Sorted!

Right!  I have spent today sorting travel times and booking hotels and we have it all set up.  We spend one night in Dresden, on the middle Saturday, and then head off to Magdeburg, where we have booked four nights.  We plan to spend one day looking round Magdeburg, one going to Hannover, and one going to Quedlinburg.  Then we head up north to Stralsund, where we spend two nights.  On the Saturday we head south to Lübeck, and then over to Hamburg - not that we'll have much chance to do more than have dinner there. At midnight, we get a sleeper train - I've booked us a deluxe sleeper as the economy was no cheaper, and I don't fancy couchettes with strangers, thank you.  I'd rather pay the extra for privacy - to Utrecht, and from there we spend our last night in Antwerp.   And then on the Monday our "Any Belgian Station" ticket will take us to Brussels and back home!  It should be a great fortnight.  I will keep a journal on here, but as I don't think I'm taking my netbook, only my tablet, I won't be able to upload photos, but will make up for that on Facebook when we get back!

Test post

I
I am trying to decide whether this little tablet will do to take away rather than having to take the laptop with me. I am hoping that it will; I always thought that it was so slow as to be unusable, but it actually seems fairly ok.

Plans!

We are busy making plans for our Inter-Rail holiday, which starts in three weeks' time!  Wonderful - except that it means that I shall be 60!  I am very lucky that both my parents are alive, relatively well, and totally of sound mind.

We set off on the morning of my birthday, the 14th, but only go as far as Liège - we have bought tickets to "Any Belgian station", which means we don't have to use up a "travelling day". 

From Liege we are heading to Munich, probably going via Frankfurt-am-Main as most of the trains we could take are Thalys, and they are the one train you can't take with an Inter-Rail - well, you can, but you have to pay a supplement of about €36, so we aren't going to!  So we take a train in the morning to Frankfurt, then almost immediately get on another train to Munich, were we are spending the first Sunday - we have friends there, and it will be great to see them. 

On the Monday morning - the 17th, I think - we head of on a Railjet train to Linz, where we break our journey for a few hours, and then head up to České Budějovice (Budweis), for three nights.  We plan to spend one day going to Český Krumlov, which I gather is well worth seeing (this can be done on local buses), and the other day we will look round České Budějovice itself in the morning, and in the afternoon we will go to a little village called Baranov to visit Cestina's "Small Worlds" museum which will be properly open by then. 

On the Thursday we set off again, this time to Mariánské Lázně (Marianbad), this time spending the day in Plzeň (Pilsen).  Friday will be spent in Mariánské Lázně, and then we will be off again, probably to Dresden via Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad). 

And that is basically as far as we have got.  I haven't booked anywhere in Dresden yet.  I know the basic idea of Inter-Railing is that one can go as the Spirit moves one, but the Swan Whisperer will, I think, be a lot happier if we plan everything in advance. 

I am thinking that from Dresden we will probably go to Berlin, or even further, depending on train times, to the far North of Germany, and we also want to visit Lübeck, Hameln, maybe Hannover, maybe Hamburg, and end up at the Belgian border on the final day! 

Should be fun....

A Weekend in Paris - Sunday

Neither of us wanted to get up on Sunday morning, but we had booked practice ice for 08:30, so we had to!  It felt like an ordinary patch, as I grabbed some coffee from the hotel before we left, and then we were there with bananas, coffee and our music!  Not too many of us on the patch, which was nice, and Hana found out how to use the music, so we were able to have one run-through to the music and then practice bits that weren't working too well.

Then back to the hotel for breakfast, after which the Swan Whisperer went down to the rink to watch the first half-hour of competition, and I stayed in the hotel to bling up and dress.  He then came back and we checked out of the hotel, and went down to the rink.  Emma won her free dance class, deservedly, although she didn't feel she'd skated very well.  We didn't have any opposition, so it was a performance, and despite missing the spin - we can DO that bloody spin, why can't we do it in competition???? - we were gratified with a season's best.   If only we'd got another 1/2 revolution on the spin it might even have been a PB.  Ah well.  The step sequence wasn't called, but they never are at Bronze.  And looking at the video, I am horrified by how wide apart my feet tend to be, and how straight my knees - you can tell how badly I skate compared to the Swan Whisperer, who is very good these days.  But oh dear, quote of the century from him: "It's all that work we do on edges!  You would think a straight line would be faster, but actually, it's faster if you're on an edge!"  It's only taken him eighteen years of skating to learn that..... !

Anyway, after the Silver and Gold free dances, always a treat to watch, it was time for the "Creation", highlight of which was Axel's rendition of "Gangnam-style", which was a hoot!  There were some good performances in the women, too, notably Lisa's air-hostess.

Once everything was over, and we had changed back into street clothes, it was nearly 3:00 pm, and our train wasn't until 19:13, so we went back to the café and had the simply enormous brunch they serve at weekends for €20 a head - coffee and fruit juice and bread and jam or croissant, followed by a huge plate of scrambled eggs with a muffin or bagel, cheese, vegetables, salad, plus either smoked salmon and taramasalata or (our choice) bacon and sausages.  As if that wasn't enough, you then got fruit salad, carrot cake and a chocolate cake - we couldn't face the latter, so the Swan Whisperer wrapped them up and we had them later.

Then we took the Metro into the city centre and sat in the sun on Pont Neuf for about half an hour until the quais underneath reopened to traffic and the peace and quiet was over, whereupon we got a bus from Chatelet up to the Gare du Nord, and it wasn't too early to check in.  Train home not as nice as it could have been due to a stag party coming home - honestly, if they wanted to spend the whole weekend getting and being drunk, as they obviously did, why bother to go to Paris?  They could have done that just as well at home!  Anyway, they were relatively harmless, and I fell asleep so they didn't intrude!  Then an uneventful trip home on the metro and bus.  And unpacking, a bite to eat, and so to bed after a lovely weekend.

I don't think we'll be going away now until our big trip in June, but you never know....

A weekend in Paris - Saturday

Today was the first day of the Trophée Hauts de Seine.  We weren't skating, so we got up slowly, and had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, and then wandered down to the rink in time to see the lower-level solo compulsory dances.  Our friend Emma was doing the Bronze solos, and did quite beautifully - a good 14-step that put her in the lead, and then an absolutely superb Foxtrot, a real masterclass in how to do it, which confirmed her victory. Another friend, Nina, from Germany, was having her first go at dance (she has been a free skater up to now) in the same class, which was not a great success, but she had fun trying - and should continue!

We enjoyed watching all the dance, and then cheered Emma on her podium, after which she and her family went off to explore Paris, and we too went for a walk.  I had slipped out and got us a sandwich and a cake from the local bakery - you know it's a good one when there is a queue going round the block - and we walked down to the Ile Ségur, which in my day housed the Renault factory, but that has long since gone, although Renault's head offices are still in the area.  The Swan Whisperer had explored two years ago, but this time we found a great transformation, as the whole island is being transformed into a public space.  Renault have a site where you can test drive their zero emission cars, but we declined to do that, and explored the rest of the site, where there is a museum, a restaurant, a children's play area and a great deal of what looks like stuff planted for bio-fuel, which gave me serious hay-fever (luckily I had some stuff with me).  We were astonished though, that on a lovely Saturday afternoon (the weather was infinitely better than it had been on the previous day, which wouldn't have been difficult, frankly!), we were almost the only people there!  Where were all the local hordes?

As I was feeling a bit rotten with the hay-fever, we walked back towards the rink, and I sat in the square while the SW went and got my bag for me from the hotel, and we went back to the rink to watch various friends free skates and the pairs.  Then we went off to a local restaurant and had a meal - we both chose salads; I had a Salade Landaise, which has giblets, hard-boiled eggs, pate de foie gras and beans as well as the usual salad stuff.  And beer, of course.  Neither of us wanted any pudding, so we came away, and went back to the hotel for 20 minutes or so, before going back to the patinoire for the tour of Paris by Night.  This was quite fun, but the usual irritating courier rather detracted from it - as did the fact that the bus got lost and couldn't find the rink!  Ah well.... we got there in the end, and then got back to the hotel just before midnight.

A Weekend in Paris - Friday

Up far too early, and out of the house by 06:00 to catch the 07:31 to Paris.  We arrived at St Pancras in good time, and bought ourselves coffee and a sandwich at the Café Nero there.  The train was on time, and we arrived in Paris, as scheduled, shortly before 11:00 local time.  We decided to go straight to the hotel, as even if we were too early to check in, they would doubtless allow us to leave our luggage there and go out again; however, they kindly allowed us to check in even though we were a good 15 minutes before 12:00!  We took longer than we need have going, as we went to the wrong ticket-hall; if we had gone on to the one on the line we wanted, there was no queue at all!  We bought Mobilis tickets - the local equivalent of the one-day Travelcard - as we were planning to travel all afternoon.

We settled in, and then headed out to the local creperie for lunch - I had one with mushroom, egg, ham and cheese, followed by ice-cream and washed down with beer, and the Swan Whisperer had one with mushroom, egg, bacon (lardons) and cheese, followed by one with stewed apple, and washed down with cider.  Then we ventured forth into Paris.  The Swan Whisperer fancied going on the T3 Tramway again, only we made a mistake getting there - we should have got off at Porte de St-Cloud and got a bus across the bridge, but we ended up at Charles-Michels and it was pouring with rain and I needed a loo, so we went into Monoprix, but they said there that the nearest were in McDonald's, so we went there to find they were locked out of service, by which time I was desperate, so we ducked into a random café and ordered a coffee!  Phew, relief!  And the coffee was heaven - I'd forgotten how much I liked expresso on occasion!

We then ended up waiting ages for a bus, but got on one eventually and found the start of the tramway.  We discovered that it now went all the way to the Porte de Vincennes, so stayed on it the entire route; there is also a 3B that goes from Porte de Vincennes round to Porte de la Chapelle.  So we got on that.  Fortunately, I think, the Swan Whisperer got bored of trams by the time we got to Porte des Lilas (I had got bored of them rather earlier, but men and their toys...), so we got off.  There was a direct bus to the centre of town - forget exactly where - which went via the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, and that sort of area.  We got off on the Grands Boulevards, and walked for a bit until we got to Havre-Caumartin métro station, at which point the road forked and I wasn't sure which road we should use to get to the next métro, so we called it a walk and went back to the hotel for a cup of tea.

After a rest, we went back into Paris, to the Café du Commerce which I do rather love, and had reserved a table at.  The Swan Whisperer had oeufs dur mayonnaise - oeufs plural, as there must have been at least 2½ eggs - followed by boeuf bourguinon, which he did not like as he said it was too salty.  Basically we had made the mistake of ordering pints of beer, so we didn't want anything more to drink, but it would have been nicer accompanied by wine!  I had snails and then kidneys, both of which were gorgeous, but again, the kidneys would have been nicer with red wine than they were with beer.  I didn't want a pudding, so drank a Courvoisier while the Swan Whisperer ate lemon meringue pie, which he said was lovely.

After which we went back to the hotel and slept!

Days of Discovery

Although we are at home, and going no further than my parents' for the long weekend, I have had a couple of very different and interesting days.

Yesterday, I had arranged to have my grandson, known to Blogland as The Boy, to spend the night as his parents wanted to go out to dinner and his bedroom is currently uninhabitable due to being re-plastered.  So my daughter suggested we met at the Horniman museum in Forest Hill which, despite living in the area for over 30 years, I had never visited.  I always thought it was awkward to get to, but in fact it is on a direct bus route from Brixton.  For my daughter, it is a fairly direct journey on the Overground, although it takes quite a long time.  In fact, it took longer than she thought, and I ended up drinking coffee in the café there and rather wishing I hadn't had lunch as the "Healthy Eating" dishes - mostly falafel, hummus and salad - sounded so delicious. 

The Horniman Museum is very splendid.  There are a couple of wonderfully old-fashioned nature galleries, full of stuffed animals and birds, and wonderful for small boys to run around in.  Then there is a music gallery, and a room designed for "hands on" music-making, also lovely for small boys.  The gardens, too, looked as if they would be glorious, but, alas, it was far too cold to want to walk around in them.  So we came home on the bus.

Today was, if anything, even more interesting.  My daughter had scored free tickets to the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the odd sculpture in the middle of the Olympic Park, so the Swan Whisperer, the Boy and I set out fairly early, braving the overcrowded northbound Northern Line and changing at Bank to the DLR, and then changing again at Poplar.  I do like the DLR, and we were lucky enough to get front seats on both trains - the Boy loved this, needless to say.  When we arrived at Pudding Mill Lane, it was only a short walk to the site office, where we picked up our tickets and waited for the Daughter to join us.  She was a few minutes late as it was a longer walk from the centre of Stratford than she'd realised, but that didn't matter. 

The tour was a preview of what the public will be able to pay quite a lot of money to see from tomorrow!  A bus tour takes you around what will eventually be the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and then you go up the ArcelorMittal Orbit.  You start off on the ground, and then a high-speed lift whisks you up to the top of it.  Where there are splendid views all over London.  Then you were supposed to go outside, but it was bitterly cold, and the floor was the kind I hate, with little holes in it so you could see the immense drop below.  Thanks, but no thanks.  So the Boy and I went down in the lift- we should really have stopped off on the floor below, where I gather there are fun things to do - and the other two WALKED all the way down. My knee would not have survived that.

The Boy and I caught a bus into Stratford, while the other two walked, and we were happily ensconced with our coffee and babycino in Costa when they arrived.  After a couple of errands, my daughter and the Boy went off, the Swan Whisperer having already left, and I did a bit of shopping, and then treated myself to lunch in the Moroccan place in Westfield - falafel wrap, yum - and a kulfi ice-cream in the Indian sweetshop opposite.  I then walked to Stratford International DLR station - I had some thought of treating myself to a ride on the Javelin to St Pancras, but I was just about to miss one and then next was not for another half an hour, so not worth it - and got the DLR to Canning Town, then the Jubilee Line to Canada Water, the Overground to Peckham Rye and the 37 bus home! Which took a long time, but was fun.  What I ought to have done was to have stayed on the DLR one more stop, to Royal Victoria and then the Emirates to North Greenwich, but I didn't think of that in time!

Then home, and 30 minutes' work, and then out again in the early evening to a pamper evening at l'Occitane en Provence, where I was VERY strong-minded and managed not to buy anything, but had champagne, a hand massage (which would have been much nicer if she'd taken off her ring), chocolates and a facial, and came away with some free samples! 

All in all, I shall be glad of a few days' break in Sussex over the Easter weekend.