Etap Hotel Besancon Nord Besançon

Bonjour!

We are up and running in France and Switzerland. The French countryside is BEAUTIFUL! Buffard, France is now our home base. You will hard pressed to find it on a map….it is close to Besancon. So far in the countryside we have encountered 9 wild boar, 3 deer, 1 hedgehog, 1 mountain goat, Belgian horses, and too many milk cows ...

... in style. My highlight was seeing a pair of storks in their giant nest atop a tower. After that it was a short distance to Colmar and a hotel that actually had a kettle and access to an iron!! I was very happy. That night we had the best meal we've had in the Little venice section of Colmar..more about this town next time.

PS Forgot to mention there was an even bigger well at the citadelle....John very happy!! More sticks and stones dropped down!!

... to get there. Ed just randomly drove and I watched street signs and next thing you knew, I saw we were on the right street and our hotel was right there. We were glad it turned out to be so easy! We found a place to park and checked in. Well, sort of checked in. We went inside and saw a large group at the check in desk and thought we'd have a long wait. Then, I saw a group of envelopes taped to the doorway and my name was on one of them. So I ...

An early start as the road noise at 6am was incredible; interspersed with regular trains and their sirens its one of noisiest sites I've been on. Are there any campsites away from railway lines? Feeling a bit miserable this morning turning over the persistant failures in various area's of my life to date. But got on the path. Which turned out to be alongside the previously mentioned busy road. Then the path ended and I was mixing it with ...

... daughters had taken up residence. They all spoke in whispers in a language I didn't recognise and seemed to make some effort to avoid eye contact. But with this many people going to bed the progress through the bathroom took time. I.t was all very proper and rather like being on the tube. Dad snored from the word go and one of the daughters had the gene. The room also got fairly hot but with the windows open options were limited. Later I realised I had sunburn too. So it was ...

Last night I wondered over to the paddlers fire and they invited me to share some wine. It turned out that the tent was quite hard to locate. But in the end it turned out good. They were just out for the weekend, sleeping under a tarp and cooking over a fire. Although they did have to shuffle cars. There is something magic about a campfire and I must do it at some point. In the tree's I slept reasonably apart from being too warm! If fact it was much ...

... the main band ca me on. Who were a bit rockier and a bit more ambitious soundwise; again largely lost in the sound system. Eventually they finished and people drifted off a bit. I headed for home. It was absolutely teeming down. So I hung about outside the club while the club grandad engaged me in a long monologue which I think was rain related. Waiting wasn't working so I had to go and get wet. And go round in a circle and ride up several hills in the rain getting wetter and colder. Such fun.

... night. Underneath the house is a place they call the Cave, which is a small bar/club thing. I’m incredibly proud to say I managed a whole 2 drinks and maybe even 40 minutes before I gave in to my nagging desire to be anywhere else omfg. When exactly did the human mating ritual descend into relying on so much alcohol you can barely see, and so much noise you can’t hear anything anyone says, while jumping down ineffectually on the spot? Those ...

... in the scene. Even now, looking back, I can remember the disorganized, carnival atmosphere with the messy display on the different table of the merchandise, and of each of the vendors yelling to promote their products and the prices, and the vendors selling the "as seen on TV" type gadgets talking to crowds of people in front of their stands about how this product would better their daily lives. One thing that I noticed different from this ...

... tourist office said was something that I could not leave Besancon without seeing. Ironically the cathedral wasn't that far away, so I started to make the trek up the hill. The lady had warned me that the Citadelle was on a steep, tall, hill and boy was she right.... At the time period I still had a lot of weight on me and was out of shape, and I had been walking all day so going up that hill killed me, but to see the views up there was ...