#106 2022 October 29- November 4. Nomad Diary. Dover Passenger Ferry to Calais. Calais to Roeselare, Belgium. Lyon, France. Barcelona, Spain.

 

Sailing away from England at Dover. The white cliffs of Dover.

A ferry leaving Dover at the English Channel crossing to Calais, France.

On the train in Calais headed for Belgium today.

Darrell’s luggage and backpack above my luggage. I’m holding my backpack.

We easily got to Belgium and moved into our roomy apartment just next to the train station.

Saturday. 29. Up at 5am. Getting our things together, morning exercise DDP Energy stretching routine. Make and clean up breakfast. Empty trash cans. Start the laundry with sheets and towels. Hang the laundry on the drying rack in closed room away from the dog. Take care of the dog: water, feed, walk. Message our host once we have left. Taxi at 7:15am to take us 25 minutes to the Dover Passenger Ferry run by P&O to Calais. Catch a free shuttle to city center to find the train station. Three trains to Roeselare, Belgium. Earlier in the week Darrell researched and purchased both of us a Eurorail Pass for one month that gives us 4 days of travel for one price. We made our train connections and did well getting to Roeselare by about 6:30 pm. Our apartment here was right next to the train station and super easy to find and to get into. The apartment is beautiful and spacious with high ceilings and architecturally appealing wood beams. We put our luggage down at the apartment. After checking out our 3 level, 2 bedroom place we go next door for a dinner of pizza. Then we enjoy a quiet comfortable bed to sleep well.

Week’s Highlights:

Our apartment out front. 

Preacher who Darrell had met online (10 years ago!) with his wife. They drive 3 hours from the Netherlands on the 5th Sunday (4x a year) to come to this congregation in Belgium. We were so pleased to meet them in person!

Three church members having lunch with us and others from Belgium.

Three more members from the Belgium congregation. The older woman is 95 or more. She is the mother of the man and 9 other children, many of her sons live around the world and preach in Canada, the US and Australia! The younger woman is the man’s wife. They made us feel so welcomed into their congregation today!

A statue in Belgium about 2-3 blocks from our apartment.

Sunday. 30. We find a restaurant for breakfast that is a couple of doors down from our apartment. It is a buffet and two times what we normally spend eating out, but we don’t want to go look for any other place and we stay. They are welcoming. The place is full and the breakfast is delicious. We walk about 3 blocks to where the church of Christ meets that Darrell found through some of his teaching connections through the years. There was a nice group of families of all ages. They conducted a bi-lingual service since we were there. Darrell’s acquaintance gave a sermon and left time for Darrell to also present a sermon. After the singing, prayers and communion we were invited out to lunch with the whole group. We rode in a car with the preacher and his wife to a Chinese buffet for lunch. We had a really nice lunch and stayed visiting for 2-3 hours with many of the the church members. It was so nice to meet and talk with people since they could speak English and were very kind and friendly with us. Another couple took us back to our apartment. We went to a grocery and bought food to make our breakfast on Monday and pack a lunch for our travel day.

At this train station in France, we had to change train companies and change train stations too. We stood in a line here where I took this picture to get our ticket and train change correct. Once it was our turn in about 20 minutes, the clerk sends us to the other side of the the train in this picture to find the other train company that we needed to get our tickets from! So we go over and find that line and stand for another 20 minutes! Thankfully we had just under an hour for our train change. Once we got our correct tickets from the correct train company office, we had to walk out of this station to one down the street and find our train. Remember that we are rolling our luggage with us! Lol! We succeeded all this!! Yay for us and yay for Darrell for his checking times and locations!

We arrived to Lyon. Here is a street scene close to the train station as we are walking about ½ mile to our apartment.

Our apartment in Lyon.

Us talking to our grandson Owen. We are so excited to see him in December!

Our delicious dinner we shared at a Turkish restaurant. It was a holiday in France and we tried to eat French food and couldn’t find anyone open! lol.

Monday. 31. We travel by train to Lyon, France and arrive about 2pm. While at the train station we go to the ticket sales to get our tickets for Barcelona on Thursday. This is all rather complicated because this week is a holiday week and the trains are booked out. The ticket office gives us a non-direct route to get to Barcelona, but it requires that we catch trains along the way and purchase some tickets once we are in Spain. All complicated and we will do this trip on Thursday. After we get our ticket for the first leg of our Barcelona trip, we walk to our apartment a little more than a half mile, pulling our luggage behind us. The weather is good and we are glad for that! We arrive to the street of our apartment earlier than check in time. So we just find a place to rest where we can sit and lean against a half wall while we wait for our place to be ready. Once it is time, we check into an efficiency apartment right out of the pages of IKEA! It’s cute and clean and on the first floor! We go out to find dinner and to grocery shop. We walk more than a mile, maybe two and finally decide on eating at a Turkish place. It was clean, quiet and tasty. We shared a dinner plate that was loaded with salad and different meats. After dinner we went grocery shopping and then back to our apartment in the dark. We sleep good.

Ornate gate at the park.

Pictures from the park.

Tuesday. 1. We wake up early this day, 5-6 am. We skip exercise and go straight to making breakfast. Then we work on the computer and phones for a while before heading out at 9am to 12:30 walking. We walk to a park I found called: Parc de la Tête d’Or. It means: park of the golden head. It was a beautiful park and massive with a small lake and a zoo. For lunch at the apartment I cook salmon and mushrooms, make a salad. We eat plenty and have a good nap too. Around 5:30, I have toast for dinner and Darrell goes out to find some dinner for himself. He returns with some cookies and mushroom soup he got at a store. It was a nice meal in. In the evening we get online for Bible class with the group at Tunbridge Wells, England. 

Beautiful day in Lyon.

Climbing the hill to the Roman ruins.

Roman ruins for free!

Steep stairs in this neighborhood.

Wednesday. 2. Today is another beautiful and sunny day. We leave our apartment for a walk to the Roman ruins about 2.5 miles from where we are living and across two rivers that flow through the city. The ruins are a steep uphill climb. We love looking at the architecture and the views as we climb up the hill. At the base of the hill are tourist streets built into the old 14-15th century structures. There are restaurants getting ready for lunch time in the next couple of hours. We stopped and had a cappuccino. Once we get to the ruins, they are free to walk into and roam around. There are two amphitheaters and an original first century Roman road! The seating has been upgraded and is now used for concerts. Much of the old stone remains. 

View of closest restaurant from our apartment.

We have a washer and a DRYER!! 

Nice park near our apartment and the train station.

Thursday. 3. We wake up with an alarm early at 4:45 am to get ready to leave. Our train leaves Lyon for Narvonne at 6:30am. We clean up, pack, have breakfast, and walk to the station with our suitcases in tow. We have first class seats. The seats are roomy and the car is quiet. Today was unsure for when or exactly how we would get to Barcelona. We had to purchase tickets inside of Spain for that rail system. We did it with Darrell knowing how to look at the schedules and book us into first class seats again. We had to pay the upgrade fees to get seats because 2nd class was full. We got to Barcelona by 12:30, lunch time! We stopped at a coffee shop for a snack break because our apartment which is close to the station isn’t ready until 3pm. We spend some time sitting in a park too. We go on to our apartment and get into the building. Our maid is cleaning our place and says we can leave our luggage, but can’t come back until 5pm. So we leave the luggage and go walking. We go to a tapas (small plates) place for dinner just next to our building. We also go grocery shopping and we bought: eggs, bread, bananas, pears, avocado, salt, cheese, salami, and laundry soap. The items I have carried in my backpack are: olive oil, vinegar, tea, coffee, jelly, cookies and a garlic bulb.  In our apartment we have a washer and a dryer! So nice to have a dryer after mostly not having on for 4 months.

 

Streets in Barcelona.

Picture at Montserrat

Chilly at Montserrat

View from Monastery

Friday. 4. Awake between 5-6am. Exercise. Make our breakfast. Darrell works on the computer until about 11:15ish. We picked out a bus tour to Montserrat that leaves at 2pm. We walk a couple of miles to get to the bus station and the tour. We stop along the way to have lunch at an empanada place. Our tour bus is a drive to the monastery and takes over and hour to get there. We ride the cogwheel train up the mountain to the monastery. At the monastery there is an incline funicular railway tram going higher on the mountain. I did this ride with my sisters and brother in law a few years ago. Darrell and I didn’t get a chance to do this today. But we did get to explore the paths around the mountain on the level of the monastery. It was chilly and we wore our jackets and got some hot tea while there. Our bus tour headed back to the city and we arrived back after dark around 7:15pm. We walked back to our apartment and had dinner at the restaurant closest to our place. We were happy tired going to bed around 9:30pm!  

Nomad Notes. So much of my day to day life is quite regular and peaceful.

Morning: I have a morning routine that I enjoy: DDP exercise routines (with Darrell); breakfast (with Darrell; cooking together when we are in an apartment); Bible reading and prayer time; social time (online; on ship with meet ups; with Darrell traveling or touring); laundry, shopping, computer blog time.

Afternoon: lunch (with Darrell: sometimes traveling or touring); rest time or social time.

Evening: early (5-7pm) dinner (with Darrell: cooking or eating out); reading, background music, DIY tv shows or antique shopping tv show with a light snack, Bible class online or in person.

Bedtime: 9-10pm.

Our days are split between: Travel Days (Packed up leaving one place and going to the next place), Touring Days (excursions to museums or tours), and House Days (where we live in a place, an apartment or house, a hotel, or a cruise ship). 

Apartment/House Days differ from Cruise Days. We call cruise days ‘Premium’ or splurge. So much is taken care of for us. There is a set place for us to live in our room. We have access to laundry service and to a laundromat on Princess ships. All meals are available onboard which means we don’t cook anything, we just select when and what we want to eat. There are no security concerns about exiting our room into a city street. Our ship days and our excursion touring days are limited by the ship’s schedule. We have room service (like in a hotel where there is no housekeeping or dishes to wash).