Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts

Thursday

Monschau - A to Z of Places I have Visited


I am writing about some places I have visited in alphabetical order.

So far we have got through 12 letters of the alphabet so nearly halfway through the series.





From August 2004 to December 2010 we lived in Belgium and because of that we have had extra opportunities to visit places we would not have heard of before or particularly thought of visiting previously.  Like The Durbuy Maze etc.

One of these places was the small town of Monshau in Germany.






Belgium and Germany share a border and just across that border from Belgium into Germany took us to that lovely picturesque location.


By Karte: NordNordWest, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 de,
CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35392837



It was a lovely day for a Fred and I to take a trip to show my sister and brother-in-law (yes the one who is the subject of a previous blog post 10 Gift Ideas for Your Brother-in-law )  another place while they were on one of their annual visits to us.

We also had our son Jonathan with us and as he spoke German he definitely was not going to be left out for two reasons.  Firstly he loves to visit any new place especially anywhere that may have some old buildings and secondly I knew from experience that when visiting large towns & cities in European countries there will not be too many language problems as many of the people will speak a decent amount of English but in the smaller tons and villages there can be communication problems.


We arrived on that sunny morning and as we parked our car our first view of the town was gorgeous.





A beautiful house in a picturesque setting of a small bridge and stream - just like you might see on a jigsaw box.

While stopping here to take some photos we ended up with a very different photo of a visitor to my arm.

I tried to look it up in google later and it seems to be some form of beetle but isn't is so small & colourful.  I did not mind having this beetle walking up my arm.





Walking on into the town we spied a fun type of transport and of course we couldn't resist taking the little train ride around the town and the surrounding area which involved up and down the hilly location.  This ended up being a good move because we were able to walk around the higher area without having to walk up the hill or down the hill because of this perfect means of transport.





We took this photo of the two hubbies in front of our transport because all men love trains but in fact all 5 of us had a fun time on our train ride.


As I said Jonathan loves old buildings and we certainly had some of them to visit on this day trip.




Up the hill was the Castle of the Dukes of Julich and we enjoyed exploring around it with it's beautiful archway and so much still intact.   The walls around the castle are clearly seen from the town sitting well below it.


After spending quite some time here we took the train down again to the town to do some more sightseeing.


Something I love to see is a clock tower and I loved this view I had through the trees of a very clear to read clock.





Then I scanned on up and saw the Swan at the top and thought how pretty this was






This turned out to the be the top of the Reformed Church in Monschau.




the clock face here was blue and there was another clock at the market square which had a white face  but I must have forgotten to take a photo of it.



We had a look around inside the church and then Fred took a photo of the rest of us at the entrance.




There is a very ornate bridge leading across from the front of the church to the opposite street, just another thing to make this a very memorable town.



It was such a bright, sunny day that we stayed outside most of the time so did not go in to investigate the museum that was beside the Reformed church.  It was called the Foundation Scheibler Museum and is highly recommended as one of the places to visit in Monschau.


We are often more interested in finding somewhere to have a good coffee and sit and people watch in beautiful surroundings which is what we did here with plenty of places to choose from for our cuppa in the centre of the town.


There are also lots of old, pretty wooden houses along the riverbank in Monschau.  See how they hang out over the edge of the river because they are built right to the edge




and some even sit out precariously over the edge which makes me wonder about the architecture of these houses.

This white and black one to the left in the picture below really caught my attention because it seemed to have just been thrown together with it's walls ready to fall over because they were missing their support.  Plus the fact that most of it was not straight - one of the more unusual houses I have ever seen.  

I think it is so noticeable because it is close to the other white one which is so straight and upright.





I thought we would end now with a picture which encompasses the style of this village




the different types of buildings the lovely clock tower, the museum, the wooded hillside and the view of the castle walls.

I would definitely recommend a visit to this quaint town especially on a sunny day like we had.









If you missed any of the previous places in this series just click on the Titles below:

A for Alicante
B for Bratislava
C for Calpe
D for Durbuy
E for Ennis
F for Florida
G for Gran Canaria
H for HongKong
I for Islandmagee
J for Jersey
K for Killyleagh
L for Leeds





Leeds - A to Z of Places I Have Visited


I am writing about some places I have visited in alphabetical order.
Still wondering what I will do for the more unusual letters like Q and X etc. but maybe I will have a brilliant idea later.






Leeds is a large city in England, UK.





I never really thought of this as a place I would be going to for a holiday because I would much prefer to go abroad or to places that were not so big and maybe somewhere I would have always heard of and wondered what it was like but this was not the case with Leeds.


By Harkey Lodger based on Jhamez84 at en.wikipedia
Own work based on map by Jhamez84 at en.wikipedia, Public Domain, Link


We ended up having a great connection with this busy city because in 2010 our oldest son left Belgium where we had been living for 6 years and headed off to be a pastor in Leeds.

Now Jonathan was not so daunted by the city because he had been dealing with driving through Brussels regularly but he still was not interested in living in the city nor could he afford it.

He got a small one bed appartment in a little village on the outskirts of Leeds and so that is how we came to visit Leeds.

We made several trips over to Leeds both from Belgium and then later from NI to which we had since moved.





A City Weekend Break in Leeds would be nice with lots to see round the city with the variety of architecture as shown above with the modern building in the foreground which is the new shopping centre and the older Civic centre building in the background.

Another older building is the Old Post Office in Leeds City Square shown below.



By Tim Green from Bradford - General Post Office, City Square, Leeds (former), CC BY 2.0, Link


In my opinion modern buildings are great if they are useful and practical and still have an interesting look about them but I'd much prefer they were eye-catching for their architectual beauty and not just to be "different".





Also for it's museums.

Above is Leeds city Museum which still stands impressively in the city with a lovely casual feel set back from the roadway and traffic by a wide footpath.







Of course we must not forget the shops to spend your money in and abundance of places to choose to eat in with a great variety of flavours from all over the world.

Here again you see the old and the new when it comes to eateries.


I have to note here that every time we have visited there have been new restaurants that Jonathan has discovered so of course he takes us to test them out.





Leeds is so large that even though we have visited several times I am never sure which street I am going to turn into next but then that might have something to do with the extensive one-way system for the traffic.

We have always been thankful that Jonathan knows where he is going as he drives us along.


Interesting Architecture and Good Food in this Yorkshire City.


My husband and I do know the way to his apartment though and you would think you were in a different world altogether when you arrive there.  It is just beside the canal and there is a nature reserve area where he can walk around and find a seat to sit and read in the quiet of the countryside.

The nicest photo we have of his apartment building was taken during the snow in January 2013 - his is the top one one the far right and there is the countryside beside it.





A few of the times we have visited Jonathan has taken us to the surrounding villages for breakfast or lunch and they are lovely with all their Yorkshire stone houses.

We have also had a trip into the close by city of Bradford to sample some of the food there.

Although I said at the start about a weekend city break in Leeds it would also be worth the time to spend a little longer to explore some of the beauty of the countryside nearby in the Yorkshire Vales.







Jonathan has recently left Leeds to live and work in West Malvern a four hour journey south of Leeds into the Malvern Hills so we have a new location to visit and get to know.




If you missed any of the previous places in this series just click on the Titles below:

A for Alicante
B for Bratislava
C for Calpe
D for Durbuy
E for Ennis
F for Florida
G for Gran Canaria
H for HongKong
I for Islandmagee
J is for Jersey
K is for Killyleagh