Day 45 Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Our new Airbnb in Mulhouse is lovely. We have nine days here to relax a bit and get ready for the second half of our trip. It is hard to believe but today marks the midway point of our holiday.
This is the view from our third floor balcony.
We are both ready for a restful day. Bob does go for little walk and buys a few grocery necessities. On the way home he walked down this street that has a lot of graffiti art…some better than others!
Day 37 Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Our Airbnb apartment in Stuttgart isn’t big but it has everything we need. We had a hard time finding a parking spot last night as parking is on the street, and there weren’t any available places. Finally after driving around the block a few times we found a place, but it is a couple of blocks away so we make several trips to bring all our stuff inside. Because we cook our meals at home, we have three bags of groceries besides our suitcases. We are soon settled and have our dinner.
Today is a quiet day for both of us. We crammed a lot in yesterday and had over four hours of driving, which made it a long day. I worked a bit on my journal and blog and Bob went for a walk and to pick up some fresh bread and fruit.
Day 30 Monday, September 29, 2025
Today is a travel day to Frankfurt Germany and we have been travelling for month already. Bob says we have to stop and see another Eiffel Tower along the way but it is not quite as impressive as the one in Paris!
We had no idea that this is wine country. There are vineyards on both sides of the road as far as we can see.
The hills around each town we pass are all growing row after row of grapes. We see the odd group harvesting grapes but the main harvest occurred earlier this month.
We stop in Trier and have our picnic lunch on a bench with this view.
The breeze blew water spray and made a rainbow just as I took this photo.
This foot of Emperor Constantine is a replica of one of the largest marble foots to have survived since antiquity. It was part of a 12 metre high seated statue of Constantine.
The Roman Baths are considered to be the largest Roman baths outside of Rome. 
The ruins are impressive!
We are able to walk through the underground tunnels that would have been used as a service level for the maintenance of the bath’s heating system. This is the entrance to the tunnels.
There was a group of schoolchildren ahead of us…probably the loudest group we have encountered on our travels! We took a side tunnel to avoid walking behind them.
There are a maze of tunnels and we are free to explore as we wish. That is Bob peeking around the bend in the tunnel.
We do get a bit lost down here, but it was a lot of fun exploring these interesting tunnels.
Which way should we go!
This photo shows the size of the original baths, although they were never actually completed. The ruins of today are superimposed on the original baths.
The ruins are impressive, but they are only half the height of the original structure!
We pass this lovely garden on the way to visit Trier’s cathedral.
Photos really do not show how beautiful and enormous the trees are. I wish we were able to grow trees this large back home. These trees wouldn’t survive our colder climate.
Trier Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the oldest cathedral in Germany. Construction started in the 4th century and it was built upon the foundations of ancient Roman structures.
And yes, the inside of the cathedral is very impressive.
It has one of the most ornate organs we have seen…
and many huge sculptures with multiple figures. We walk up these stairs for a view of the nave.
This beautiful blue and white Baroque stucco work decorates the choir loft of the Cathedral. It is stunning and unusual. This is the first time we have seen anything like this in a cathedral.
We pass this building on the way to the Nigra Gate. There are many ornately decorated buildings in Trier.
I love watching the bubble makers, and the children trying to catch the bubbles. This fellow made huge bubbles…
and lots of smaller bubbles. I would love to know how to do this.
At the end of the street we can see the Nigra Gate, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Porta Nigra, or Black Gate, is the largest Roman gate in Northern Europe. It was part of the defensive walls and gates that surrounded Trier in 200AD. It is incredibly well preserved, especially when you consider that it was completed around 200AD, and it almost two thousand years old!
We pay 6€ each to climb inside the gate. This ‘window’ has a pile of coins, perhaps people making a wish?
A view inside the gate.
We can see the Trier Cathedral from the second level of the gate.
Grafiti has been around for a long time. Some of the dates on the walls are hundreds of years old. I do really hate this practice of defacing monuments.
There is Bob, I sent him down to the street so he could take a photo of me in one of the gate arches.
Here I am.
These carved decorations are still in remarkably good condition.
Walking back to our car we stop for a photo of the Electoral Palace. We had our lunch in its beautiful gardens which have many white statues and small ponds.
Another gorgeous tree.
The clouds are moving in on our drive home.
Big black ominous clouds.
We arrive at our Airbnb in Frankfurt. It is smaller than our last place but cozy and has everything we need.
Day 24 Tuesday, September 23, 2025
We are staying in Fontoy, France which is 35 minutes from Luxembourg because we couldn’t find a place to stay in Luxembourg. Fontoy is a small town with a population of just over 3,000.
Our Airbnb is very nice, even though it is up three flights of stairs…no elevator.
I have had a sore throat for a while and now I have the beginnings of a cough and cold. The weather continues to be cold, wet and windy. I need to stay home and rest for a few days and this is a good place to do that. We both have a quiet day. Bob does go get a few groceries, washes our clothes and I have a two hour afternoon nap!
Day 17 Tuesday, September 16, 2025.
Our Airbnb is in the basement of a huge old house on the outskirts of Brussels. You can see the widows to our suite which is actually quite bright.
The suite has a lot of character. We got settled last night and just before bed plugged in all our electronics…and we blew the breaker! All the lights in our suite went out. We messaged our host, who came down in her jammies to fix everything. We were lucky she heard the message beep on her phone as she was already asleep. It was quite the day yesterday!
I really needed a quiet day, so I stayed home and got all caught up on the blog. That feels really good. It is hard when I get behind. It takes quite a while to get each day’s post done but I really love having this souvenir of our trip. I joke that when we aren’t able to travel anymore we can revisit trips on the blog and say “remember when..”
Bob gets restless on these stay at home days so he goes to visit a car museum in Brussels. He writes the rest of this post.
Autoworld is located in a plaza near the Art & History Museum, Royal Museum of Military History and a Napoleon Museum. It is the building to the left of the arches.
A 1896 Bollee Voiturette called a Mother-in-Law Murderer, because the passenger sat up front. It could go 30 kph.
A 1913 Peugeot. The spare tire is bolted onto the front tire, rather than being mounted on the fender.
A classic 1937 Cord with front-wheel drive and retractable headlights.
A 1936 Citroen fitted with a gas generator (behind the front fender) used during the Second World War. As gasoline was in short supply, the car used the captured gas (from burning wood or coal) to fuel the vehicle. 
I thought the first vehicle ever built was the 1770 steam powered Cugnot. But 100 years earlier in 1672 a Belgian priest in the Imperial Court of Peking designed this steam powered vehicle called an Eolipyle. It was 2 feet long and built as a toy for the Emperor. High-pressure steam comes out the front and forces the cups on the shaft to rotate, similar to how a waterwheel works. Instead of water turning the wheel, the high-pressure steam turns the wheel.
A Fabrique Nationale 1930 car built for a Shah but never paid for or delivered.
A one-of-a-kind 1991 Lotec TT1000 based on a Ferrari Testarossa, with twin turbos and 1000 HP. It was fast, 370 kph and cost $3.6 million. 
And for something more budget-minded, a 1959 Heinkel Kabine. This model came standard with hydraulic brakes and a reverse gear. The original cost was around 300 euros. 
A 1991 Audi Quatro prototype made out of wood.
A 1939 Horch Cabrio. August Horch started his car factory in 1900 but left in 1908 after a dispute and started a new company Audi (based on the Latin translation of his name). In 1932 both companies merged with 2 others to form the new Audi, hence the four rings in the logo.
Day 3, Tuesday, September 2, 2025
We slept in until after 11:00 this morning! Our Airbnb is nice and quiet as it is in the back yard of a house and we have a very comfortable king size bed.
Today was a pretty lazy day, just getting over our jet lag. We went for a bigger grocery shop at a huge Carrefour store that was a twenty minute walk away. Now we are well stocked. We stopped for our first baguette at a local boulangerie on the walk home. It was only €1 euro and still warm so we each broke off a piece to eat on the way home. So good!
I spent part of the day organizing and while I was filling one of my nutritional canisters look what I found inside! I burst out laughing. On our fiftieth anniversary our grandchildren hid 50 of these little mice all over our house. Our granddaughter was at our house the day before we left for Paris…I believe she is the culprit responsible for this little creature! I think we will have to name him…any suggestions?
Day 80, Thursday, November 16, 2023
Today we drove to Pairs, in the rain! This will be our last stop before we fly home. It is a two and a half hour drive and we both just want to get to our next airbnb and get settled. Sightseeing in the rain isn’t much fun.
There is no way I would want to be navigating using a paper map. The roads can be very complex…like this interchange below.
We pass through several tunnels with lots of traffic. Bob does an excellent job following my navigational instructions, but I think we will both be quite happy to return our car tomorrow and use the metro to get around Paris. 
These two buildings, or maybe it is just one, looked so wonky. Not sure why anyone wants a build a high rise that looks like it is falling over? It is still pouring rain. but we are almost to our destination.
On our way to our bnb we passed a church with four angels high on its steeple.
I wasn’t able to find out the name of the church, but really liked the angels.
This lovely house with its beautiful fall colours was just down the street from our bnb. 
We parked on the street close to our apartment to unload but needed to move the car for the night. As Bob pulled into the parking spot the car made a strange noise. Upon investigation we realized that a rough curb had caught the side of the tire, tearing it and scraping the hubcap. We return the car tomorrow morning…we almost made it the whole three months without any car issues….this little incident problem ended up costing us $500!
Our twelfth and last Airbnb on this trip. It was difficult finding a place when we were booking last Spring. Our apartment is very small, probably the smallest that we have had on this trip. In the photos it actually looks a bit bigger than it is in person! Not ideal for the end of our trip but it will do.
Day 71, Tuesday November 7, 2023
I forgot to post the drawings I did at the Lyon Zoo, so here they are. It has been a long time since I have been able to draw at a zoo. It was a cool day and most of the animals were out and easy to see.
Giraffes are hard to draw, they always look rather strange with their long thin necks and muscular bodies.
The monkeys are always fun but they tend to move around a fair bit.
Too bad it was time to go, I was really enjoying this, but the clouds were very dark and we wanted to get home before it rained.
I was really tired on the drive to Dijon after we left Cluny and when we arrived at our apartment I started to feel very congested…full of a head cold. Darn… Here is our apartment, it is tiny but has everything we need. It is also on the third floor which was more like the sixth floor because the ceilings were so high and there were two flights of stairs for each floor.
This is our apartment building. We are way up in the attic with dormer windows, on the back side of this building. 
Here is the view from our windows over the roof tops.
We both stayed home today. I wasn’t feeling well and we were both happy to have a quiet stay home day.
Day 49, Monday, October 16th, 2023
Today we travel from Carcassonne to Cannes. It is a 4 1/2 hour drive if we use the toll highway and 7 1/2 hours without so we decide to pay the tolls. We make a side trip to Beziers to visit the Fonsernes 9 Locks. On our way there we drive by a very strange design on Google maps… I wonder if it might be some sort of irrigation system?
A bit of research solves the puzzle. Who knew?
‘The Étang de Montady, or Pond of Montady is a drained pond or lagoon.. It was built by monks and wealthy Béziers landowners during the second half of the 13th century. The Étang de Montady was drained to provide farmland by making radial ditches from a single center point out to the extremities. The water flows to this center point and is then drained by sixteen vertical shafts to an underground culvert.’~ info from Wikipedia.
It was a bit of a challenge to find the locks. First of all we drove to the town of Beziers where we thought we would find the locks, but there were no locks in sight. We did find a spot to have our lunch though, overlooking a pretty river and the Cathedral Saint-Nazaire.
We check at the location again and this is what google maps tells us! Really?? We need to get from the blue arrow to the red pin…and we do it! Pretty impressive navigating and driving I think!
I wanted a photo of this pretty bush covered with orange berries, and Bob hams it up by giving himself an orange moustache.
The Canal du Midi connects the Mediterranean Sea to Toulouse. It has 360 navigable kilometers and there is a drop of more than twenty meters from this location to the town of Beziers. The locks were built in 1676 to deal with that change in elevation.
We watched these two boats make their way through the locks.
The water level begins to lower…
as the water pours into the basin below.
Soon the water levels in the two basins are equal and the lock gates open…
and the boats advance to the next basin and this process is repeated 7more times.
This boat with four couples from South Africa barely has room to squeeze through the open gates. 
The 9 locks of Fonseranes have a total of 8 ovoid-shaped basins and 9 doors and in 1996, they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as is the entire Canal du Midi.
At the bottom of the locks there is a gate that appears unused for some time. It has grown a water garden on its backside.
Back on the highway we pass through yet another toll booth. This one is pretty big. The crazy thing is that on the other side there are no lanes. Once you pay your toll the gate goes up and all the cars need to merge back onto the highway. It is kind of crazy.
Bob says he can tell we are getting close to the French Riviera because there are expensive cars on the road. A Lamborghini costs anywhere from $221,000 to more than three million dollars! I can’t even imagine driving a car that is that expensive.
The turn off to Cannes is a bit convoluted…we have had a lot of strange routes on this trip.
We check into our next Airbnb…only this one has palm trees and a view of the ocean in the distance.
Day 33, Saturday , September 30, 2023
We leave for Sarlat la Canéda in a heavy fog. It is quite beautiful , but not the easiest driving.
Before too long the sun is shining and we are driving through farmland that looks a lot like Alberta. 
Then we drive through a beautiful forested area.
We stop for a visit and lunch in Montrésor which is listed as one of France’s 140 most beautiful towns. The church is small but interesting. The church was built to house this white alabaster tomb for three family members. The stained glass windows and the carved wooden stalls all date from the 16th century when the church was built. 
We walk along the river which has interesting information plaques and great views of the Château de Montrésor and the village.
Loved the reflections in the river.
There are some very large, very old trees along the way. Bob is standing on the bridge just behind the tree.
Many of the houses are built right into the stone cliffs. This little shop is an example, the ceiling and back wall are all natural stone.
I loved this sign in the window. It says “Turn off the TV and look at the sky.”
I also love peeking in windows and open gates whenever I have the chance. You never know what you might see. I wonder what happened to the owner of this little bookstore?
This gate looked interesting…
and it hid this tiny garden complete wth a chair, a bottle of wine and a very interesting statue.
The half-timbered houses date back to the 15th century! In the background are the towers of the Medieval Keep of the Château de Montrésor.
I loved this carved lizard, which is the symbol of Montrésor.
The Château de Montrésor is a medieval castle with a Renaissance mansion built in the grounds. We decided not to tour the château and soon we are back on the road to Sarlat.
The canola fields are just starting to turn yellow here, much later than back home.
I have a chance to sneak a few sketches of people waiting for a bus at the gas station when we stop to fill up. There hasn’t been much opportunity for this so far this trip.
I notice that the leaves are staring to turn colour…winter is coming!
The hillsides are dotted with charming little villages.
Our bnb in Sarlat is right in the heart of the old town. On the Airbnb website it says “Come and discover the entertainment, restaurants, shops, the famous market of the city with its local products, surrounded by the walls and history of the city of Sarlat. All at your feet.” It should be interesting, we have never stayed right in the heart of an old city before. The circled windows belong to our apartment.
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