A quick trip to France and Netherlands

We have arrived in France from the Dover Ferry. Many cars, bikes, caravans and RV’s are lined up and many of us chat as we waited to board.

We have purchased a vehicle and you can read about how we did that here: http://exploramum.com/2014/06/buying-car-England-uk.html

It is an RHD and the first thing we learned was how to set a new country on the GPS. Then we had to stop once outside the ship as we waited for a GPS signal – and that we couldn’t do on board.  It was a pretty smooth and fast 2-hour crossing – and very inexpensive too.

We decided to take the canal road and see a couple of small towns from Dunkirk up to Brugge, in Belgium. So our first stop was a pretty little town called Veurne in Belgium.

We were pretty excited by now to have moved so quickly from France to Belgium, our 26th country in less than 2 years.

We then visited Nieuwpoort and Ostend on the way to Brugge.  By mid-afternoon I was tired from our early start, and so we were pleased to find our Brugge hotel, where we stayed for 3 nights. You can read about that here:   http://exploramum.com/2014/06/brugge-Belgium-beautiful.html

We then had a spare day to get to my friend’s host home in Brussels, so we decided to head up via Holland. First stop was a small town called Damme, in Belgium.

There was not a lot to see, and the sky was turning greyer by the minute, so apart from a distant windmill you can see below, and an old church you can see above, there wasn’t much. Therefore we drove on.

Holland! Well correctly that is only a region and the real country name is The Netherlands. We stopped for a break in Sluis.

This town is cute.  The canals are lovely!

It is not majorly touristic, but it still has that element of camera clap folk milling about – just not too many.

So we had to go to a cheese shop of course.

Rows and rows of gorgeous cheese lined the walls.

Next stop was a windmill. We wanted to have lunch here, but the man was quite rude. He told another waiter off for allowing us to sit at the tables in another section, and we had to sit in the lesser section.  So we left and decided we would just go sit elsewhere.

We passed a church and as we did the pretty bells played a lovely melodic tune.

We had a lovely lunch by the canal and headed to the next Dutch town.

Aardenburg had the cutest arch entrance. This was a sleepy town.  We had a chat and decided to come back another day and see more of Holland. So we then drove back to Belgium and went to Gent.

I’m going to blog about Gent separately as it is a lovely town with a lot to see.

Questions and Comments

• What do you find fascinating about France?
• What do you make of my visit to France?
• Do share your comments with us below.