We really loved the Dordogne. The house was perfect and we had a wonderful time. Before we head off, here are couple more pics of where we stayed.
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Remember the view from the kitchen window? This is the garden below that
view. The bedrooms were all downstairs and this is looking out the doors from
the master bedroom. Kitty corner to me is the old bread oven. |
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| The oven. Door casting says 1618. |
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Looking in from the upstairs doors. On the right is the extremely tight
spiral staircase to go downstairs. |
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| Kitchen and dining room. There's a lovely view out both windows... |
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| Patio and main doors from the direction of the pool. |
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| Coming in the driveway. |
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| The immediate area around Lagrenie where we stayed. |
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| The larger area around Lagrenie and Groléjac that we explored for the week. |
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Overview of where we've been since Paris. La Rochelle is on the coast
between La Baule and Royan. |
The trip from our place in the Dordogne all the way to Neuchatel where we were headed in Switzerland was going to be a total of 6 or 7 hours. We long ago decided we couldn't be bothered to drive that far in a day. Lyon looked like a good half way point. We tried for some B&B places in the surrounding countryside, hoping we might even get to stay in a castle. However this is the only night we hadn't nailed down before leaving Canada and by the time we got around to it the cool places were all booked.
We ended up staying in a lovely place called the Hotel Ibis Budget Lyon Villeurbanne. I think Villeurbanne is sort of Lyon suburb. They had no family or connecting rooms so we got 2 room side by side. It was budget indeed with no fridge for my stinky cheese collection. In fact it was so budget that the toilet in the boy's room was one of those ones we often saw in public washrooms that had no seat. You're supposed to do the hover, which is hard for Dunc whose legs don't reach the floor! It turns out the girl's room had a newer toilet with a seat. Luxury. However the rooms were clean and comfy and it was just a stopover. No complaints.
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| The boys' room at the Ibis. Dunc liked the bunk bed. |
After a quick settle in and a bit of research, we hopped back in the Duster and had Louise take us down to the old part of Lyon to search up some dinner. She does much better in urban settings. Or maybe it only seems that way because all the roads are paved! Anyway, while dinner was nothing to write home about, the old town was lovely and the patio setting at the restaurant was nice. We had a nice evening.
The next day we packed up again and headed for the Swiss border. We had to stop at the border and buy a pass for the highways. The Swiss don't mess around with toll highways. They just require everyone to buy a windshield sticker every year if they want to travel on the main highways at all. That includes visitors. Other than that, the border is wide open. Given that they are not part of the EU, we had expected to at least show our passports, but nope. On we went.
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| La Suisse |
The mountains were lovely to drive in. Lots of tunnels too. I think we passed through one that was almost 5 km long.
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| Big mountains means lots of big tunnels. |
We stopped in Lausanne for a nice lunch.
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There's a 'hood called Ouchy in Lausanne. In fact it's not far from another part
of Lausanne called Maladière but I missed getting a picture of the sign. |
We pulled into Neuchatel late afternoon. The place we were staying was in the pedestrian part of the centre of the old town.
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Alexandra Campbell returns to Neuchatel
27 years later! |
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Our funky old room with 5 single beds. It was great. And it used to be a bar
which added to the excitement of playing restaurant for Clara and Dunc.
Thankfully there was a fridge for my stinky cheeses as well. |
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