Jan 9, 2009 – Frankfurt – Homeward Bound!

This is the last entry in the Helton’s European trip blog.  As you can see from the date this was posted it falls quite a bit after our return on January 9, 2009.  But I’m glad to finally complete these last few entries and bring the trip to an official close.

It was a wonderful adventure for our family and putting this blog together was a great adventure for me and a great opportunity for our family to share some of what we experienced during our trip with our family and friends.

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After saying our goodbyes to the Kerwers, we headed up to the Frankfurt airport, or more specifically, a Holiday Inn near the airport that was the designated Auto-Europe pick up and drop-off point for their vehicles.  A shuttle transported us from here to the terminal and our departure gate.

In this photo Allister and Charlotte stand beside our trusty Jean-Pierre Peugeot who had been our reliable companion for the previous 4 months.

Jean-Pierre had about 11 kilometres when we picked him up and here you can see the final tally from our trip – 17, 424 kilometres!

Allister and Charlotte say goodbye to Jean-Pierre properly.  We hope Auto-Europe and Peugeot found him a good home…

And then we were off to the airport to board the plane for the long trip to Vancouver and then the ferry to Victoria and home.

Jan 8, 2009 – Seeheim-Jugenheim, Germany

Earlier in our trip we visited with a Frankfurt CISV delegation that had attended Charlotte’s CISV camp in Pittsburgh in July 2008.  The family of Lea, one of the members of that delegation, had invited us to stay at their home if it fit with our schedule on our way back to Frankfurt for our return trip home.

With such a kind offer, we made this fit with our plans so the day before we were due to depart Frankfurt we met up with the Kerwer family in the city of Seeheim-Jugenheim, located less than 50 kilometres south of Frankfurt.

The Kerwer home was located on the edge of a large green space that we explored on a brilliantly sunny but cool day

It didn’t take long for the snowball fight to break out.

The Kerwer children’s school was located in part of this common green space area.

It had some pristine snow that was calling out, “snow angel, snow angel…”

I’ve remarked earlier in this blog about how impossible it is for kids of a certain age to pass by a playground without experiencing it.  This day provided another data point in my ongoing research.  We took advantage of the opportunity by having the kids pose for this picture.

A little further on from the school was a pond that was frozen quite solid.  A circular track had been cleared for skaters.

A group photo of the Kerwer family with Charlotte and Allister.

Jan 7, 2009 – Heppenheim, Germany

I had some hotel points remaining so we decided to stay a night in the same city and hotel where we spent our first couple of days when we first arrived in Europe in early September 2008.

Our hotel was in the old section of Heppenheim – they gave us the same room we’d stayed in our previous visit – and, as before, we were impressed by the view from our room of the rooftops of the old city.

Jan 6, 2009 – Beaune, France

On one of the last nights of our trip, in transit north to Frankfurt from the south of France we spent stopped for a night in Beaune.

The area around Beaune, the Cote de Beaune, is known for its Burgundy wines, with Beaune serving as the hub of the local wine business.  Many famous French wineries had buildings in town and the town had a very established, organized feel.

I looked through the my archive of pictures and couldn’t find any of Beaune so you’ll have to make do with my memory.  When we arrived in the early evening it was snowing and a light accumulation of dry snow on the ground.  We had a very nice room at the Hotel de la Paix and had a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant and had a relaxing evening.

When we left the next day the snow had stopped and the roads were in good condition for our trip to Heppenheim, Germany, a trip of just under 500 kilometres (according to the Google map linked here).

Jan 3–5, 2009 – Aix-en-Provence, France

After leaving Italy, we headed to Aix-en-Provence (they pronounce the Aix like ‘Ax’) for a rendezvous with our friends the MacDonald’s – Rick, Wendy, Rowan, Caelan, and Rick’s brother Al – who were also travelling in France.

We made a couple of day trips to the surrounding area.  This is a group photo taken in a place called Here is a group photo at a place called Les Baux-de-Provence (Google Maps link here).

 

We highly recommend this area and it was the second time we had visited it.  Fortunately we hadn’t  visited the old city and its fortifications on our previous visit so we joined the MacDonald’s in a visit to the site. 

They had visited once before, in summertime, when the temperature had been almost 40C which was quite different than the weather on this day – clear, windy, and quite cool.

This is view from the fortifications (which was a high point of land in this area) of the surrounding valley.  As you can see, there is an agricultural area where they were growing olives and lots of grapes.

 

This is a view from the fort of the city below.

The fort had been redeveloped into a museum, part of which is shown in this picture.

The museum contained a number of well-preserved medieval weapons.

Just to show that the wind that whipped us during our visit was not a fluke – check out the pocked walls of the fort.  I think they were a specific type of rock – limestone, sandstone, something like that – that is a little porous but this degree of erosion spoke of the exposed placement of the fort and a consistent prevailing wind.

Within two kilometres of the museum was a winery located inside an old limestone quarry.  They weren’t actually open to the public but on our previous visit to the area we’d also visited this winery and one of the employees remembered Charlotte so they provided a tasting and let us use their seating area for a picnic (and to get out of the wind).

On our way back to Aix-en-Provence, we passed through Avignon where we saw this unique tunnel entrance mosaic made out of different types of creeping (clinging) wall plants.

 

Another image from our day trip through the French towns around Aix-en-Provence.

A typical tree-lined French road we travelled on our way back to Aix-en-Provence and some very enjoyable group dinners with our friends.