A week of Travel

May 20, 2014

This week marked the end of our time in France. France was the toughest part of the tour so far travel wise and this week was particulary busy with travelling almost everyday. In a week we have been to Caen, Rennes, Nantes, Rouen and Lille and as I write this we are on a long two day travel to Denmark.

Due to the fact we were on the bus a lot mean’t we couldn’t get to see all of the towns/ cities as much as we would have liked.  Laurie, our tour manager had a great idea.  To break up the travel from Rennes to Nantes he suggested that we leave a little earlier and stop in Dinard. This was a gorgeous town right on the sea.The weather was just as nice with the sun splitting the stones.  We ate in a lovely restaurant looking out on to the sea. Cal even tried out the local cuisine and ordered mussels for the first time (even though he had never tasted them before). He wasn’t a big fan of them but at least he was embracing the culture so fair play to him.

We spent the next few hours chilling on the sand, getting ice-cream and  playing rounders. We had to improvise again and play with a football but it done the job nicely. We attracted quite an audience with people standing around watching or coming up and asking what the game was called as they had never seen it before. Some even had to dodge getting hit by the ball too as people got quite competitive! We also met a lovely woman who told us that since the age of 6 she had been coming to the beach and would go swimming. She swam everyday until last year. She is now 90 years old. I hope I am as active as her when I reach her age.

Rouen was another beautiful city. It was buzzing with life as it is a university city so there was plenty of young people around. We didn’t get to see to much here either but we did see one of the most amazing cathedrals in France right on our doorstep. Monet was even a fan and painted it 28 times. This was also the city in which Joan of Arc was burned at the stakes in the town centre.

This week a little girl put on smile on a lot of peoples faces. Margot, who is ten years old is a huge fan of the show. Her sister Silke Maris posts her pictures of the cast on Instagram as she is too young but we all get tagged and write her a little thank you under the picture. I messaged her sister to find out a little more about Margot. She fell in love with the show after her sister bought the Riverdance DVD ‘Live from Beijing’ and was extremely excited to find out that the show was going to her home town in Hasselt. Her favourite dancers are Niamh O’Connor, Padraic Moyles and Brendan Dorris and has got many new idols after getting to meet some of us after the show and is thrilled  that we have responded to her pictures. Her sister also told me she is going to draw everyone in the cast. She must put so much time and effort into her pictures and we all really appreciate them and look forward to seeing them.

As we spent a lot of time on the bus this week we came up with a new game to play to pass the time. We spent a whole 5 hour bus journey the other day, chatting and describing everyone with one adjective, saying where everyone will be in ten years time and our favourite one, one thing you love, love seems like quite a strong word here but liked about each person. We left that bus journey on a very positive note anyway. We may see eachother nearly every hour of everyday but we still always manage to find something to talk and laugh about.

Over the next few weeks we will travel to many countries, starting in Denmark we go to Sweden, Norway,Finland,and Russia. I have never been to any of these countries before so I am really excited and hopefully will have a lot to share with you all.