Read more about the article Carcassonne – France
Carcassonne - France

Carcassonne – France

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Roman: Colonia of Julia Carsaco

An incredible great surprise and totally unexpected and unplanned. We came this weekend to be only in Perpignan, but after seeing everything on Saturday and with not much more to be done for Sunday, was nice to find out that the impressive medieval city of Carcassonne was only 1 hour 15 minutes away by train from Perpignan. And what a city! It completely eclipsed our original plans and thoughts we got from Perpignan the day before.

The city after all, is not that big, and while we thought we would have plenty of spare time as we started visiting the area around the train station and the Cathedral that took us only 2 hours no more; once we reached the Cité, that feeling changed. Only with this city-fortress you could easily spend the entire day if you also visit the museums within. So plan ahead or schedule well your time, otherwise as in our case, simply enjoy the time as much as you can. We are quite a heavy travellers and we are used to run from a place to the other hence managed to see everything while having some time to rest, have a nice lunch and then enjoy a dessert with a coffee at a terrace.

Walking along the city and specially on a Sunday morning (and afternoon) was all for ourselves! All the shops were closed, no one in the streets and even was hard to find an opened coffee place. Oddly, tourists seem not to come to this area of the city but head straight away to the Cité instead, where it was thriving and full all people. In the other hand we managed to get pictures everywhere without anyone in the streets. (more…)

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Read more about the article Perpignan – France
Perpignan - France

Perpignan – France

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Villa Perpiniano

Losing the track on how many trips we’ve done so far since January, not to mention absolutely nonstop week after week with some longer than just a weekend here and there. The “scary but exciting” side of this is to think ahead on the ones yet to come! This year has gone absolutely crazy, but on track to beat all records. I cannot even cope in creating these travel guides more or less at good time, not even on the smaller word doc “use-and-throw” guides I create to keep me in line knowing where to go and what to see to the places I travel, which I create prior of writing a final travel guide after the trip in my blog.

So here is for the first trip to France this year. A new destination that was in our viewpoint for a while and now finally we found a great deal with Ryanair; Perpignan. But as usual, the rule of thumbs works in here too, whenever is low season, get your hands quickly to grab some bargains in flights, those tend to go too quickly making no sense anymore to book such destinations for double and triple the price. Probably that’s why we kept postponing Perpignan until we found the right fare we would pay to come here.

The city is not “truly” French, in the sense of the word. In fact, it feels one of the less French cities in the whole of France. The reason for this is for Perpignan having acted as the capital of the newly formed Kingdom of Majorca by James I from 1276, back in the times when this region formed part of the Spanish Empire. It lasted until 1642 with the Treaty of the Pyrenees, and 17 years later in 1659, Spain ceded it to France.
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Read more about the article Brussels – Belgium
Brussels - Belgium

Brussels – Belgium

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The Capital of Europe

One more time planning a weekend in this vibrant and beautiful city full of surprises. Big and very cosmopolitan, yet small enough to enjoy almost in full in two days. Brussels is perhaps the destination I’ve been the most times other than Madrid and Barcelona of course. I might count easily 15 times if not more, but it’s the kind of city you do not get tired nor bored. Once a year is already a great aim why not.

It’s always so nice to be there, walk around the narrow streets in the old town, admiring the impressive architecture specially at the Grand Place or watch the life passing by from any of the hundreds of outdoor terraces enjoying some of the best beers in the world. And even if it’s not beer, then a waffle, crepe or the world famous Belgian chocolates. Only for those, the trip is already well worth it at any time.

Any season is good to come here; either if it is spring when the trees are in bloom, summer with the many shows and activities everywhere in the city, autumn when the colors are turning brown and yellow or winter with the famous and huge Christmas Market being the highlight. Beautiful!

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Read more about the article Lyon – France
Lyon - France

Lyon – France

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Capitale des Gaules

As if we were planning this on purpose but it’s just a matter of coincidence, it’s been a year since our last visit to France. Past year February and March were our French visits, and this year it happens to be the same. Probably because it is when the air fares to certain parts of France are the most economical, even though we did not fly directly to Lyon but to Geneva instead, some 150 kilometers away. In any case, while most of the people is flying to the region for sky during the winter months, we took the advantage of having our usual city break in low season, with very few other tourists hence enjoying the most out of it.

Lyon is the second largest city after Paris, city proper-wise speaking. If including the metropolitan area, then the second would be Marseilles after Paris, with Lyon in 3rd position. Bearing this in mind, the city is quite large with plenty to see and do. A weekend is not enough to fully explore it, and if you have only a bit less than a day and a half as we did, you will need to prioritize and it is impossible physically to get everywhere. In our case, we had to scrap everything from the Roman era in the Fourvière Hill (as the theater, the odeon), and other points elsewhere in the city as the remains of the amphitheater. After all, Lyon’s old town is one of the largest urban areas inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites List, so prepare to see a lot.

An unique architectural feature in Lyon are the so called Traboules. You will find many around the Vieux Lyon, not to mention is most of the postcards you will see at least one. These are narrow corridors connecting two streets through a building. Very easy to spot as are the ones having the tower containing snail staircases. Pay attention at the plaques indicating the historical buildings, some of them will have the door open where you can enter and see. (more…)

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Read more about the article Lausanne – Switzerland
Lausanne - Switzerland

Lausanne – Switzerland

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Civitas Lausanna

Continuing on our second day for this weekend in this region and after visiting Geneva the day before, we took the short train ride that takes to the city of Lausanne, right by the shores of Lake Geneva. It was at this point where I had to stop and think back which of both cities I would like the most by the end of the day, but since it’s quite a hard decision to be honest, I will keep both at the same level. Still, and don’t get me wrong, both cannot compete with the beauty that Basel and Zurich are for example.

As you can also image, the train ride was great with nice landscapes and views of the lake. Certainly we could have managed it better perhaps by having a rental car and being able to stop wherever we wanted and visiting many other places along the route. But well, it was already quite an expensive weekend altogether and a rental car would have set us on even higher costs. At the end of the day, it was not even a month ago since we were by Lake Constance all around, where the architecture, nature and landscapes were really similar to those in here.

For the size, it is smaller than Geneva, but divided in two different areas, therefore not as compact as it might look. In any case it will not require too much time to visit everything. Don’t rush nor wake up early to get here should you have enough time until leaving the city. For us, we had until 21.30pm until our plane departure therefore giving us the full day to enjoy Lausanne. After such a crazy weekends over the past months before this, it was actually a nice treat to have a rather lazy and slow one. (more…)

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Read more about the article Geneva – Switzerland
Geneva - Switzerland

Geneva – Switzerland

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Medieval Pagus Major Genevensis

Not even a month since our last time in Switzerland when we used Zurich as our base airport for visiting Liechtenstein and Lake Constance, we came back but this time to spend the weekend in Geneva and Lausanne, cities that we did not visit before and that we were looking after a while awaiting for a good flight deal to come. Well, basically booking flights elsewhere, as it was always cheaper going to other countries and cities than coming to Geneva.

Knowing that Geneva is pretty small and that for sure we would visit everything on the first day, the plan for the next day was to reach Lausanne. Coincidence-wise, another weekend by one of the greatest lakes in Europe. First, Lake Constance a month ago, then Lake Garda merely 2 weeks ago and now Lake Geneva. All of them with something in common, the Alps. Same landscapes and same beautiful small villages all around.

Geneva is the second largest city in Switzerland and also one of the most important ranking among the top 5 for the highest level of life of any other city in the world. Having that in consideration, you can imagine how expensive everything is. We already had our experience in Zurich and Basel previously, but here in Geneva seemed to be even more expensive than the others. Bear this in mind as this won’t be a cheap weekend. The worst part comes the moment you need to find something to eat… Well, McDonald’s was thankfully there to our rescue. Lunch and dinner on Saturday, dinner on Sunday. A variation for Sunday lunch? Burger King. Well, obviously not everything in their menus is bad and unhealthy. It is either that or paying almost 25£ for a ridiculously small Margarita pizza in the cheapest place we saw! No thank you, for great pizza at normal prices I can go elsewhere in Europe and of course Italy for the best. (more…)

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Read more about the article Mainau and Konstanz – Germany
Mainau and Konstanz - Germany

Mainau and Konstanz – Germany

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Roman Constantia

Heading to our last city for this trip, just a short ferry crossing from Meersburg are those 2 beautiful places right where Lake Constance splits into 2 and the river Rhine flows into the lake right through the city. The first of them, Mainau, is an island referred to as island garden because all that is there are impressive landscaped gardens and palaces, all of which listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the second, the beautiful city of Konstanz, some 5 kilometres away from Mainau.

The Medieval city of Konstanz will impress any visitor. Larger than all the other cities we visited you will definitely need more time to enjoy and properly visit, something that unfortunately we could not count with any more as we would have loved to. But in any case was “just” enough to enjoy all the beauties of the city and finalise such a wonderful trip all together.

After all, there is not really much to see and do other than walk around the nice streets admiring the architecture and nature around you, hence straightforward and easy to navigate. Then if you do a similar tour as the one we did this weekend, driving back from here to Zurich airport is very quick at not even 80 kilometres distance. For us it was just arrive, drop the rental car and board minutes after, as simple as that. We take planes that often as people who gets on the metro.

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Read more about the article Meersburg – Germany
Meersburg - Germany

Meersburg – Germany

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Burg on the Sea

Driving from Friedrichshafen towards Konstanz we found along the way what I would consider to be the most beautiful village in this trip. Not only that the little over 25 kilometres drive that separate both places is one of the best, crossing through many vineyards and apple plantations, with their respective mansions and cellar houses overlooking the lake down below, but the village of Meersburg came out of sudden unaware to us this place was existing.

It is maybe for this reason that we ended our trip in Konstanz a bit rushing as we spent quite a good time in Meersburg also having lunch in there. So great food for such great prices! Incredible. Really don’t go for a pizza, as you might be thinking after you see how good they look and how little they cost, but instead go for something more traditional and local; take your chance while you are here.

The village is also one of the main ports in the north of the lake. The ferry crossing to Konstanz saves a long way driving around the northernmost area of the lake to just come back down. Don’t take me wrong, if you have the time you should definitely drive all the way, otherwise in just 10 minutes you will be at the other side. (more…)

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