We rang in the holidays with a Thanksgiving feast courtesy of our American friends in Bergerac; complete with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. It was a gathering of American, British and French and proved to be a delightful afternoon immersed in the taste of nostalgia. Though we had expected to stay put post-Africa, as it turned out, friends and family from the UK decided to take a trip to Bruges, Belgium to visit the famous Christmas Market.
We decided to make the two day trip to catch up and enjoy some libation with a commitment we would be staying pretty much put in France for …hopefully. We stayed at one of our favorite, classic hotels on the way; all done up in a festive manner with the impossibly high ceilings and the ambiance of a classic chateau; this helped us get into the Christmas spirit. The next day we met up with the folks in Coquille near Calais for a nice meal. We then ventured the next morning into Belgium. Unfortunately, it was rather cold and windy which put a bit of damper excuse the pun on our visit, but found Bruges to be rather charming all the same.
And we managed some lovely Belgian Waffles with the best chantilly cream! Bruges is a place worthy of exploring outside of the holiday season and we hope to get back up there someday to meander the lovely streets, shops, restaurants and canals. So much to see!!! The Christmas Market is located in the Tuileries next to the Place de Concorde which is about a mile away.
It was nice seems most fitting for those with children , but there are so many distractions in Paris that you can easily get sidetracked for vast periods of time. So there! After traversing a good 8 miles of eye candy, window shopping and taking in the festive sights of the Parisian streets all dressed up for the holidays — under the watchful eye of La Tour Effiel, we headed across the always astounding Pont Alexander III to the metro.
This despite this being our fifth time in the City of Light!!! No matter where we have wound up in the world — we get where we need to go eventually. Next, we headed to Bordeaux, thankfully blessed with dry and partly sunny weather for which we were grateful. It turned out to be a pretty seamless operation considering the complications we were subjected to, and they seemed glad to write off the Americans and their burdensome FACTA paperwork.
