Hi, it’s Pauline here. This blog is mostly aimed at the friends and family of my sister Patricia (or, after a week in Paris…..Pa-tree-zee-ah as she now thinks it should be pronounced). Of course, you’re all welcome to read about her adventures with us – we just thought that now that Patricia has gone home, we should put our version of events on line in our own defence. So, here comes a bit of a travelogue, recounting some of the events of the past four weeks since we knocked on the door of her Montmartre hotel room door in Paris where she’d had a few days on her own first, and took her on a tour of Europe (well, some of it anyway!). There’s a few pictures of “Travels with Patricia” attached as well…..click here

We started with a return to the first camp we’d stayed in back in mid-June, in the Somme area of northern France after a visit to a supermarket to restock the van, and a quick trip back to a couple of the war memorials we’d seen earlier but wanted to share with our new tenant. After dinner that night, the first live attempt to make up the second bed in the van….and very successful we were too. So successful unfortunately, that Patricia obviously decided that she couldn’t do any better than Andrew and I at it, so left us the job every night for the next 4 weeks! Katrina and Bernard, you’ll be pleased to know though that the bed making and unmaking is a breeze and the bed itself is reportedly very comfortable.

Our next stop was a quick trip back to Bruges which we’d thoroughly enjoyed the first time and felt sure Patricia would also really love the old medieval buildings, the town square, the canals and the boat trip. We weren’t disappointed as she did appreciate all of that – what we hadn’t counted on was the liking she took to the local beers. Admittedly it was a very hot day, but really!! Eventually though, we prised her away from the Beer Wall (a bar which supposedly sells every one of the 1300+ beers brewed in Belgium) and headed for Bruxelles. The plan there, or in nearby Leuven, was to catch up with another of our Clemenger cousins but sadly that didn’t happen due to some illness on their part although we hope to get back to Belgium later in the trip to see Emma and her family. Instead, we had a couple of quiet days near Bruxelles and then a very nice visit to Leuven for Sunday lunch and a walk around the very old cobblestoned streets near the cathedral. It looked a lovely old town, and Patricia really appreciated the chance to see where some of her ancestors had originated from.

We then spent a night in country #3 – Luxembourg – before heading on to Germany and a couple of nights in a camp on the banks of the Neckar River a few kilometres from Heidelberg. On the day in the city, we purchased Heidelberg Cards and were tourists for the day – eating apple strudel, visiting the very old Heidelberg Schloss (and incidentally as part of that, the unlikely but extremely interesting Museum of German Pharmaceutical History!), walking across the Old Bridge, going up to the castle on a funicular railway and then walking down, and then chancing upon an organ recital in an old Church below the castle which was really good. All in all, a good visit to a very nice town, and a place which Patricia really enjoyed.

The next day took us in the morning to the Sinsheim Aviation and Transport Museum which we all enjoyed (highlights maybe being the Air France Concorde and the Russian Tupolev-144 aircraft on display that you could go into) and then in the afternoon on a three country sprint from Germany into Switzerland where we couldn’t find a camping spot and then into Austria where we could, at Bregenz. We kept the run of countries up the next day by going back into Switzerland briefly (don’t tell the authorities though, cos we didn’t buy a windscreen ‘vignette’ to allow us onto the autobahn), quickly through Liechtenstein where we had lunch and got a stamp in our passports, then back into Austria, before crossing the Ehrwald Pass back into Germany to visit Neuschwanstein Castle before calling it a day. All in all, we travelled 370km that day when, had we just gone from Bregenz to Neuschwanstein direct, the trip would only have been 103km!

You know some of the story of the next few days, when we visited Oberammergau – went to a German play and climbed a German mountain – and then spent one more night in Austria where we visited Salzburg and enjoyed a full range of music from Mozart to Rodgers & Hammerstein. We then headed south to Italy and had some great times showing Patricia Venice, San Marino (that was European country #9 for her), Tuscany (the countryside in general, Florence in particular), and then Rome. In Rome, the van started to fall apart and so, coincidentally, did Patricia! Well, that’s a slight exaggeration but she did insist on not wearing a hat on our big sightseeing day and the combination of a lot of walking, seats on the open top deck of the “Hop On, Hop Off” bus, and a temperature in the high 30s all combined to take a bit of a toll! However, she survived (as did we) and could add places like St Peter’s, the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel, the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum to her list of touristy tick-offs.

The problems with the van which couldn’t be fixed locally because most of Italy closes for August and also a sense that we were running a bit short on time after being in Bavaria and Austria for longer than we’d planned, meant that we put our nose down and tail up and got back to France as quickly as possible. That then gave us Patricia’s last full week to spend enjoying France – and we did just that!

We made the most of being in one of our favourite parts of the world – the South of France – and made sure Patricia got to see places like Monaco, Nice, Grasse, Apt and Gourdes. We stayed in a couple of camps, one near Nice and the other right at the top of the hill above Gourdes which many of you will know is one of the most picturesque (and most photographed) villages in France. In between those spots we had a night in a “France Passion” which is one of a series of free camping spots in rural France and which I think will be the subject of Andrew’s next blog post – this one was on the property of an olive oil and wine producer at Fignieres in Provence.

After Gourdes we headed north on the Autoroute to Lyon and encountered the bouchon which we learned means traffic jam in French slang. This involved nose to tail traffic in all lanes, both ways, for many many kilometres which held us up for hours and completely defeated the purpose of paying the toll and using the supposedly faster route that day! The bouchon is caused by a unique French summertime custom – all rental holiday homes in France, of which there are tens of thousands, are rented by the week, from 4pm Saturday to 10am the following Saturday during the peak season. Consequently, everyone using such accommodation is either travelling to or from on Saturday afternoon….and we got well and truly caught in the ensuing chaos! Anyway, we eventually reached our destination and spent a night in another “Passion” vineyard (this one in Beaujolais country) which was a great experience – the next day we moved further north via more delightfully picturesque French countryside to a camp on the banks of the Loire River at St Saur.

After that, all we had left to show Patricia was a bit more of Paris so we spent a day at Paris Disneyland and a day and a half on the tourist trail in the city, adding the Tuileries, l’Opera, the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, the Champs Élysées etc etc to the list. We also found time for some nice dining including a return visit to a place we visited in 2009 – Le Procope which is the oldest restaurant in Paris and where Napoleon used to eat!

Oh, speaking of restaurants, we met the owner of a creperie in Montmartre…..but that’s a story that Pa-tree-zee-ah will have to tell you herself if she chooses to. What goes on tour, stays on tour!!