Trip #2. A short intro.

by Eva

After catching up with #1 it’s finally time to start writing to you about #2. We’ve got some nice posts queued up already so I’ll keep this short. We left Germany mid April after we had had some fixes done to our camper and thrown everything we needed inside (it’s not so easy to pack for a long tour with two small kids). Fun fact – shortly before our departure we had some visitors! A Dutch couple we got to know in Portugal and who’s also living on the road. What a nice surprise!

From Bavaria we first headed to Clermont-Ferrand to introduce Levi to our French family. On the way, we stopped by my grandma and aunt near Ulm, my aunt, uncle and cousins in Markdorf, made new friends near Freiburg, followed the Doubs (go visit if you can, the valley is lovely!) to St. Hippolyte, and then along the Swiss border to Les Rousses. We stopped in Thonon-Les-Bains, our former home, to meet friends and then went straight to Clermont. We spent about 3 weeks there, enjoying life, visiting the city, going on hikes, seeing a lot of family and friends. Sooo good for the heart.

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Then it was time to hit the road again, seeing that we’re kinda aiming at being in Finland before the snow flakes start falling 😉 From Clermont we went straight on to the coast and hit Marennes where we met a former colleague from Frankfurt and his girlfriend! We had a lovely picknick on the beach, got sunburnt and then went to have some oysters in the evening. Well, Juju had the real thing anyway. I’m not even touching them raw 😀 I did try them cooked with garlic, lemon juice and parsley and they were very nice.

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After that we visited some of Julien’s family who lives at the seaside, his grandma and some more aunts in Angers and then we met his dad at a lovely lake not far from Nantes. Most of these visits were not planned, but just happened and it was amazing for me to get to know Julien’s family a little. They’re very numerous – with Levi’s birth, his grandmother is counting 99 “children” (including all grand-children) – and up to now I knew hardly anyone so we didn’t miss this chance.

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From Nantes, we went on to Guérande where we strolled through the old city and where I tried my very first Kouign Amann. It’s actually a specialty from Brittany, but Julien is going to tell you more about that in his post about that beautiful region!

Thanks for reading us and see you soon!