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So - we made it home after 3 weeks in mostly France. A great trip with many memorable moments. There are some great benefits with bringing your own car. It is much easier to improvise and it is possible to bring home bottles of strong liquid. In Provence we picked a winemaker by chance while driving on small inland roads. They let us taste several kinds of vin rouge and we ended up buying 2x6 bottles that are now safely stored in our basement.

We started our trip with a couple of days in Bruges - once the main trading town in north western Europe. Nowadays it is a very nice and lively city to stroll around in with many old houses and canals. And great beer. Every place has a couple of great beers on tap. Compare that to Sweden where we have to del with Spendrups and Pripps on tap - ouch. The food was good - the best place we ate at was De Vlaamsche Pot with traditional flemish cuisine. Highly recommended. On our way towards France we stopped at the trappist monastery of Westvlateren and had great lunch with even greater beer. The shop had run out of it unfortunatley so we couldn't bring any home.

Next Paris. Me and Käthe met with my kids there and then we made all the touristy things: Disneyland, Louvres, Tour Eiffel, Champs Elysees, boat trip on Seine, a glimpse of Tour de France, Montmartre etc. We also visited the great impressionist Musee d'Orsay. A great couple of days with some really nice food experiences as well. One lunch at Relais de l'Entrecote on 15 rue Marbeuf close to elysees where they only serve heavenly entrecote with frites. Great vin de pays to go with it. The place to visit if you are really hungry. Last night we tried another "relais" called Relais de Gascon offering huge brilliant salads and great pasta.
 

Now we headed south to the house in Sollies-Toucas north of Toulon where we were to spend a week with all our kids flying and biking in from their different locations. On our way there we stopped at hotels in Poitiers and Le Puy-en-Velay. Outside of Poitiers the very french theme park Futuroscope was a nice experience with a very amazing laser show at nightfall. In Le Puy-en-Velay we had great salads at le Croco on 5 Rue Chaussade and an awesome local beer called Villavia. Le puy is a great old town with a cathedral, monastery and red mary statue at the hill and cliff in the midst of the town. Religion at its heart which make sense - this is one of the starting points for the pilgrimage to Santiago Compostela in north western Spain.

The week in Provence was mostly lazy staying at the house by the pool and cooking great meals with great wine. We made one daytrip to Avignon to visit the papal palaces - really nice. And then we headed home via Italy and the alps. It is amazing that you get great food even at the rest stops in italy. We had great Pasta di Liguria on our way home and we made sure to stop one last time before the swiss border to have a decent espresso. The road through the alps were astonishing - no pics taken though. The last day we managed to drive from Ulm in southern Germany all the way home - some 1600 kms.

More pics are available in this set at flickr. Not all pics are there yet though. The tiny camera has yet to make it on to the internet....