Christmas
Christmas News
There’s One Final Part to Our Christmas Trip Story
I always fly with Qantas and I’m one of just a few frequent flyer members who joined in the first year of Qantas’ Frequent Flyer Program being established that is still flying at a platinum level. I joined the Frequent Flyer Program in 1984 when the domestic airline, Trans Australia Airlines (TAA), was renamed Australian […]
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Our Last Days in London
We have spent our last two days in London catching up with the last few things that the girls wanted to see. One of these was Buckingham Place and we put this off until yesterday as that was the day that they were changing the guard. We arrived one hour before the parade and the […]
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Welcoming the New Year in London
As we have been finding out, London is a very busy place over the New Year period. Everyone gets right the festivities, even the supervisor of the breakfast restaurant at our hotel. Yesterday was New Year’s Eve. We had lost one of Violet’s joggers somewhere along the way so our first task was to head […]
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Big New Year’s Crowds in London
We arrived in London on Saturday after a pleasant one hour train trip from Amiens to Paris and then a two hour ride on the Eurostar to London. By the time we had taxied from St Pancras Station to our hotel in Kensington, it was juat about dark. Sunrise here is currently at 8.00 am […]
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Our Australian Connections in the Wars in France
On our final day in France, we set some time aside to visit some of the historical places where Australians served in WW1. I have a familial connection with this area as my grandfather, Walter, was wounded for the second time and his war ended near here on 8 August 1918. He was in the […]
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South to Amiens
We initially found it difficult to get from Bruges to Amiens as all the train services seemed to require a trip via Paris. By good luck, I found a transport service that enabled us to be picked up in Bruges and driven to Amiens yesterday. For a few extra Euro, we were able to build […]
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A Hidden Treasure in Bruges
We checked out of our hotel in Bruges this morning, but not before we explored the basement where some ruins of an old church and artists from the original City walls can be seen. The former site of St Donatian’s is now occupied by the Hotel. The foundations of the cathedral were uncovered in 1955. […]
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Christmas Night Dinner in Brugge
We’ve just finished a wonderful meal in the restaurant of the Crowne Plaza Hotel where we are staying in Brugge. The food was superb and the service was excellent. The all-inclusive price included champagne and wine. We had a table by the window and that enabled me to look out across the town square. I […]
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Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Brugge
Our Christmas Eve in Brugge began with breakfast together and then a walk round the market square to buy some presents for each other. It was a cloudy day and cool, with the temperature hovering around 8C. Belgium is famous for a number of things and they are all available here in Brugge. The obvious […]
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We’re in Bruges for Christmas
Our 1 1/2 hour train trip from Gare de Nord in Paris to Brussels was easy and uneventful. We were on a long train that split into two in Brussels – one half continuing on to Amsterdam and the other terminating at Brussels. I measured our speed on an iPhone app and for most of […]
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Our European Christmas – Third and Final Day in Paris
This was our first wet day but it only drizzled a little and it wasn’t even worthwhile getting out our umbrellas. We had one last thing to do before we leave Paris and that was to visit the Arc de Triumph. This is one of the most famous monuments in Paris and stands at the […]
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Our European Christmas – Second Day in Paris
Today was one of the days where everything fell nicely into place. We planned our day around spending the morning on the Isle de la Citie and the afternoon at the Louvre. It all worked very well. We were welcomed warmly at breakfast by the restaurant manager who remembered us from yesterday and had the […]
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