was a very unusual theme. We started to see kids of all ages – one at either end of a pole arrangement that had a beautiful model of a ship on it. We could hardly believe all the models that went by. The children were dressed in all kinds of navy-like outfits. Every once in a while, four men would appear holding up a “boat” with sails outlined in flowers and a toddler inside! It was a great parade. After we started walking around, we found that the models were part of the collection of the Musee Marin and not something built by the parents of the children on parade.

When we got to the harbor, we discovered that on our previous trip, we had only seen a very tiny part of a really lovely city. It was not only that beautiful inner harbor – but a great many very interesting buildings, including a Norman church made of wood, and built like the hull of a boat. We wanted to send out our previous letters, so we looked for an internet café. Didn’t see one. Finally, we asked at several stores. They apparently never heard of such a thing. We tried a different tack. Adelle saw a young woman outside a café, and asked her, in French, of course. She knew where one was and she gave Adelle very specific instructions on how to get there – in French. We figured we could follow what we understood and then ask more questions. And our next try was successful. The young man who talked to us not only knew the internet place, but spoke terrific English. It is worth saying that once he told us where to go, we were following the exact instructions given to us in French. Once we found out how to go there, we knew what the original informant had said!

We did check our mail, but we couldn’t send our letters out. The service was too slow. But we had a delicious cup of coffee, and then returned to our RV by way of the bakery and the supermarket.

From Honfleur, we were headed to Calais and the ferry to England, which was not exactly close. We drove a few hours in the afternoon, then stopped at a campground that was very conveniently located next to the road – but very inconveniently situated when it came to facilities. But it was, as our Caravan Club book is fond of saying, only a NH (Night Halt).

Next morning we were off to Calais. There was a rather long stop at an Auchon that was on the way. Both of us are extremely fond of Auchon – which is another hypermarche (supermarket), similar to Carrefours. By the time we left, we were well equipped with food and wine. This Auchon had a huge wine section, including about a 40 foot section of boxed wines. These are excellent for RV’ing. There are no bottles to clink and one box of either 3 or 5 liters lasts a long time.

Calais was another couple of hours away, but the highway was well marked. When we got there, we arranged to buy our tickets and then got into the lane for the 3:30 ferry. As we pulled into the dock, the ferry captain announced the time. English time is one hour earlier than French time. Why? We don’t know. But it meant we could drive another hour before we had to stop for the night. And so we did.

Letter 8 from RV trip to Europe

2006-06-12T05:45:00.000-04:00

We left for Caen next. We were headed to that city because there is a museum of antiquities near there that Adelle wanted to see. Unfortunately, she had lost the brochure that told us its location. Ron suggested looking in our guidebook, which might list it. The book opened on the wrong page, and just by chance, Adelle read that the best museum about the D-Day invasion was in Sainte Mere Eglise. On the spot, we decided to change plans and go there. But we had already passed the exit for the correct highway.

We decided to use the local roads to backtrack. It was a perfectly sensible idea, but the French were up to their old tricks. Somehow, they hid the correct round-about for the northern road, and we ended up going back even more than necessary. The stress level was getting high. Then Adelle got the exit off the highway wrong. We got off, but once she realized her error, we went around the circle at the St. Lo exit to get back on the highway, only to find the entry ramp was blocked. That required that we get back on the highway going in the wrong direction. We got off at the next exit, got on the right way and found Ste. Mere Eglise by 3 p.m. Pulled into the town campground and were astounded to see what looked like WWII jeeps and other equipment, army tents, etc. That’s when we realized it was June 2, and the nearest weekend to the June 6 anniversary of the D-Day landings. This town really celebrates the anniversary of that day.

We were lucky. There were exactly two spaces left in the campground, and we got one. For those who are too young to remember and haven’t seen the movie “The Longest Day”, many of the 82nd Airborne paratroopers, the Screaming Eagles, who were supposed to be dropped in the fields around here were dropped on the town instead. One American paratrooper, a real person who was played in the movie by Red Buttons, was caught on the church steeple. He played dead for two hours, was captured and then escaped in the confusion when the Nazi troops retreated. This is a true story. In fact, there is a parachute and a full-size molded plastic man dangling from it on the church right now, as you can see in the picture. Whether it is always there or was put up for the occasion, we don’t know, but a British informant tells us that it is a permanent fixture.

This weekend is a big “fete” – if you can call it that. There are many French and English people who own 1940’s jeeps and trucks, and get all dressed up in the US Army uniforms of that day. It is not exactly a re-creation, but something like it. And we don’t mean a few people, either. There are “soldiers”, “paratroopers”, army officers, WAAC’s, etc. - and these people were dressed down to the last detail. We met a group in an antique shop. When Adelle went in, one of them was explaining to a man who had asked about his uniform that most of it was new, but he did own several original pieces. The so-called WAAC we saw had the uniform, even stockings with the seam down the back, the whole nine yards.

Furthermore, there are about 200 American Paratroopers (real ones) here. They were scheduled to jump onto a site close to town on Sunday. There are people serving food in the square, music in various places and generally it’s a hoot.

It’s very strange. Several times we’ve gone up to men in American army fatigues and said something to them in English, only to find that they are Frenchmen and don’t speak any English. Indeed by our guess, most of the pretending-to-be 1940’s G.I.’s were French. Everywhere you look there were 1940’s jeeps, trucks, uniforms, etc. We asked some of the Brits who owned vehicles about them. Apparently, when the Americans left, it didn’t pay to take equipment home. They just abandoned it. And some were rescued by the locals, who have kept these remnants of the war in tip-top shape.

There are events planned for the entire weekend. Friday night we attended a very nice concert in the 12th century church. Yes, the same one that John Steele, the real paratrooper played by Red Buttons, was caught on. It was an organ and trumpet recital of music that is best heard in a church where the sound resonates just right. Mostly Purcell, Telleman, Bach and Couperin. Loved it, except for the uncomfortable pews on which we sat. They seemed to be designed to be uncomfortable!

The campground seems to have a friendlier air than most. Our next door neighbors in the campground, who are Irish, wanted to know if we’d like to visit them there…and our across the street neighbor wants us to visit them in Swansea, Wales. Between walks in town, the museum, meals, and doing laundry, we did a great deal of enjoyable socializing.

We went to the museum on Saturday, and it was, as the guidebook said, a really good museum. It was crowded with tourists, mostly French. Adelle says she only cried a little. When we left we signed the book and looked at the other comments. Everyone was impressed with how well the museum had conveyed the feelings of the local people who were liberated and the difficulties of the young Americans.

We’ve talked about this a bit. Ron thinks that no one would have known much about Ste. Mere Eglise if not for the movie. We were kind of surprised to find that all the major roles in the movie were about real people and real exploits. As we already said, Red Buttons played the young man who was caught on the steeple. John Wayne played the commander who really did break his ankle, strap it up and continue fighting. We think his name was Vandervort . The museum highlighted their stories and others that were very compelling.

Now the big problem was how long we were going to stay. Ron thought we should move on without delay. But Adelle really wanted to stay at least until the parachute drop. So we compromised. We stayed until the parachute drop.

We pulled out of the campground on Sunday morning, and found that all the roads were semi-blocked by movable barriers. We ignored them, and got onto the main street (Gen. de Gaulle Road). Ron managed to pull into a parking space while Adelle went to the Boulangerie (bakery) to buy a loaf of bread (and a few little treats). She found herself in back of a group of 82nd Airborne troops. Since you only find out by asking, she asked them where the actual drop would be. A French paratrooper who was with them showed her where to go. Then she started talking to the Americans, including the one female trooper. Was she going to jump? No, because on her last jump, she had damaged her ankle. She asked where we came from. Adelle gave her the usual answer: CT and FL. Where in CT? It turned out the young woman had gone to school in Pomfret, CT – about fifteen miles from us. She and Adelle talked until she got her order, and her group left. Then Adelle was served, and she returned to the RV.

We ignored another barrier and turned where the paratrooper had said. After a few kilometers, we saw a sign that indicated Parking for the Parachutage. We followed the sign, paid the 5 euros and drove a very long way on a very narrow, unpaved road. When we parked, we walked to find the “DZ” – drop zone. It was not far away, near a statue of an American paratrooper nicknamed “Iron Mike”. Just to the side of the statue was a bronze plaque with fresh flowers on it. The sign reported that it was placed there in honor of Pfc Charles Deglopper, Company C, 325th Glider Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, who had won the Medal of Honor posthumously.

It seems that this particular area was the spot on which a very important battle of the D-Day invasion was fought. There is a bridge (a very small one) here over the Merderet River. American troops under the command of General James M. Gavin on the Ste. Mere Eglise side of the river had the job of preventing German forces from counter attacking Ste. Mere Eglise on the night of June 5 when the paratroopers got control of the town. The soldiers guarding that bridge destroyed two German tanks that were trying to get into the town. Although the plaque did not say so, we surmise that Pfc DeGlopper was one of the soldiers who did that job and that cost him his life.

We talked to the people there who spoke English. There were two American women there. Adelle asked them if they knew what road we were on. They said no, they were just here to get their father something to eat. We talked to an Englishman who told us that there is the same sort of ceremony going on in other communities along the invasion beaches from Oistreham on the east to Utah Beach and Ste. Mere Eglise on the west. He’d been all along them during the week. It’s quite mind-boggling.

There was about two hours left before the event was scheduled, so we went back to the RV and ate our lunch before we returned to the area with our chairs. That’s when we met the two women again. They stopped to talk to us, and their father appeared. He had just discovered that a Belgian man who published a new book on D-Day in Ste. Mere Eglise, and that a whole chapter was devoted to him. So we met a man who had really dropped from the sky into the town in 1944! In the picture of him that we have included, he is pointing to the area where he had landed on the night of June 5. In 2006, there were cows grazing there.
There were other veterans there. High security was apparent. Every gendarme in the area seemed to be there. Someone told us that an ambassador was expected.

As we walked around, we met Adelle’s favorite paratrooper and we talked for a while. She’s a young woman, and there were a lot of things that we know as a matter of course that were new to her. We talked about the movie stars who went into the service during the war and repeated Bud Roper’s story about being in London on D-Day (his squadron wasn’t scheduled to fly). He said he saw bombers in tight formations of five, eight groups across, i.e., 40 across, flying by his spot for 2 hours. That description – lines of forty bombers for two hours – makes the number of airplanes (935 or something like that) seem more real. After our conversation, the paratrooper kissed Adelle good-bye and went to film the parachute drop. (Adelle says “I really liked her and I think she really liked me.”)

We waited in our chairs. The planes were about twenty minutes late, and there plenty of announcements made on the public address system, but we couldn’t understand them. When they appeared, those men came out of those two airplanes so fast that it was mind-boggling. Suddenly the sky was full of them. It was definitely in the “amazing sight” category. We only stayed for the first drop, but there were two others to follow. Adelle’s favorite paratrooper had told her that the jumpers had formed a pool. The winner was to be the one who first landed in the Merderet River. Our friend said that made her really wish that she could be one of them. We did not see any winners on that first jump. We wanted to be on our way to Honfleur.

Letter 7 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-12T05:40:00.000-04:00

Since we couldn’t go to the market in Dinan on Friday, we left in the morning for St. Malo in Brittany, a trip that took about an hour. St. Malo was to be the farthest west we would go in France. We followed the signs for a campground, and found a lovely municipal facility in Alet, which is a part of the bigger town and just across the bay from St. Malo. Here there was bus service – but only two buses ran in the morning and two in the afternoon. We got ourselves together and took the next morning bus.

It was a very short distance to the square where the bus would pick us up. What a square! It was on the water – which was clear and clean. At the end of the dock was a medieval tower that was just beautiful. In the water were some moored boats. We sat on the benches and waited. What more could anyone ask of a square?

The bus took a while to get to St. Malo. The bus had to go through lots of city streets to pick up passengers, so it was a long trip. Other campers told us that you could walk to St. Malo by going along the waterfront, but it was too long for us.

We’ve been in St. Malo before, and we loved it. On a vacation trip in the 1980’s, we had stayed here. The city is much the same. It is chock full of tourists, mostly French, lively and interesting to walk through. It looks very old, but is really a reconstruction. Like other seacoast towns, there was a large Nazi presence and the area was the scene of bitter fighting as well as bombing. But they did an excellent job of reconstruction.

Lunch was in a small restaurant that advertised that its specialty was mussels. This was no surprise since every single restaurant (and there were a great many) advertised “Moules”. Considering that the town is on the Atlantic coast, there was remarkably little fish on the menus – just “moules”. We walked all over the old town and settled finally on this particular restaurant. In fact, Ronald’s meal of moules turned out to be wonderful, and my Brettan “gallette” was also excellent. ( A gallette is a large buckwheat crepe served as the base of a meal. Mine was made with egg, cheese and ham.)

As we talked, the man at the next table looked at us, and asked, “Where are you from?” We made our usual automatic answer: the United States. He commented that he knew that, but from where.

He and his wife were Americans and live now in Park City, Utah, but he had grown up not far from our home in CT. The four of us had a great talk. In fact, we probably talked so much that we kept the restaurant open past their lunch hours! We were the only ones in the place when we said good-bye to John and Linda.

We went from there to walk the ramparts, looking into the city on one side of the wall and out into the Atlantic on the other. We were amazed at the huge numbers of private boats in the harbor. An American tour was on the ramparts at the same time, and we took advantage of it by listening to their guide. We strolled along, enjoying the buildings and the general carnival-like atmosphere.

There were only two buses home in the afternoon, and we were getting tired, so we decided to take the earlier bus back to the campground. The buses run often, but only rarely do they go as far as the town of Alet. The next bus was listed in the timetable as the 13:57. All over Europe, they use what we always thought of as “military time”. What that means is that to find the right time in the afternoon, you need to subtract 12 from the listed number. Don’t know why, but somehow Adelle got confused, and thought that 13.57 meant three minutes to 4 p.m. Since the numbers in the afternoon begin with 12, 13.57 is really three minutes to two.

Unaware of this mistake, we waited for the bus to come at 4 p.m. One did come, but it didn’t say “Alet” on the front of the bus. Ron got on to ask if this bus goes to Alet. The bus driver didn’t speak English, but he was quite clear. This bus did not go to Alet. After a few minutes, Ron realized how we’d made the error. We’d just have to wait for the next afternoon bus.

So we walked around a bit more, had an ice cream, and then took the 17.08 bus (5:08) which took us to the harbor of Alet. We enjoyed our day. St. Malo was just as nice as we’d remembered.

There was another open-air market on Friday in the next town. We were torn, but the market was about two kilometers away, down a steep hill, with no bus service at all. We might get there, but getting back was a little more than chancy. Adelle waffled, but finally decided it wasn’t worth it.

We decided to skip it, although it was hard to give up a local open-air market. Instead, we opted to find the Carrefour supermarket in La Madeleine, a commercial center. The lady in the campground gave us a map that we found totally useless because it included no street names. The entire area is waterfront with one way streets. After more than a couple of wrong turns, we were saved by the bus.

As we turned back the third time, we saw the bus leaving the square, and we followed it although at a distance. Fortunately, you can see a bus a long way away. This got us out of Alet and near enough to La Madeleine to find the supermarket, where we spent a lovely hour and spent a fortune. We’re well stocked with food.

To tell the truth, part of the reason we spent so much money at the supermarket is that we tend to buy all kinds of cheese to see if any of it is what we thought it would be. This trip, we bought six different kinds of cheese, and we’ve decided to throw one out. It’s nothing like what we wanted, and has way too much fat for us to eat just because!

From the supermarket, we got onto the new autoroute very easily, and we set off, going back east, to Caen.

Letter 6 from Europe RV trip

2006-06-09T06:34:00.000-04:00

After our morning walking around the Omaha Beach Monument, we drove on into other parts of Normandy. Our first destination was a campground in the town of Rennes, southwest of the Normandy coast. It was quite a long trip – from Colleville-sur-Mer (the name of the town at Omaha Beach) to St.Lo, to Torigni-sur-Vire to Avranches to Rennes. There are a lot of familiar (from WWII) names in this part of the world. We saw lots of farm fields, but no towns at all, because we took the new autoroute, which is designed to by-pass all the towns.

The instructions in our book for the campground were not exactly clear. We couldn’t quite decide whether we should get on the ring road around Rennes. When it began, we tried it. And shortly thereafter we saw an exit marked with the name of the area we were headed for. It turned out to be the name of a huge park. We got off at that exit, and found our own way to the campground.

As we drove into the park where the campground is located, we came across a couple of workmen cleaning up the brush on the side of the road. They were throwing the debris into a wagon pulled by a draft horse. We were kind of surprised at their using horsepower, but since we were worried we might be in the wrong place, we stopped them to ask, “Le Camping?” And it was just a few yards up the road.

It turned out that they use a horse drawn cart because the city maintains a “Ferme pour L’Enfants” (a farm for city children to see farm animals). The horse works a part of the day, and the rest of the time he’s out in the fields eating grass in the company of the pony and the burro. There were school groups with young kids when we left in the morning and when we came home.

This is a very nice campground and the bus is only a ten-minute walk away, even at our pace. It left us in Rennes’ main square and we walked around, looking at the “precarious and wonky-looking collection of spectacular lofty timber-frame houses” as our Cadogan guidebook says. There was more. As we walked, we came upon a city gate complete with guard towers, a moat and a gangplank that could have been pulled up in an emergency. Our booklet from the tourist office pointed out that on one street there are two large side by side buildings with roofs shaped like overturned boat keels. Many of these 17th century timber-framed buildings have idiosyncratic roofs. Many also have little “hats” that overhang windows. In addition, there are numerous “great” buildings, all very old. All in all, we enjoyed the architecture of Rennes.

We hadn’t come here to see anything special. It was a French city whose name was familiar to us, and we just decided to see what it was like. We checked in at the tourist office and then found an internet café to send out our last letters. We walked the streets, and then stopped to have a real French meal at a tiny, crowded restaurant. Ron said that heavy lunch was what caused Adelle to be so tired that when we returned to our RV, she had to take a nap. Maybe it was the chocolate dessert! But it was worth it!

When we sat down at the restaurant, it was sunny and warm. Before we were served, the sun disappeared behind the clouds making us cold, so we moved inside. Compared to what we had before, this is truly a pleasure. But there are other climate-related wonders to mention. For example, it is still light out at 11 p.m. The songbirds sing their hearts out right up until then!

Our biggest news, though, is the price of fuel. Here in France, many supermarkets sell gasoline at a much lower price so we are now paying “only”1 euro 25 per liter. That translates to about $6.15 a gallon instead of $6.82. All such savings are gratefully accepted. The only difficulty is that you have to be sure that there is a cashier on duty to take your credit card. There are a lot of stations that allow you to pump your own gas if you have a card – but it has to be a particular gas company card which we don’t have.

Our next stop after Rennes was Dinan, which is down the road apiece, literally. Dinan is a walled city in Brittany, and according to our guidebooks, a gem including lots of 15th and 16th century half-timbered buildings, and a wall and great for walking around. We agree. We really like Dinan.

Our original intention was to stay for two nights, so we could attend the open-air market on the morning of the second day. But when we found the campground and asked about bus service, we were told there isn't any. On Wednesday, we could just drive into the center area and park in the central square, but on Thursday, the parking lot becomes the open-air market. No place for us.

We did drive into town on Wednesday. Took a very short time from the campground, but it wouldn’t be possible to walk to the market from the campground because the town is up a very steep hill. We’ll just have to go to a market somewhere else.

We should probably mention that getting from Rennes to Dinan was a snap. Finding the campground, however, was a little tricky. First, the French pulled that old trick, they put the sign for the campground on the wrong side of the road. By the time you saw the sign, you were beyond the turn. Secondly, they tried another common trick. The road sign said Route 2 when we did turn, and we needed to be on Route 12. Another hundred yards up, the road miraculously become Route 12. That’s one of the things we noticed again. The numbering of roads – even highways – is idiosyncratic. One road we were on had signs identifying the road with three different numbers. Happens all the time. But at least we’ve finally figured out what a “Rocade” is. It’s what is called in other French cities, “Le Peripheric” (the edge road). But why Rocade 748 turns out to be Route N 178 – only the French can understand.

The old city had a two-mile wall complete with guard towers. We walked down part of the famous streets and enjoyed the wonderful buildings. But it was quite a long way down the hill so Ron went ahead to see if we could get up on the wall at that point. We couldn’t. So we continued our stroll. As we came to the basilica, we found that without climbing any steps, we were on top of the wall and near a tower.

We walked all around the old city in Dinan, enjoying the wonderful buildings. Many also have “hats” over their windows, but many of these are “hats” are shaped like upside down black ice cream cones or even witches hats. Very gothic. The basilica was interesting, the church was ancient and had beautiful colored windows. The ramparts gave us a wonderful view of the city and the countryside. There are more than two miles of ramparts with open guard towers, a castle, and a lot of cobblestone streets. By the time Adelle walks on those streets for a while, she remembers her age!

After our long tour of the city, we went to a local supermarket. As we were looking around the produce area, we heard an American voice talking to children. Finding Americans in supermarkets is unusual, to say the least, so Adelle went and introduced herself to them, and asked if they were also in a campground. They were. So far that’s three families from America doing what we are doing. That is a record. The family we met in the supermarket comes from Meterie, LA. We asked about their home, and they told us that it was one of the few in their neighborhood that was on high enough ground so it wasn’t flooded. They were staying at a campground near St. Malo. They had done this once before in a rented RV. When they inquired this year, the price per day for a small Class C motor home had gone up from 70 euros per day to 130 euros per day, so they settled for a van.

We were taken aback to hear that rentals had gone up so much. Goes to show that we should keep checking.

It was great to talk to them, and even nicer to realize that we’ve met more Americans this year than we ever have before. Maybe we’re the vanguard of a movement. We hope so. There is no other way to see so much for so little money, no matter how much gasoline costs.

Letter 5 from Omaha Beach on Memorial Day

2006-06-09T05:58:00.000-04:00

This letter will be about only one place.

We spent the morning of Memorial Day at the American Cemetery and Monument at Omaha Beach, one of the sites of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Omaha Beach is only 17 kilometers from Bayeux. We’ve been there before, but the site continues to have a big emotional effect on us both. Last time and this time, we did not walk among the graves for long before both of us began to weep.

The leaflet that is given out at the welcome center in at least six languages says that there are 9,387 graves in that cemetery. The dead include four women and three Medal of Honor recipients. Not all the young men buried there died in the invasion, because we saw a number of graves of members of bomber squadrons and many who died after the invasion. There were also a number of graves without names. Their markers simply said that “Here lies a fallen comrade whose name is known only to God”.

On the rear side of the Christian cross or Jewish star that marks each grave is a number. Probably the number on the ID medallions that all soldiers were issued. That’s how they knew who was in that grave. Then the Army engraved each person’s name, unit and home state on the front of the marker. Incidentally, although we didn’t see it this time, we both remember at least one grave that marked the burial of a Muslim soldier. It had a crescent rather than either a cross or a star.

There is also a wall with the names of 1,557 men whose bodies were never found. Even if you didn’t know anything about World War II, the sheer volume of the names is bound to affect every visitor. There were quite a few visitors, but it was a very silent crowd. Most were Europeans, mainly French, judging by the language we overheard, but there were other Americans present. And there were also a number of people who were speaking German.

Directly in the center of the front of every grave were two small flags – one of the stars and stripes, and the other of the tricolor flag of France. And there were flowers at many of the grave sites. We missed the Memorial Day ceremony because it was held on Sunday, but it was quite obvious that these men were not forgotten either by the French or by the US. The ceremonies included a U.S.A.F. fly-over, a French military band, a local priest, an army chaplain and the rabbi of a French congregation at Caen. The memorial address was given by the Commander of the U.S. Forces in Europe. Both French and American troops as well as a U.S. Boy Scout Troup from Heidelberg, Germany participated.

Sometimes we forget that everyone doesn’t remember WWII as vividly as those of us who lived during those years, but very few of the people visiting the memorial were of our generation. It is good to know that even those who think that this war was ancient history still have great respect for those who fought it.

The picture captions use the abbreviation A.C.,O.B. for American Cemetery, Omaha Beach. The pictures tell the story of our visit here as well or better than we could.

Letter 4 from our 2006 Europe RV trip

2006-05-30T08:13:00.000-04:00

Where are we going next is always a big decision. Usually there are one or two definite stops. This time, Rouen was on the agenda and that’s where we headed.

No matter how long Adelle looked at the map, she couldn’t figure out whether we were going to be on a toll road on our way into Rouen. It was definitely a four-lane highway. We decided we had to take a chance on the “Peage”. (Costs for toll roads for an RV in France tend to be high!) But we need not have worried that it would break the bank. It cost only 1 euro 80 (the equivalent of $2.20). Affordable. But we were on that particular part of the peage only for about 8 miles. That’s almost 30 cents a mile! However, the road took us directly to the small town outside Rouen where a campground was located. We sailed into that campground as if we knew where we were going.

We got a late start and got into the campground kind of late, so we just chilled out for the afternoon. It was a small affair, with perhaps 30 “emplacements”, i.e., spaces for travelers. Quite a few were taken up by what looked to us like semi-permanent residents, but there was space and electricity, and we stayed in, avoiding the rain. In the morning, we made two surprising discoveries. First was that a rented German RV that had come in after us was being driven by a couple from Georgia. Second, was that an English RV was being driven by a family who live three towns away from us in Largo, Florida.

Both were on their way somewhere else, so we just touched base and said good-bye. Then we walked about a block and a half to the bus stop and took the bus into Rouen. We decided we’d walk around and see the cathedral and then decide whether we could do more.

A great deal of Rouen took a beating during World War II, so we didn’t expect to see many old buildings – and were surprised at how many really old half-timbered buildings there are. And a very impressive, huge cathedral, of course. A cathedral that most people will recognize because of Monet’s paintings of the front. Oddly enough, what caught our attention, besides the huge size of the nave, were the two tombs outside the choir. One held the remains of Henry, son of King Henry II of England, who died before becoming Henry III. We had seen the house in the town of Martel where he had actually died. On the other side of the choir was the tomb of his brother, Richard the Lion Heart, who apparently felt much closer to his Norman possessions than to England. All our guidebooks say that it is only his heart buried in Rouen!

The cathedral in Rouen had been heavily damaged during the bombing after D-Day, and there were pictures of the damage that caused the cathedral to require more than ten years of repairs. Now they are cleaning the stone and it is white and beautiful. We were in the cathedral a very long time, and then we walked through the old town and the shopping area before we had lunch. Rouen’s other two big sights are a huge clock that is under repair and not visible, and its Palace of Justice – which is just that. A palace. The front façade had been cleaned recently and the damage done to it in the last war was very visible.

After lunch, we walked to the site where Joan D’Arc was burned – or at least to the site that is traditionally known as that place. There is nothing there now, but a small garden surrounding a circle of dirt – with a sign. In back of that area is a new church, built in 1979 and named after Jean D’Arc. It is a long, low building with multiple roofs, each one looking like the old fashioned nun’s headdress.

By the time Adelle was nearing collapse, it was fortunately also time to go home, so we walked to the bus stop. In a stroke of luck, we walked to one further into the city than the stop where we had entered the city. Why a stroke of luck? Because we got a seat, and at the next stop everyone in Rouen got on the bus with us. They mostly had to stand all the way back to the suburb of Deville where our campground was.

There was a lot of discussion that night about where to go next, but one of us was entirely too fuzzy to make up her mind. So the conversation continued in the morning. In the end, having gone round and round many times, we opted to head for other places in Normandy. We would drive toward the area of Pont L’Eveque and Liseux just to see the scenery that had been described in our guidebook as something like the prettiest of the pretty. Then we’d drive on to Bayeux to see the famous tapestry. We’ve been to Bayeux before, but not since the 1980’s, and neither of us remembered much. So, off we went.

The scenery was as promised. Tiny villages with many half-timbered houses, some with thatched roofs, set among beautiful farm fields. Occasionally a chateau would appear. Often there were long, half-timbered buildings that we thought were probably very old barns. We drove along the Seine River for some of the time, and then climbed high hills that gave us panoramic views of the countryside. We were glad that we had gone slightly out of our way to see it all.

The only change made to our original plan was to visit the very old castle called Crevecoeur . It had figured in a history book that Ron is reading. One of the things we read said that the original owner had put up a wall, and then gone off to fight with William the Conqueror. The wall is still standing. We only wanted to see the outside, but since it is now a museum of oil exploration, they would only let us in if we paid the fee. So Ron took excellent pictures from outside the grounds and we drove on.

The campground in Bayeux is owned by the city, and is really lovely. We pulled in and Ron promptly went shopping! The stores are just across the street! We asked the warden about bus service in the morning – but on Sunday in France, bus service seems to be a rare bird. She said it would only take us fifteen minutes to walk to centre ville. We decided we’d try it.

So in the morning, we got ready and walked into town. It would probably be a fifteen-minute walk for our son or daughter or grandkids, but for Adelle, it turned into about 25 minutes. Still, that’s not too bad. We did not remember how old and lovely the city really is. Apparently the last time we only drove in to see the Bayeux Tapestry and then left. Bayeux was the first French city liberated after D-Day because it is really near the invasion beaches. Miraculously this city was undamaged, so a lot is as it was in olden times. The walk through the city was a pleasure.

Outside the building that houses The Tapestry is a great statue of an 11th century knight. The Tapestry is as remembered. At something over 900 years old, it is arguably the world’s first attempt to influence public opinion through the media. The 70-meter long embroidery tells the story of William the Conquerer’s successful invasion and conquest of England from the point of view of William. Propaganda it might be, but it is a beautifully done, intricate embroidery, in both senses of that word. We enjoyed seeing it again.

Then we walked over to see the Bayeux Cathedral – begun in 1070! As we walked around the side of the building, we could hear an organ playing. We rushed to the front only to find that the service was over, that it had been attended by hundreds of worshipers, and that they were all milling about, talking. We walked through the crowds and into the beautiful church, where there were lots of additional people. Among the most interesting people in the nave were the choir boys in their white “dresses” carrying candles – and the choir girls in their similar dresses carrying candles. We think that this may have been a special service since today the French celebrate Mothers’ Day.

After our tour of the cathedral, we walked back through the city center. Adelle announced that instead of eating a sandwich made in a baguette, she wanted a crepe, so we stopped at a suitable tiny restaurant where she had a ham and egg crepe and Ron just drank his coffee. Then we walked back “home” under the first blue sky we’ve seen practically since we got here.

We took the opportunity to bring out our chairs and sit outside to read. That may not sound exciting to you, but to two people who have been wearing raincoats for 16 or 17 days, it was a “new” experience. Tomorrow we’re off to re-visit Omaha Beach and the American War Memorial. Then we’ll drive to Rennes and perhaps Dinan, both small, less well-known cities in America, but certainly interesting to visit.

Letter 3 from 2006 Europe RV trip

2006-05-30T08:03:00.000-04:00

Can it really be us? Did we cause the “resolutely cloudy” skies, with enormous dark patches and frequent heavy downpours? We only ask because it was just like that in Boston when we left, in Amsterdam when we got there, in Gent the night we were there, in Lille, Arras and now Amiens. Our British neighbors in the campground at Bertangles gave us the best advice: Go South. But that’s not where we want to go!

We spent two lovely days in Lille. The first day, as we said, we just walked around for hours. The second day, we found an internet café, sent out a letter and went to the Musee des Beaux Arts. We spent the afternoon looking at their permanent collection of art. Ron walked through. Adelle rode around in a scooter! Otherwise she’d have never been able to also go shopping at the Carrefour supermarket where we had parked the car. As it was, she helped get the total bill to $50. We were surprised as usual by the size of the supermarket/department store. There were numbers on the cashiers’ registers. They went from one to forty-five! And one young employee was on in-line skates to allow him to move quickly!

When we finally got home, we were astonished to find that it was already 8 p.m., so we had a cold dinner, Ron did the dishes, and we spent a short time writing before we went to bed.

When we left Lille, we drove through the nasty rain storm to Arras, which had a municipal campground listed in our directories. Right in the town. We found the street perfectly, but couldn’t find a campground. Ron pulled into a parking spot and Adelle went out (in the rain) to make inquiries. She saw a lady passing by and asked if this was the correct street. That was enough for her to offer to help find out what happened to the campground. She spoke English well – and offered to call the Mayor and/or allow us to use her house. She did help by asking the caretaker about the facility, and found that the campground was closed. Adelle thanked the Good Samaritan profusely and said we’d just drive on. We were headed for Amiens.

On the road that ran between Arras and Albert, we drove through the World War I battlefields of the Somme . In a two or three mile stretch of road, there were about ten cemeteries and monuments to the men who died there…English, Canadian, South African, New Zealand, Australian and French. And we understand that most of the men who died there were never found or buried. And we passed several signs reporting that this was the front line as of July 14, 1914, August 15, 1915, etc.

We drove to Albert. We found the campground without a problem, but were told that “the patron” wouldn’t be back until 5 and we couldn’t come in. This was a bit odd, because we’ve always found that when no one is available to help, there is a sign that says something like “find yourself a space and register when a warden is present”. Our first impulse was to drive to the museum that is dedicated to showing the conditions that men lived through in the trenches of World War I—a huge building with a very tall, gold domed tower that could be seen from a great distance. But this is France. Everything is closed for lunch between twelve and two, even the museum. So we had a delicious cup of coffee in a local bar– and decided to skip man’s inhumanity to man and drive to Amiens.

Just in passing, we’d like to make a point. We are travelers, not campers. We camp because that is the best and least expensive way to travel, but our pattern is to pull into a campground but spend all our time out and about, usually in the city somewhere. We know that many people go to campsites for entirely different reasons – perhaps to hike the woods or to go fishing. And we find that people at campsites follow both paths.

On our way to Amiens, we noticed that the fields were huge, and many had crops growing in them. We recognized rapeseed . We think that this is what is squeezed to get canola oil. There were many wonderfully greenish yellow fields that will turn bright yellow later in the season. The others we couldn’t quite identify. It turned out that we had been driving through the “cereal fields” of northern France. The different shades of green, the occasionally yellow field, the old brick farm houses and the farm animals made the drive a pleasure. We saw a sign for the campground we wanted, and followed it to the Chateau at Bertangles which is north of Amiens. When we pulled in, we met a young Dutch couple and their three young sons, and we spoke for quite a while. Then we each pulled into pitches. We decided to walk through the little town, which we did. On our way, we discovered why there were so many cars parked on the road. There had been a funeral in the beautiful and quite aged church. Because there were so many people around, we never got a chance to go into the church. As the French would say, “Quel domage”.

Shortly after we returned from our walk, a British couple in a caravan pulled in. Adelle said hello to the lady in the caravan–said something about the rain in France and asked about the weather in England. An hour later, her husband stopped by to give us the weather forecast page from an English newspaper. The weather looked pretty dismal, but the effort prompted an invitation to join us for dessert – and a new friendship was formed.

The next morning we bought a baguette and a fresh apple-filled croissant from the bakery van that visited the campground, had our breakfast, and then started off for Amiens. We got to the bus stop only to find that we had missed the number 14 bus by a few minutes. Then we fortunately noticed the sign for a number 50 bus. As we talked about finding out where the bus stopped, a bus came the other way. We motioned to him and he waved as if to say that he’d be back. Were we ever surprised that he did come back. We got on and said thank you – and he spoke English. He thanked us. We were the only riders he had. He drove us to “C Cial – Amiens Nord”…that is the commercial center on the north side of the city. It took us a while to figure that abbreviation out! From there we quickly got a bus into town. As we got on, we asked the bus driver if he would tell us when we should get off to see the cathedral. He said yes, and we sat down. We were both apprehensive. There were a lot of people on that bus. He could easily have forgotten. Not only did he remember, but he stopped the bus where there was no bus stop and said “A gauche”. And there to the left was the Cathedral! We got off and he motioned for us to cross in front of the bus, which we did. Who says the French are not helpful? Not us.

There is no vacant space on the Cathedral’s exterior at all. It is covered with carved stone figures everywhere. It makes one marval at the amount of work that went into it. And it is not just work but finely wrought, detailed work as you can see in the pictures.

We spent a very long time inside the cathedral. We learned that the vault over the central nave is 43 meters high—about 130 feet. It is apparently the second tallest in France, and it provides a soaring and enormous and beautiful space. It is unusual in that it had a recognized architect, who is acknowledged with a street named in his honor. It is also unusual because it was built in 50 years (1220-1270!), so it is all of one design. Most Cathedrals were built over many generations of architects and over time spans lasting well more than a hundred years. The Cathedral has been designated as a UNESCO world heritage site, and Amiens is really working at cleaning the dirt off. The entire front has been cleaned. It is now white and they are working on other parts. This is especially amazing in the main chapel where the entire, enormous inside roof and the walls are so clean. Cleaning the stone on such a high ceiling must have been quite difficult.

A display case inside has a placard that tells you that the Kings of England when the Cathedral was being built were Henry II, Richard the Lion Heart, and John Lackland. Another placard informs you that a relic held here is nothing less than John the Baptist’s head which is displayed at certain times of the year. Indeed, one of our guidebooks asserts that the Cathedral was built to house this relic. Now we have been in the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany that purports to have the bones of the Three Magi, and a Jacobin Church in Toulouse where the remains of St. Thomas Acquinas reside. Believe it or not!

Some of the most affecting scenes in the Cathedral were the plaques put up by the survivors of the World War I battle at Amiens to their fallen comrades. You can see one in a picture we include.

We went to a little sandwich shop for lunch because they seemed to have wonderful bread. It smelled so good that we wanted to order one of everything. Anyway, the only chairs were very high stools. Only politeness could have kept the women behind the counter from laughing at the sight of Adelle trying to get up onto that stool. Between her lack of height and her inability to bend her knees back enough, it was a slapstick comedy scene.

By the time we had eaten lunch and visited the internet shop to send out our previous letter it was really too late to do anything else. We decided to head home. We received some help from the Amiens tourist office However, the young age and seeming inexperience of the agents there did not fill us with confidence. It’s a good thing that none of you could hear the conversation between us when we were trying to figure out how to get home. To call the bus schedule complicated is much too simple. Should we take the same bus back to the Centre Commercial and then a number 50 to the Chateau. Or should we go to the railroad station to get the number 14. Which would be a safer bet? Which would get us home earlier? Why doesn’t the number 9 bus, which brought us from the commercial area, stop there on the way back? Why has the number 9 bus been replaced by bus #2? Where are the bus stops for these various busses? Don’t ask!

The upshot was that we walked to the railroad station to get the 14 bus. The girl in the Tourist Office said it was only a fifteen-minute walk and oddly enough, that was how long it took us. But then we had to wait 45 minutes for a bus. No problem. A cup of coffee and we were on our way.

As we prepared dinner, there was a knock on the door and we accepted an invitation from the British couple we’d met the day before to have dessert with them. We had a lovely evening and laughed a lot. Where are the famous “reserved” Englishmen? So far, we haven’t met any.

We exchanged addresses, took pictures of them – and in the morning before we left to drive the less than 75 miles to Rouen, they took pictures of us. We agreed that we would try to stop and visit them near Hereford if we possibly can. And we will make an effort. It looks like they live relatively close to our friends in Somerset, Peter and Valeri and we certainly will try to visit them. You are forewarned, Peter and Valeri.

That’s it for now. Bye. Adelle and Ron

Letter 2 from 2006 RV trip in Europe

2006-05-24T08:43:00.000-04:00

Letter #2

We have a lot of things we need to say so we’re going to organize this letter a bit differently. First, we need to answer some of our readers’ questions.

Fuel - First, let’s talk about fuel cost and consumption. Our 22’ rig gets about 12 miles to the gallon. Not a lot, but it’s not bad when you consider that we aren’t paying $65 a day in car rental fees and that the little engine pulls around a “house”! You sure can’t get a hotel room for the $20-25 a day we pay in campground fees!

So, 12 miles per gallon is not too bad in terms of value. It’s also less important when you consider how little we really drive when we are in Europe. Our first trip—Amsterdam to Tilberg, was 75 miles. When we left Tilburg in the afternoon on Saturday, we only drove to Gent – perhaps another 50-60 miles or so. We stayed overnight in Gent so we could decide where to go next. And next turned out to be the city of Lille, in France – another 60 miles. We won’t move from Lille for at least two days, though we will need to drive to the supermarket that is next to the metro.

Of course, paying the cost of fuel at the pump is “thrilling” as Ron is fond of saying. Our first fill-up cost us 67 euros which equates to about $80! So far it has taken us from one part of the Netherlands to another, and then through Belgium to France. Again, not a bad value if you consider that it is a rental car as well as a hotel room with a stove and fridge to accommodate 2 people! Gasoline is now 1.41 Euros per liter in Holland and Belgium. Multiply that by 3.785 liters per US gallon and you get $5.33 per gallon. Multiply that by 1.28 dollars per Euro and you get $6.82 per gallon. Multiply that by 10 gallons for an average fill-up and you get $68.20. That is what Ron calls “THRILLING”. Much more of the cost of fuel here is due to taxes than is true in the US. Diesel fuel is cheaper than gasoline in Europe and we understand that is because the governments here have chosen to favor diesel engines by charging less tax for the fuel.

Food. We tell everyone that traveling our way allows us two things. Inexpensive meals and also the ability to eat like the locals. Our first night we ate only sandwiches before we went to bed. The next night, we bought fried chicken from a FEBO store – which is like an automat and makes very good chicken. With it we had potato chips and a cucumber, pepper, onion and tomato salad. On the third night we had the chicken wing parts from the open-air market. The chicken stall sells only all kinds of parts – including just the middle part of the wing. That’s the part we like best, so we had one of our favorite dinners- chicken wings in oyster sauce with white asparagus and rice. Adelle cooked all the chicken we had bought at the market, so we had enough left over for another dinner. The fourth night we ate the lamb chops we bought at the market. Adelle grilled them in the frying pan, and served them with a very different sweet potato and another salad. The potatoes were different because they had very orange skin and very light, almost white, pulp – but they were sweet. So you see, we don’t suffer one little bit when we eat “at home”. Some nights we eat like the locals, and we always buy from the same places that the locals buy food. Our desserts are usually fresh fruit, purchased baked goods or really good candy (yummy) etc.

Campgrounds. We’ve stayed at five places in five nights, and all were quite different from each other. Amsterdamse Bos is huge, and in the past, we weren’t too fond of their bathrooms and showers. But last year they put in a wonderful new sanitary building. Now we stay near the new facility. Gaasparplas is also in Amsterdam. It is much better organized and in beautiful condition as always. Both of them hold hundreds of campers. Gilze, on the contrary, is tiny, with spaces for only ten or fifteen campers. But it is scrupulously clean, its grass area is worthy of a Kentucky horse farm, and it is always a pleasure to be there. (More about that campground later.) Next was Blaameerson in Gent. That campground is run by the city in a huge recreational area. It also can and does handle hundreds of campers every day. All of the campgrounds have more than enough sanitary facilities for the campers they have and these all appear to be very sanitary indeed. (Blaarmeerson is the only one of these five that supplies toilet paper.) The staff are polite and helpful to their clientele, and what is more, speak English. What more can any RV’er want?

Weather. The first thing that struck us was how much advanced the season is in Holland over what we left in New England. There was only a smattering of leaves on the trees when we left, but everything in the Netherlands is lush with leaves. That’s in spite of the fact that Holland is so much farther north than New England. They have our Gulf Stream to thank for the more temperate weather here than in New England. It’s not fair.

The weather so far has been pretty rainy and a bit chilly, with very strong winds. The rain doesn’t stop us from too much, but it does create a problem. As those of you who got our letters in 2002 know, we had a slight disagreement with an overpass on our first trip. We got through the overpass, but our air-conditioner didn’t quite make it. We took the unit off the rig and Ron fixed the roof, but the caulking dried up and he needs to do it again. If it ever stops raining, so the roof can dry, he will fix it. In the meantime, it is a nuisance.

Back to the Gilze Campground. We have stayed at this tiny campground several times because we always come to visit our friends in Tilburg and this is the closest campground to their home. We had a nice visit with our friends. Ron did go to yet another open-air market with Cees and he did buy more food, but the strawberries were just delicious so Adelle forgave him. After our visit, we left to drive to Belgium.

We had left the campground in the morning on a very sad note. With tears in her eyes, the proprietor told us that the town government is forcing her to close and move away because it now wants to use the land that had been farm fields on the edge of town. They intend to build a commercial/industrial area there. Her grandfather had built the facilities and even planted the beautiful walnut trees 75 years ago. The campground had been passed down to her parents and then to her. Now the city has purchased the land and told her to move. This is an example of the right of Eminent Domain in the service of commercial and industrial growth. You may recall that our Supreme Court recently upheld Eminent Domain for development use as legal in the case of New London vs. some home owners in the area that the city plans to develop.

We had originally planned when we left Tilburg to go to a campground near Brussels, then onto Reims in France to visit the great Cathedral there, and next, go to Paris. But, that 67 euros for a tank of gas made us think about our route. The problem with going directly to Reims was that there was not much we wanted to see between Tilburg and Reims and also not much we wanted to visit between Reims and Paris. Given the price of fuel now, we thought it was quite an extravagance to see that Cathedral, as beautiful as it might be. So, we changed our first destination to Gent and from there drove to Lille, which also has a Cathedral that sounds lovely in our guide book.

We found a small campground on a farm in a small town just north of Lille. The lady at “Reception” said she has room for only about 30 campers, but is presently catering to 50 – because all the other facilities around have closed. She was very nice and quite helpful. The fee here was only 10 Euros a night. The facilities are in line with the price. The electricity is only sufficient to run lights and fridge. There is one small sanitary block and another tiny bathroom with only one sink for dishwashing in each of these. The commodes do not have seats, which we regret to say is quite common in France. (Easier to keep clean, they say.)

We asked about getting into Lille, and that turned out to be a problem by bus on Sunday. But the proprietor had a solution. She gave us a map showing where a Carrefour supermarket abuts the Metro. Of course, because it is Sunday, Carrefour is closed, but the parking lot isn’t. We managed to find it, left our home in a parking lot and took the Metro from just across the street to the center of town. Then we spent four and a half hours walking around the area of the city that boasts a number of beautiful Baroque buildings, went into one ancient church (built in 1290), and one newer and larger Cathedral whose stained glass windows are especially beautiful.

It is obvious from the kinds of shops one sees and the variety of people on the streets that France is at least as heterogeneously populated as Holland. There seem to be more Chinese restaurants, kabob stalls, Thai snack bars and Turkish coffee houses than places advertising French cuisine, in the downtown area at least. And there were all sorts of ethnicities and ages represented among the clientele of the little street café we had coffee in.

See. Travel is broadening both in outlook and in body. Adelle & Ron

Letter One from Europe, 2006 Trip

2006-05-22T07:47:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are in Holland again. We left Boston on Tuesday night and arrived in Holland via a stop in London’s Heathrow Airport, on Wednesday afternoon. We had left our trusty RV in the de Wit’s greenhouse last October. It is therefore dry and protected, and the RV started up again without a problem. Indeed, the only problem we had was with Adelle – since she hadn’t slept all night and was very tired, straightening out the four big bags and the four pieces of hand luggage seemed to her like an insurmountable task. But we managed to go grocery shopping for some basics, check into the Amsterdamse Bos campground (about a mile away from the greenhouse), make sandwiches for dinner and stay awake on our second day until 9 p.m. Dutch time (3 p.m. American time). We hope that will keep the jet-lag-wolf from the door.

Ron is certain that mentioning this will jinx us on our upcoming tour, but let’s hear it for our poor little old motorhome. It has been stored since July 2001 in one of the de Wit greenhouses between our visits. Every year it has started without trouble when Arendt de Wit gets it ready for us. And everything still works: the stove and fridge, the 220 to 110 converter, the battery charger. Even the brakes seem okay, no noise, no rust, no seizing up. Ron did take the precaution this trip of bringing new rear brake shoes and front pads just in case they were needed and not available here. The two batteries, one for the living quarters and one for the engine, are now 6 years old! The tires have a great deal of tread left on them even after all four trips: the 1l,000 plus mile US trip and three approximately 4500 mile trips in Europe. The sidewalls look perfect. The motor sounds as good as when it was replaced in Seattle on our American trip.

And we have road-tested it already. We are writing this letter on Friday afternoon in a campground in the town of Gilze, about 75 miles south of Amsterdam, and midway between Breda and Tilburg. We were the only ones there, this being still early in the camping season. It is a beautifully kept facility. One picture shows the area where the motorhomes and caravans will settle in later. And other pictures shows the garden visible from the camping area, and a third shows the sanitary block. This first leg of our trip went very smoothly in heavy traffic and heavy rain, with a fierce crosswind all the way. We feel very lucky that our little Dolphin has treated us so considerately.

Yes, it is little—22 feet, Class C. But those of you who have never lived in such a small space for any length of time should know that when we arrived home last fall after our last three-month trip, Ron was initially very uncomfortable in our Connecticut home. Too much open space around him. In contrast, the motorhome had gotten to feel very cozy. Everything we needed or wanted was at hand, never more than a step or two or an arm reach away. It took awhile to get used to large open spaces. But, of course, you do get used to that, too. While the first couple of days back in the motorhome did feel confining, we got right back into feeling at home again.

By mid-morning on Thursday, everything was put away well enough to travel, so we checked out of our first campground—paid 20 Euros, about $25--and moved to the Gaasperplas campground which is more convenient to central Amsterdam. You can see pictures taken on our last trip of both of these campgrounds. (The fee in Gaasperplas was 21Euros, about $26. We don’t think you can get a hotel room in Amsterdam for anything like that amount.) Then we did the most natural thing. We went into the city armed with two backpacks and visited the Albert Cuypstraat street market. We had to buy cheese (Maasdammer, Emmenthal and Walnut as well as Roquefort and Parmesan) from the same merchant we usually buy from. Otherwise the cheese police might get us. And Adelle had to have flowers: 10 tulips for 2 euros and 10 Siberian iris for 1 euro)…otherwise the flower police might get us. And, as long as we were there and could carry more, we bought more. A lot more! Vegetables, fruit, meat, chocolate, deep fried macadamia nuts, dried tropical fruits, olives, a crisp baguette, cooked chicken for dinner, and a beautiful handbag that can be carried over the shoulder, or as backpack.

Walking in the street markets is interesting not only because of the really wonderful things you can buy, but because everyone else is doing the same thing. After walking through Amsterdam one thing is very clear. The Netherlands is living up to its reputation for being an inclusive, multi-cultural society.

We’ve just finished hearing the audio CD of a book called “The Island at the Center of the World” by Russell Shorto, which is about the Nederlanders’ colony in America. You remember Nieuw Amsterdam, don’t you? The main point of the book is that the American ethos of multi-cultural, tolerant and inclusive society was born in the Dutch colony that was all those things, not in the New England colonies, which was nothing like that. Those New England settlements were exclusively closed to all except English Puritans whose beliefs did not vary in any way from those of the governing group. You will remember that some Puritan groups who held to things a little different from the hard-core Boston Puritans had to break away from that colony to settle their own somewhat variant, but nevertheless still Puritan belief colonies in Rhode Island and in Connecticut.

In contrast, the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam accepted people of all religions so long as they had something to contribute to the survival and well-being of that Island Manhatten and/or the profit of the West Indian Company that governed the settlement. Indeed, they even took in some of the people who could not stand the rigidity of life in the New England settlements.

Furthermore, social class distinctions were not as important to the 17th century Dutch as they were to the English settlers who kept those social class differences alive and well in the Boston Colony. Finally, it is a matter of record that the population of the Dutch colony consisted of peoples of many nations including Blacks from Africa, both free and slave, and not almost exclusively people from England. So, the case can be made that modern America is more like that Dutch colony than like the society that the Boston Puritans established.

And present-day Holland is still a multi-cultural mix. You know, a lot of Americans believe that the U.S. is the most heterogeneous, multi-cultural society around. That does not seem to us to be the case. When we first came to Holland, it was kind of a surprise to see so many black, middle-eastern and Asian looking people and even more jarring when we heard them all speaking Dutch!

We left Boston in a terrible rain storm and arrived in London to find that flights out of Heathrow were delayed due to extreme rain storms. Now we are in Holland, where our first two days were just beautiful but there was heavy rain both nights and most of today. Think it is our presence?

We are here in Gilze to visit our friends Cees and Maartje in Tilburg. We missed visiting another friend in Utrecht on our way here, but plan to stop for lunch with them later in the trip. We want to spend at least three weeks in France before we leave for England, and that doesn’t leave a lot of leeway.

Our friends in Utrecht - Karen and David - do what we do in reverse. They live here in Holland and own the same kind of RV as we do—only nicer, newer and with the six-cylinder engine instead of the four—but their RV is in the U.S. where they travel every chance they get. In fact, they came to the US after we returned home last fall but we did not get a chance to see them there and return their previous hospitality.

We are excited to be back in Europe, and glad to have a chance to say hello again to all those who read our letters. As usual, the letters will be sent on an irregular basis, since we never know when we’ll find an internet café. But we have lots more to say, so we’ll send letter #2 soon.

Adelle and Ron

23. Getting antsy

2006-05-12T16:58:00.000-04:00

This is the most dangerous time of the preparation period. We have five more days…and not that much to do. We get an easy-going attitude, and no longer hurry about with great purpose. Inevitably there will be things we should have done in this period, but we forget, and then we end up rushing to get them done at the end. Packing is the last effort and not to be done until the day before we leave. But there must be more than that left. Problem is, we just can’t think of anything.

Closing the house down for the ten weeks we’ll be gone is simple because we’re so used to it. And in the summer, there is no problem with heat, pipes, mice getting into the house, or any of the problems that come with cold weather.

There are always some things that we really need that are either too heavy or too big to fit in a suitcase. The problem doesn’t arise when you are only traveling for a short period. But ten weeks to three months is a long time. Since we don’t have a TV that will receive European TV, we depend on books for our entertainment in the evenings. Of course, this time, we don’t have to take so many books. We can buy English-language books in the language’s “Mother Country”.

All media have been cancelled or placed on vacation (TV, newspapers, internet, telephone), insurance has been changed to cover us in Europe, there are no bills pending, utilities (gas for cooking and laundry and oil for heat and hot water) are taken care of, duplicates are made for critical papers, medications ready…we’re ready

Ron sent an email to Ineka DeWit yesterday telling her when we will be arriving at Shiphol. She replied that Arendt will pick us up 15 minutes after we phone reporting that we have our luggage. The greenhouse in which the RV is stored is that close. She wrote that Anendt will start the RV and it will be ready for us, don’t worry. The campground we stay in the first night is less than a 10 minute drive from the greenhouse. The supermarket is just a little farther away. We hope to visit that first to at least buy something for dinner and breakfast before going to the campground, registering, unpacking, having something to eat and getting to bed. After the red-eye flight with a change of planes in Heathrow, we will be dead-tired. It will take a while to rest up and then, off we go. As soon as we are up to it we will drive to another campground that is a little more convenient to Amsterdam’s Central Station. Then it will be a short walk to the metro, a 15 minute ride to the Central Station, and a tram to the Albert Cuypstraat open-air market where we will stock up on cheese, smoked fish, vegetables and flowers, all of very high quality and all at bargain prices. Can’t wait.

22. More preparations

2006-05-11T12:47:00.000-04:00

There’s less than a week to go. Adelle says that the worst part of the entire process is the anticipation of errors! But the reality is that we’ve never had any problems. We always bring duplicates of important papers – just in case. She even copied our little address book over. It’s really a superstitious behavior. Deep in our hearts, we believe that if we do have duplicates ready, we’ll never need to use them.

Of equal weight in this house is the amount of food in the refrigerator. Adelle is glad to say that we have finally got the knack of eating most of the food down so that we don’t have to take boxes of leftover food to our daughter when we leave.

The biggest packing problem is shoes. How many should we take? Which ones will ultimately be the most comfortable? Etc. We need to have clothes for many kinds of weather. People always say that you should have rain gear and warm clothes even for summer in England. We’ve been in England many times, and we have rarely needed either. But we take it all anyway. Given the value of the English pound against the American dollar, we’ll want to spend money only on traveling expenses.

We have gotten to the stage that almost everything we want to take with us is assembled somewhere in the house and we are gradually placing it all on the bed in the spare room. Today we gathered all the medicines we have to take with us, enough for 70 days, picked up the brake parts that we had ordered yesterday. They are very heavy—four shoes, and four pads, and Ron is thinking about what the airport screeners are going to make of them and what a mess they will be in if they unwrap them and try to put them back into their box. Yesterday Ron gathered a couple of computer programs we want to take in case anything gets corrupted and we have to reinstall.

We had hoped that we would be getting to Europe early enough so that we could visit Keukenhof Gardens again (the link is to a site we found in a Google search which is in Italian, but you can translate the page. There are pictures that show a tiny bit of what the garden is like). The tulip growers of Holland plant unbelievably beautiful gardens every spring, but it is closing on May 19 – only two days after we get to Europe. It always takes us a day to put everything in order, clean up and stock up with groceries. If we can manage it, we’ll make that trip. If not, perhaps next year.

21. More on Getting ready and some worries

2006-05-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

There’s less than a week left before we start our European trip. We are busy getting the house ready to leave and trying to remember what we left on the RV when we stored it last October. Before we left, we did remember to make a list of the things we need to bring with us. Without a list stored on our computer , we might never have remembered, that we need a replacement lens for one of the tail lights, a panel for the screen door, replacement bulbs, and brake parts to take along just in case we will need to replace pads and shoes. etc.

Packing is the least difficult part of the business of getting ready. No matter how long our projected trip, we take the same amount of clothing. Ten days worth. That’s in case we don’t get a chance to do laundry for a while. Usually we do laundry about once a week. We simply wait until we have one washing machine’s worth to wash. There are some things that are left in the RV – rain jackets, sweatshirts and sweaters, straw hats to ward off the sun. But we do take most things with us.

Our e-mail list needs to be updated before we leave. This helps us to avoid problems that need to be corrected while we are in internet cafes.

And there always are things that are of concern but that we can do nothing about. Like what will happen to bird flu while we are over there. And how far farther the dollar will decrease in value. You may be interested to know that on our first trip, it cost only 87 cents to buy one Euro. Last trip it averaged about $1.20 but it hit a high of $1.26. Today the Euro was worth almost $1.28, and it has been higher in recent days. And, of course, there is always the price of gasoline to worry about. That is going to be higher than on our last trip, also. The question is how much higher it will go. These problems we can do nothing about except deal with them if and when they arise. We always can come home early. And, like everyone else, we can cut back on our mileage. Last year we traveled 4500 miles from Amsterdam (map of 2005 trip), across Germany, down to Italy, back up through France and Belgium, and back to Amsterdam. This year we won’t be as frenetic. We probably will travel in France closer to Paris, and in England, closer to London. But we shall see.

20. Getting ready to leave on our next trip

2006-05-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

We now begin the countdown, getting ready to leave next Tuesday for our next trip.

What’s the old story about being as busy as a one-armed paper hanger with the hives? That’s how Adelle feels – but it’s not a matter of jobs that take a lot of time. It’s just that there are so many things that need to be taken care of when you are planning to be away from home for so long.

Adelle arranged for the special insurance on the RV weeks ago. She made sure that there is too much money in our checking account just in case an emergency comes up. But those are only the beginning.

Her list today includes canceling newspapers, the cable service (which in our case includes the internet and telephone), canceling our liability insurance on the cars while we are away and the cars are stored, and making sure that all current bills are correct and paid. While we are away, our daughter will screen our mail and pay the few bills that are not paid automatically out of our checking account. We just have to leave her a list. But we do have to think about that list!

We are lucky to have a daughter who is local, and who can pick up our mail. Otherwise we’d probably have to rent a mail box. There are other chores we have to leave her with – like watering our few indoor plants through the season. And cutting the grass occasionally.

We know what is really important. Of immediate concern are the hummingbirds who live in our yard. Their nectar needs to be changed on a regular basis. And the birds who use the bird bath need fresh water. Fortunately for us, we have a neighbor with a teen-aged daughter. We’ll hire her to come up twice a week and we’ll leave her commercial hummingbird food, a water hose and instructions.

Of course, these chores are only additions to the usual work that needs to be done. Adelle’s biggest problem with all of this is the worry that she’s forgotten something important.

19. More Food Stories

2006-05-04T16:05:00.000-04:00

When we write that we don’t eat dinner out, we should qualify that. We don’t go out to dinner very often because by dinner time, we are tired. European restaurants rarely open for dinner before 7 pm, and usually their first dinners are served even later. Since we use public transit to get into city centers, eating dinner out is difficult for us. It would mean that we would not be able to sit and put our feet up until ten or eleven at night. So we usually have dinner at home. There are exceptions however.

In 2005, in Italy, we were on our way to see the five towns built into the mountains next to the sea. That area is known as “Cinque Terre” (five towns). As we glanced through our campground guide, we noticed an intriguing entry. It said it is an agri-tourist establishment, which could only accommodate five or six vehicles. We had very little idea what it was, but it sounded very interesting. Among the things the description in our book mentioned was the fact that you “will be invited to eat dinner with the family”. We were hooked.

We won’t bore you with the long and tedious drive through very narrow roads that we had to take to get there. But we will point out that we missed the cut-off. We finally stopped at a bar (where no one spoke English) but when Adelle showed the proprietor the name of the place, he drew us a map which turned out to be quite accurate.

We could hardly believe we found the farm we were looking for – but we did. No one spoke English there either, but we managed to get our RV situated on a field high over the countryside, and agreed to join them for dinner. What a dinner!

The table was set for twenty because there were other guests in rooms in the various outbuildings. On the table were two kinds of wine (both made from their grapes). As we sipped wine, we dipped the homemade bread into olive oil with garlic (both from the farm). Then we were served gnocci with ragu sauce, followed by brasciole made with capers and mushrooms, cucumber salad, zucchini and tomato and lettuce salad (all from the farm of course). For dessert, we had ripe figs from their trees and a beautiful fruit tart that may have been the only thing that wasn’t homemade!

M-m-m-m!

18. Food Stories

2006-05-04T15:53:00.000-04:00

As soon as we began eating lunch in Belgium, we made a startling discovery. French fries are not French at all. They are a Belgian specialty, acknowledged as such all over Europe. In Belgium they call them by their Flemish name “Vlamse frites” – fried in a Belgian province. And the way they are made in Belgium and Holland makes them special. They start with fresh potatoes, never frozen ones, and blanch them in oil first. When a customer places an order, the semi-cooked potatoes go into very hot oil until they are golden brown. When they emerge, they are very crispy and taste distinctly like potatoes. Then comes the part that is surprising to us. You are given a choice of sauces, and ketchup does not seem to be the most popular. Instead, the Belgians and Dutch prefer mayonnaise on their frites (near the bottom of the Antwerp, Belgium,thumbs). Even more surprising, people who order “frites” for lunch usually eat only the potatoes (and whatever sauce they prefer).

On the other hand, there was the amazing sandwich. On our first trip we were in Bastogne. This little town remains important in U.S. history because the American forces stationed there during World War II did not surrender when the German forces counter-attacked in December of 1945. This became known as the “Battle of the Bulge”. We went into a sandwich shop in the main square to get lunch . (This square is named McAuliffe Square after the American General who responded to a German request to surrender with a single word, “NUTS!!!”. ) We watched as the counterman made a sandwich that deserves a description. A foot long baguette was sliced open, then two ropes of mayonnaise were lovingly and energetically pumped across the bottom, followed by a foot-long breaded, deep-fried sausage or hot dog—couldn’t tell which - on top of which was scattered a heap of these Belgian fries. Finally, the finishing touch before it was wrapped to go was the energetic pumping of two more ropes of mayonnaise across the top of the fries. Belgians must have Teflon coated arteries.

17. Sources of Supply

2006-05-04T15:32:00.000-04:00

There are four sources to buy food in Europe. There are the traditional tiny specialty shops. Each sells a limited range of products. For example, there are bakeries that sell only bread and some that sell both bread and pastries. Some butchers sell only pork and pork products, specializing in making their own sausages and hams. Cheese stores are everywhere, usually selling local products.

Then there are the open-air markets. Different markets are somewhat different, but all will have stalls with fresh produce, enormous choices of cheese, eggs and milk, fish, poultry, wine, flowers, candies, baked goods, olives and prepared foods. When we mention some of these products, people look at us as if we are crazy. Someone sells only olives? Yes. About fifty different kinds of olives and a few other things to attract customers – perhaps a selection of spices – or nuts – or homemade pasta and sauces. Some markets also include household goods, fabrics, shoes and pocketbooks, and other specialties.

In many places there are markets which are similar to the open-air markets. They consist of individual stalls under a permanent roof. They are similar to the open-air markets except that they are inside. There are great ones in Florence, Italy (at the end of the thumbs) and in Frankfurt, Germany.

All the markets have places to have lunch. The choices range from pizza and Middle East specialties to Indonesian or Chinese specialties to crepes.

The word supermarket may not conjure up a great experience, but we think that the best supermarkets in the world are the big French chains that have stores in Italy, Belgium and other countries, particularly Auchon (at end of thumbs) and Carrefour. We’ve spent some wonderful hours wandering through their aisles. They are enormous and they are full of great food. Think the best American supermarket you’ve ever been in, and triple it!
When we return home from Europe, there is a long period when we really want to return so we can go back to those “food museums” to buy groceries.

16. The Glorious Food

2006-05-04T14:36:00.000-04:00

When the idea of traveling through Europe first came up, what do you think we thought about first? How much money we could save by using the RV as our rental car and hotel? No. Both of us thought immediately about the third and very important advantage-- being able to cook in our own kitchen. That would mean that we would be able to buy the food we see in the open-air markets and take it “home” with us. You can’t do that when you are staying in a hotel.

All the other great things about Europe aside, we really love to go food shopping in Europe. At the time we made our first plans, we only knew about the open-air markets that had always tempted us on previous trips. We’d never been able to buy anything much in them. But with our own kitchen, we would be able to really shop. We didn’t know about the wonderful supermarkets(there are pictures of an Auchon supermarket in Avignon, France, at the end of the thumbs in this link) in France and Italy – but we sure know now.

Everyone always talks about restaurants in France and Italy, but we find that our style of traveling allows us a much wider scope. We do go to restaurants (usually for lunch) but that is only part of the experience.
Because we have our own kitchen in our RV, we shop where the locals shop and eat the same things both “at home” and in the same neighborhood places they do.

Of course, the menu varies enormously by country. But our normal routine is to have breakfast in the RV, take public transport into city centers, spend the morning at museums or just walking, have lunch, then walk some more. By late afternoon we are dead tired and want to go back to the RV to rest and have dinner. We usually stay “home” all evening. That routine is quite similar no matter where we are.

We spend a lot more time shopping for food than is absolutely necessary, and we enjoy every minute of it.

15. More Beautiful!

2006-05-04T11:11:00.000-04:00

America is such a large place that only our cities are densely populated. Europe, on the other hand, has been populated for so many centuries that there are lots of densely populated villages, surrounded by what looks like miles of farmland. We want to see those ancient little villages built into the mountains that appear in the distance as we drive through mountainous areas.

In areas of France and Italy there are beautiful towns that are really built right into the mountains. We have visited the towns on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. They are crowded with tourists enchanted by the beauty of the mountain, the sea and the towns with their narrow streets climbing high into the stony mountain. The road to these towns goes around the edge of the mountains, with lots of hair-pin curves. There often is no way to see what is coming the other way.

We knew we didn’t want to take a wide vehicle like ours on these roads, so we took a local bus. We found ourselves in the bus, driving along the edge of the mountain. We came to a blind turn. The bus driver honked his horn to signal that he was coming. The driver of the large Mercedes coming the other way didn’t realize that he was supposed to stop to let the bus come through. He kept coming. As soon as he rounded the corner, he saw the bus and he stopped – but that didn’t give the bus enough room to go by. There was quite a long pause while the bus driver waited to see if the Mercedes would back up. It didn’t. Finally, the bus driver very carefully backed up that big bus close to the edge of the road, which was just enough to let the Mercedes go through – but not enough to send the bus down the cliff into the ocean far below! It was a tense moment, but probably not an uncommon one on those particular roads!

In France, there is a town called Rocamadour(Next to the last thumbnail. We had never heard of it before. An Englishman who drove a tour bus for a living told us about it. We met him in a French campground where he was spending his holidays. He said that when he brought a bus to visit Rocamadour, he had to notify the authorities. They had a team of men who help the bus get through the narrow streets that wind up the mountain. They carefully directed his approach. He claimed that when he had to park, the part of his bus which was behind the rear wheels was dangling over the edge of the cliff – but that the team knew exactly how to get the bus parked safely. We stopped to see Rocamadour but decided not to try to climb the steep streets.

The only similar construction we’ve seen in the U.S. were the pueblo dwellings in the far west. We didn’t climb into those either.

14. Beautiful, beautiful!

2006-05-04T10:47:00.000-04:00

Travelers have different interests. We happen to be big fans of history, of seeing how people used to live, of museums of all kinds, and of gardens.

When we are in the U.S., we are always interested in the 18th century buildings that still remain. In Europe, those are the new buildings! But even buildings in Europe that were erected in the centuries since America was founded are different from the old buildings we see here. For one thing, they are rarely made of wood. Once they may have been – but fires and long age have taken their toll. Most of the buildings we saw were made of stone, stucco, brick and other more durable materials.

Many of the great palaces and even mansions are still in use – not necessarily in the form they were built. Many old castles are now hotels – or museums. For example, there is a great art collection in Paris in what had been a private home. The Jacquesmart-Andre Museum is housed in a mansion that is as interesting as the art inside. It is so spectacular that it was used as the home of the wealthy hero of a 1960’s movie called “Gigi”.

Other places are equally beautiful. We both literally jumped in our seats when we first saw the walled city of Carcassone in southern France as we drove along the highway. It is so beautiful that it has the look of a Disney re-creation! And it too was featured in a movie. It became the castle that Robin Hood and his band attacked in “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves”.

Many beautiful old buildings have been adapted for use as museums. The two most famous are probably the Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, but there are lots more. Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that there are castles and palaces all over Europe that are still used as homes.

When we toured England, we joined the National Trust. It owns large numbers of mansions and gardens that are open to the public. And in nearly three months of traveling through the UK, we were unable to see more than a few of them. That’s why we need to return to see what we missed!

13. Differences in architecture from place to place

2006-05-04T10:01:00.000-04:00

We are often asked, “Which country or city is your favorite?” We can’t decide. To tell you the truth, just driving along the countryside or walking in the cities is a great experience. And it is different from place to place.

When we drive along the secondary roads in France, for example, we find the extreme changes in the styles of buildings interesting. Most buildings are a grey stucco – but the style of the building differs radically from area to area. Roofs may change from mansard-style to overhang with checkerboard patterns. Some buildings are obviously from what we call the Tudor or half-timbered style, with huge beams of wood visible on their exteriors. Others are “newer” – from the 16th or 17th century.

In Germany, the houses are nearly all white-washed with red tile roofs. Adelle wants to corner the market on red tiles for roofs! In Italy, houses are painted pink and yellow. Germany is buttoned up tight – everything is neat and in repair. In Italy, things are looser!

There are medieval buildings everywhere, even apartment houses from as long ago as the 13th century. We always want to ring the bell and ask to see the inside of the house. People are living in buildings that so old. In England, we got lucky. We went to visit some American friends who were renting a 15th century farmhouse and we go to see it. The granite walls were several feet thick, the ceilings were low, and modern conveniences were installed.

Many cities have wall fortifications and portcullises that still could be lowered. Everywhere there are castles from various centuries as well as palaces and chateaux from later times.

Different countries have architectural styles that are quite distinctive. In Amsterdam, for example, houses on the canals are tall, narrow and look like they are slightly tipped. In Gent 13th century warehouses front the canals. Bruges, which is very close to Gent, still has an entire 13th century center, full of tall, narrow and beautiful buildings with tops that are different from those in Amsterdam. The canals in Venice on the other hand, are lined with great villas.

We’ve been in a lot of cities and taken a lot of pictures. All of these places are distinctly different from each other, and all of them are beautiful. Of course, there are also modern areas in all these places, but the Europeans have made it a priority to keep whatever old buildings they have and have rebuilt old buildings that were deteriorating or were damaged. That is why just wandering through the streets is interesting and fun.

12. Roman Ruins

2006-05-04T09:33:00.000-04:00

The cathedrals in Europe are just one reminder of Europe’s age. Roman ruins are another.

There are Roman ruins all over Europe. Italy has ruins everywhere. In Rome, a tourist can walk in the forum exactly where Caesar walked and in the Naples region, there are the ruins of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

But there are also a lot of Roman ruins in France. Perigueux has the remains of a very large Roman villa, now under a glass museum building. Here you can see graffiti scratched into a wall by some Roman so many years ago and a pump that was used to supply water to the villa from an underground source. In the city of Arles, there is a Roman arena that is still in use today. The artist Vincent Van Gogh lived in Arles and one of his most famous paintings is of this arena. And there are the remains of both a theatre and a bath. The great Roman aquaduct, the Pont du Gard, is near Nimes. Lyon has a Roman wall as well as a Roman theater that is still in use today. (Note that the link provided for Arles, Pont du Gard and Lyon is to pictures taken in Northern England on our 2003 trip and are not captioned.)

England has many Roman ruins. Colchester castle is built on a Roman foundation, as are many other castles and cathedrals. The name of the city of Bath so named because it has the remains of a huge, luxurious of Roman baths. And there is the famous Hadrian’s Wall, on part of which we are seated in the picture in the profile section of this blogsite. To be frank, this wall was a little disappointing to us. The publicity we had been exposed to about it led us to expect a huge structure, perhaps as grand as the Great Wall of China which we had visited several years before. The remnants that we did see were barely five feet high and only a few feet thick—puny in comparison to the Great Wall. However, the ruins of the Roman forts that are spaced along it are very impressive and interesting structures. You can see the remains of the barracks, the large Commander’s quarters, the baths and the latrines, and parts of the water system and the hypercausts (the spaces under important buildings that supplied heat to the rooms above).

11. More on the Cathedrals and Churches of Europe

2006-05-04T09:07:00.000-04:00

As we traveled, we found ourselves drawn to cathedral after cathedral. Each is unique and unbelievably beautiful and modern people cannot help but be deeply impressed by the fact that such huge, soaring buildings were built so long ago without modern materials and machinery.

St. Denis Cathedral in a suburb just north of the Paris city limits was the one that served as the model for most subsequent cathedrals. It was a model because it incorporated many elements of the Gothic style for the first time, along with the Romanesque features characteristic of churches until the time St Denis was built. Romanesque cathedrals have a heavier look—huge pillars and rounded arches over doors and windows, while the Gothic style incorporates pointed arches, and pointed instead of round vaults in the ceilings. In addition, Gothic buildings use flying buttresses to reinforce the exterior walls on the outside of the buildings. These two features allowed the building of soaring edifices that seem to point to heaven. The effect is to create an airy, soaring internal space. Add to this the huge, tall stained glass windows that such a building allows, along with the great rose windows, and one is confronted with an environment that is simply an awesome pleasure to stand within.

We took pictures of many Cathedrals, inside and out. The Cathedral in Antwerp is one of the largest, having seven naves, one in the center and three naves on either side of the center. The Cathedral in Chartres is a masterpiece of Gothic art, while the Cathedral in Exeter, England is mostly Romanesque, and the Cathedral in Durham, England has a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque features. St Nicholas Church in Liepzig, Germany has an extremely pretty interior.

St Peters Cathedral in Rome is, of course, the church of the Roman Catholic Popes and is probably the most ornate of all the Cathedrals we visited. Among the other interesting sights in St Peters interior is the bronze statue of St Peter whose toes have been worn down by the thousands and thousands of the faithful who have walked by and rubbed his foot for luck. And there is a distinct circle of inlaid marble that marks the spot where Charlemagne, the earliest unifier of Europe, was crowned as Emperor on Christmas day in the year 800. So if you want to see what St Peters is like inside, check out the pictures.

10. The Cathedrals

2006-05-04T08:02:00.000-04:00

Some of our favorite places to tour while we’re in Europe are the churches and cathedrals. They are truly magnificent. European cathedrals and churches are considerably older than any buildings in the New World. Some cathedrals date from the eighth century. We have seen many, and some do stand out.

One example of a very old church is in Aigue Morte in the south of France. This walled town used to be a seaport. It was the port from which the Crusaders set sail for the Holy Land between the 11th and 12th centuries. They needed a place to worship since they were very religious, and they often had to hole up in that port for long periods waiting for enough money to get on with their task. So in the 11th century, they built a church. That church is still there, together with the lighthouse that guided them into and out of the port.

Another favorite is St Baaf’s Cathedral in Gent, which was built over an 9th century church. They still hold services in that church and there are still frescos dating from the time before the Cathedral was built. That Cathedral also has a very large Peter Paul Rubens painting and it houses a medieval masterpiece by the Van Eyck brothers, an altarpiece called “The Adoration of the Lamb”. (Our photo of a photo of that altarpiece can also be seen at the same place on our website.) A docent in that Cathedral heard us speaking what he recognized as American English. He came over to us to ask us if we were from the United States and when we said yes, he said that he wanted to thank us. When we asked what for, he related the following story.

When the Nazis occupied Gent, they removed the Van Eyck altarpiece and sent it to Germany as a “gift” to Air Marshall Goering. He, in turn, gave it as a “gift” to Hitler. When things started to go downhill for the Nazis the painting was removed to a safe place in a salt mine. The American forces liberating the area found the painting. Instead of shipping it off to the United States as the docent expected they would do, they actually returned it, unharmed, to the Cathedral. He then told us that he and the citizens of Gent will be eternally grateful to the Americans because of this act. Apparently he makes it his business to thank every American he sees when he is on duty.

We’re not sure if it was the story or the way this elderly gentleman told us, but both of us were very moved and proud when we heard about this incident.

9. The European City

2006-05-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

One of these great charms of European cities is that many have compact historic districts—usually ancient by American standards - in which pedestrians have a much easier time walking than cars do driving. The streets are very narrow and parking on the streets is often impossible. But such streets are nice for walking.

And by ancient, we mean walking on streets where the buildings date from as long ago as the 1200’s, which is about 400 years before any Europeans had set foot on what is now American soil. Just take a look at the pictures we took walking the streets of Perigueux, Martel, Rocamadour or Amboise in France, or Gent, Antwerp or Bruges in Belgium and Prague in the Czech Republic. We find these streets full of beautiful, architecturally different buildings to be very special. This kind of scenery is just not here.

These historic districts in the cities and towns have lots of shops with tastefully decorated windows, street vendors offering all sorts of snacks and refreshments and ice cream shops including Adelle’s ice cream assembly in Liepzig and our cappucinos in Rome, hurdy gurdys, and those wonderful oases for hot and foot-sore pedestrians, the outdoor cafes.)

Nearly every city has some beautiful and ancient monument or building. Sometimes it is a giant clock that has figures that pop out like those on a cuckoo clock. In other places, it might be an old building built to house a street market. Often the building may be a former monastery or cathedral. No matter what, there is always something special to see in every town.

8. Why Europe and Not the U.S.?

2006-05-03T13:40:00.000-04:00

People often ask us why we would want to camp in Europe. After all, there is a lot to see right here. That’s true. We have seen most of the country. We’ve been up and down both the east and west coasts, been in many of America’s big cities, and visited a large number of the beautiful national parks and monuments in the west. There is still much to be seen here but at the time we decided to travel in Europe in our RV, there was much more that we had not yet seen in Europe. And, after three trips there, there still is. We hope that we will be able to visit the places we missed in the US someday.

The beauty of traveling in Europe is its diversity. Through a long history, different countries have developed real differences in architecture and in culture as well as in language. Even cities in the same country are often very different from one another.

We like RV travel better in Europe than here. In America, almost all campgrounds are located outside city areas. In Europe, nearly every city has at least one campground either inside city limits or close by. Furthermore, in America you would need to drive from the campground into the city, since there is rarely public transit available. That’s why so many RV’s tow a car. In Europe, on the other hand, you can get public transit into tourist areas from the campgrounds. No one tows another vehicle.

For example, on our UK trip we stayed on a farm in the Campsie hills about 15 miles from Glasgow, Scotland. There was a bus stop literally at the end of the farmhouse driveway that took us to Glasgow in about a half-hour. In England, we also stayed on a farm in Bebington, which is across the Mersey River from Liverpool. We took a bus right outside the driveway to that historic city. The Paris campground is in the Bois de Bologne and there is a bus outside the gate that will take you to the Metro. In Rome and Florence the bus stops across the street.

So one reason we like RV’ing in Europe is that this way of traveling allows us to visit their cities and towns. We like cities and towns here in the US but European cities have some charms that are lacking in American cities.

7. The Food Advantage

2006-05-03T13:33:00.000-04:00

Anyone who knows us will tell you that we are food groupies. And food is one of the big pluses when traveling in Europe. Not only food in restaurants – which is exceptional – but the food that every housewife buys.

Buying food in Europe is one of the best parts of the travel experience. Our favorites continue to be either the open-air markets or the supermarkets (especially in France and Italy). We wander happily through the aisles of the huge supermarkets for hours, or spend the morning walking through the open-air market.

These are similar to our farmers’ markets but with a much greater variety of things for sale. They are full of local produce, raw and cooked food, local wines, cheese and bread. We have many pictures of some of the ones we liked on our website, in Amboise, and in Lyon. Look at the mouth-watering huge pans of paella and other foods.(The pictures of Lyon are grabbed frames from videos and are not captioned. But we think you will find them.)

Supermarkets do vary. But there are particular ones that are true “food museums”. Their stock is just not the same as supermarkets here. There are 60’ refrigerated cases of soft cheese, 60’ cases of yogurt, 60’ cases of hard cheese and small aisles of paper goods. You could eat a different kind of pate every day for a month – with a different kind of ham. Baked goods are not only beautiful but delicious. Bread is excellent – and cheap. Food shopping is an exciting experience.

There are very few markets like these in the US. Shopping in them, and taking the food home to eat in your own home on wheels is one of the great treats in store for anyone traveling the way we do in Europe.

6. Differences between American and European Campgrounds

2006-05-03T11:32:00.000-04:00

European campgrounds are different in a couple of ways from the facilities that Americans are used to. For example, in the U.S. many campgrounds offer full “hookups” for each RV or trailer. That means each site has a faucet so you can connect a hose and have water in your unit, and it also has individual electric outlets delivering 30-50 amps of power. Many campgrounds even have individual waste-water disposal sites.

We have never encountered such full hookups In Europe. There is electricity – but you may need a long cord to connect to a central electric unit that services four to eight sites. Furthermore, this electric service differs in the amount of current you receive. Of course, you must have a converter that changes the 220 volt system in Europe to the 110 volt system that is in American RVs. But the amount of current you get from the campground ranges from 5 amps to a maximum of 16 at 220 volts. That translates into 10-32 amps of power at 110 volts. The 32 amps should run anything on board an American RV, even an air-conditioner. We aren’t sure about that, though. We had a slight run-in with a low overpass early in our first trip, and we lost our air conditioner. We’ve never replaced it because we’ve never needed it – even in the heat of summer in Italy! The 6 amps probably will only run your fridge and lights.

Clean water is available but not at every site. There is a central site for camping vehicles in every campground. It has the water to fill your tank and a place to dump waste-water. We use the water in the tank only for cooking and washing and fill a large container with fresh drinking water daily.

The “sanitary blocks” in European campgrounds are similar to US facilities. Toilets are often in their own buildings. Showers all have dressing room areas and locking doors so they are very private. In all the times we’ve gone for a shower, we have only rarely had to wait even a few minutes.

Campgrounds often include markets and restaurants or even bars. Many are resorts, with playgrounds, arcades, game rooms and pools.

You can see some examples of the campground facilities in Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Florence and in Montalto Marine in the Northern part of Italy on these links, and more on our website at www.rv2europe.com.

The biggest difference may be that many campgrounds in France and Germany are closed for lunch, which which means you cannot check in or out until lunch is over. This is Europe, after all.

5. Availability of Campgrounds

2006-05-03T11:30:00.000-04:00

We’ve spent a lot of time in Europe. In the 173 days we’ve spent camping on the continent and the more than 80 days we were in the UK, we’ve visited a lot of campgrounds.

The fact that there are so many campgrounds came as a surprise to us. Partly that’s because when we began our first journey, we didn’t know where to find good information about campgrounds. But even without good prior information, we had no trouble finding facilities. As we drove into a town or city, there always seemed to be a sign for a campground. Later we learned that in France alone there are more than 10,000 campgrounds. Of course, all of this made perfectly good sense when we realized that one reason for the abundance of campgrounds is the long vacations that Europeans get. Unlike in the U.S., vacations in most European countries last three or four weeks. When you get that long a period off from work, camping is a good choice.

With only one or two exceptions, we’ve found that European facilities are clean. The staff always includes someone with at least a nodding acquaintance with English because a great many of their clients are English. On the rare occasions when no one speaks any English, we’ve managed.

There are many differences between campgrounds in the U.S. and those in Europe and we will go into these differences in our next posting.

4. Other Advantages of Rv'ing in Europe

2006-05-03T11:21:00.000-04:00

What we really love about camping in Europe is that there are campgrounds in the cities! Even in Amsterdam, Paris, Rome. Florence, Berlin and even London (The pictures in the London link are not of London alone but include photos of campsites throughout the UK)! And because European public transit is good, you can drive into a campground, park your rig, and go into the tourist area just like any other tourist. Except for one thing. The hotel based tourist in Rome is paying $150 plus. We were paying $30. A friend just made reservations for a hotel in Venice. The least expensive he could find was over $150. Last summer we stayed in a campground in Fusina, a 10 minute ferry ride across the lagoon, for less than $25.

In Amsterdam, we drive into the campground, take a short walk to the Metro. We walk slowly but even for us, it takes ten minutes. Then we get take a fifteen-minute trip to Central Station. From there, we can go anywhere in Amsterdam or to nearby towns like Haarlem and Delft.

In contrast, campgrounds in the US tend to be located a long way from cities and public transportation to the cities ranges from spotty to non-existent. That is why one sees so many RV’s towing cars here in the US. We have never seen an RV with a car in tow in Europe. RV’ing in the US is wonderful for people who want to get away from cities and experience the nice things in rural areas and in our great national parks. But if you also like to poke around cities, Europe offers both experiences.

We found another big plus traveling in an RV in Europe. Our apartment on wheels, allows us more of a local experience than being confined to a hotel and to restaurants. In a hotel you meet only the clerks and other employees. In a restaurant, you only meet the wait staff. But in a campground, you’ll meet other European campers. We’ve met people from all over Europe. We’ve even been invited to visit!

3. RV’ing in Europe

2006-05-03T11:15:00.000-04:00

To begin with, the minute you link “RV” to “Europe”, people say “but the price of fuel is so high over there”. The price of fuel does appear to be a problem, but it really isn’t. It is true that motorhomes do not get great mileage and that fuel is much more expensive in Europe than here—two times more expensive at least. At current prices, that means $6.00 per gallon compared to $3.00. But as it turns out, that is not really so bad because there is an offset. That offset has to do with the distances one travels. Europe is very small and the US is very big. How small? Well, the entire country of France is geographically smaller than the state of Texas!

In 2001 we toured the U.S. in our motorhome. We started in Tampa, Florida, going across the Florida panhandle, through Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Then we drove on to New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona, and to San Diego via Las Vegas, and up the west coast through California, Oregon and Washington to Vancouver and Victoria Island. We returned east by going across Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and New York State to Connecticut. Our trip took 73 days – and it required us to travel 11,500 miles.

The following year we traveled some 83 days mostly in Belgium, Holland and France and covered only 4,500 miles.(2002-2003 trip Maps) Even though the cost per gallon was so much higher in Europe, the total cost of fuel on the European trip was about the same as the total cost of fuel for the American trip. That was true in our next two trips as well.(2005 trip Map)

Shorter distances are a real advantage. You spend much less time driving. And remember that you don’t travel every day. On average, we have traveled only about 50 miles a day on our trips in Europe. That is not much more than an hour and a half of driving time per day. (We are slow.) A typical “moving” day meant having a leisurely breakfast, leaving the campground and arriving at our next campground in time to hop on a bus or a tram and having lunch in the destination city. On our US trip we averaged 158 miles per day—more than three times longer. On some days we traveled all day between destinations.

2. Why RV?

2006-05-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

Our next trip will be from May 17 to July 26. We’ll post letters here about our adventures as we mosey along. As of today, we are planning to spend part of the time in northern France and part in the UK – but that may change.

Until 2001, we traveled the “usual” way. We rented cars, stayed in hotels and ate in restaurants. Then we bought a small RV and discovered that traveling in your own motor home has some big advantages. Now don’t lose interest just because you don’t own one now or think you would never own one. You may find reasons to change your mind.

RV’ing is a wonderful way to travel here in the United States. Before we talk about traveling by RV in Europe, let us explain the joys of motorhome travel to those of you who haven’t had that experience.

It’s quite simple. The motorhome serves as your hotel, rental car, and place to eat, all in one. You won’t have to make reservations that lock you into a set travel plan or go out to eat for every meal. You can decide every day where you want to go. It also means that you do not have to pack and unpack every time you get to a new place.

If you are like us and always stay at “affordable” hotels, a motorhome has another advantage. It is always clean and really comfortable. And, because campgrounds generally are friendlier places than impersonal hotels, you may even make new friends.

The next post will describe the differences between RV’ing in Europe and here. We think that traveling in an RV in Europe is nicer in some ways than traveling that way here.

1. Who are we and what are we trying to do in this blog?

2006-05-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

Hello. We are Adelle and Ron Milavsky. You can read a little about us in by clicking on the “profile” link on the right.

We love to travel. Since 2001 we have made four wonderful long trips. Three of them were in Europe and would be considered somewhat unusual by most Americans. But they were so wonderful that we want to tell other people all about them. We think that other people would love to travel the way we do if they really thought about it. Besides, there is a lot to know beforehand.

Even if you aren’t ready to go now, we think you’ll still be interested in our way of traveling, which is by motor home. We’ll explain how we travel and will post letters from abroad when we start our next trip.

In addition, you can visit our website at www.rv2europe.com. We set this up after our book about our travels was published. The site has information about the book (“Take Your RV to Europe: The Low-Cost Route to Long-Term Touring”), our letters from the 2005 trip around Europe, route maps of all our journeys and over 1400 captioned pictures of the places we visited.

It doesn’t matter that most of those who read this aren’t RV’ers. Even the skeptics will find that this is one of the least expensive ways to travel when you can spend a long time away from home. We’ll explain it all in our postings.