I was looking forward to the Big K's August roster because I learned that he would be going to Bangkok for a series of company training sessions. And little ole me got all excited when I found out that he had a few days off before the start of one of his training sessions which meant I could ride shotgun again. Yay!
The last time we were in Bangkok we stayed at the Bangkok Tree House at the Bang Namphueng area also known as the "lungs of Bangkok" because of its abundant greenery. Bang Namphueng is a 20-minute boat ride across the Chao Phraya river from busy metropolitan Bangkok and is also the site of one of Bangkok's non-touristy floating markets.
On this visit we opted to stay right by the city but still along the Chao Phraya river.
Bruges or Brugge in Dutch was never in our original itinerary during our recent European holiday but as fate would have it the Big K was given extra vacation days that gave us the opportunity to make a last minute detour to this enchanting medieval city. And oh boy are we ever glad we made that decision as we simply fell in love with this beautiful city.
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| Minnewater Lake |
My first long distance train ride in the US was a 12-hour trip to the East Coast with the Gorgeous H that I wrote about in an earlier blog post. During my recent visit with family, my train-loving sister talked me into yet another train ride this time to California.
Our journey started in Cleveland, the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where my sister and her long-suffering husband, the Doctor A lives, an overnight in Chicago and finally the Can-I-survive-two-days-in-a-minuscule-cabin-with-my-energizer-bunny-of-a-sister-train-trip. Yup! You read it right. It was going to be a much longer train ride across some of North America's scenic countryside.
Here's our third and the final in the series of blog posts about our week-long visit in the Loire Valley.
- You can read Part One here
- And Part Two here.
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| Château de Cheverny |
Next to our love for train rides in Europe, the Big K and I also enjoy road trips. We love speeding on autobahns or autoroutes, motoring along back country roads, traipsing from one picturesque village to another while trying to figure out what-the-heck-does-that-road-sign mean and all the other joys (and hair-raising excitement!) of driving.
And since the châteaux of the Loire are spread out in a large area, they are better reached by a car. Yup! Definitely a road trip here. In our week long excursion (well, 6 days to be exact), we had set our sights on the châteaux located along the central part of the Loire that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site (it would have been physically impossible to see all 300+ châteaux in the little time that we had). We wished we could have stayed longer.
We ended up visiting ten impressive châteaux. I know of some people who would cram so much things to see in such a short time but the Big K and I prefer to take our time sightseeing. You could say we're the step-back-and-enjoy-the-moment kind of travelers.
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| Château De Chenonceau |
