Day Trip to Lyme Regis on the Devon-Dorset Border

There are plenty of shops along High Street in Lyme Regis on the Jurassic Coast. Most cater to the many tourists coming to this seaside town. At this time of year, in early October, it was mostly elderly people. The weather was brilliant, and we even got to sunbathe at the shore for half an hour before we left the next day.

We had the option of taking a three-hour tour, but having only one afternoon in this town (we got there around noon from Exeter), we decided to walk around at our own pace.

There are a few fossil shops, a fossil museum, fossil tours, and even the lanterns are fossil-shaped.

On my former visits England, I used to find coins on the streets and sidewalks. Not anymore. Either it is because the streets are being swept all the time (they looked very clean), or because Brexit is near. Instead of coins, I saw many bird feathers. 🙂

We walked a good mile out to the spot where one can find fossils. We didn’t find any, but instead I found much sea glass! A fossil collector explained how it got there – land erosion caused a landslide, and brought down a landfill… I brought it with me nevertheless. It had been in the sea for many years, polished by the sand and water, so it had done its job.

Jurassic Coast Lyme Regis

This is a beautiful place to vacation, and I could easily spend a week here. There are several cafés and benches by the shore. Most of them have an inscription dedicated to a loved one.

We watched the elderly get off the bus. They had to step carefully, some gave a helping hand. My husband and I looked at each other, and we didn’t have to say it out loud. This could be us ten years from now.

We saw no one with an iPhone, nor iPad (I used mine to take pictures and was eyed curiously). We were some of the younger tourists there.

Three Days in Riquewihr, Alsace

Again, here are a few more impressions of our visit to Riquewihr.

The last time, we had been here was in 1996. Back then we could only stay for one day, because suddenly we had a baby with a high fever on our hands. Being new parents, having just moved to Europe from Japan, with only mediocre French skills, we decided to head back to Germany to see a doctor.

This time around, we were on our own. That little boy is now a college student in England and our daughter was in Poland on a school trip. The only rise in temperature we expected to get was from having red wine. 🙂

The whole town is so neat and clean. There is something interesting to see around every little corner. While we were there though, there was often a sour smell wafting out of courtyards (wine making in process).

Store front Riquewihr

This is either a vegetable storage bin or the recycling of one’s no-longer-edible vegetables, serving as decor.

vegetable box

 

 

corn in window

Main street,  rue du GĂ©nĂ©ral-de-Gaulle, is very inviting with its many restaurants (30 of them, I’ve been told).

Rue du Général-de-Gaulle à Riquewihr

At the restaurant La Grappe d’Or , we were seated upstairs. That’s nothing unusual in itself, only the fact that the ceiling is extremely low. We had to walk in bent over, so did the waitress serving the food. With the help of some good red wine, we made it out of there OK. Slightly more bent over.

Nevertheless, I had the best salad ever there. Look for “Salade Automne” with figs, chestnusts, strips of zucchini, mint leaves, on a bed of lettuce, with a bread basked. My husband had the “Escargots Baeckaoffa” (some potato casserole specialty with snails). He was not raving about the food as much as I was, but he liked it.

La Grappe d'Or Ă  Riquewihr

La Grappe d’Or Ă  Riquewihr

We had a very pleasant time in Riquewihr.

Three Days in Riquewihr, Alsace

This is a little show-and-tell of roadsides,  restaurants, and Riquewihr impressions from our three-day visit.

There are quite a few tourists with a dog in tow. For some older dogs, it might be a bit hard to walk up and downhill on the cobble stones. This shop owner’s cat had a keg to hop on every time one of the friskier dogs came near.

cat on keg

Most amazing are the beautifully decorated shops and windows in these old and well preserved houses.

Grocer's shop window, Riquewihr

This was taken on Sunday evening with the weekend making it a busier place.

Riquewihr

We had looked online at rental places outside the medieval part of town as well, and so we took a little stroll to see where some of the other lodgings are located.

View onto Riquewihr

We ended up with a very nice studio apartment on main street, rue du Général-de-Gaulle. More about that in a different post.

Frankfurt and Sunday Shopping Calendar for 2013

For some readers, who are not familiar with our German shopping laws, this might seem unusual.

Things have eased up a bit over the years, giving individual states the choice of whether to have shops open and running or not. Before this adjustment was made all shops had to close on Sundays (except for open markets and fairs).

Our state of Hesse just announced the dates for the four (limited!) Sundays for Sunday shopping. An unusual concept for many Germans, and the shops are usually full on those days.

The German term is Verkaufsoffene Sonntage (no proper translation is available at this point).

Sunday shopping 2013 calendar:

* 14 April (same Sunday as the Dippemess/Frankfurt Fair)

* 26 May (same Sunday as the Wolkenkratzerfestival /Skyscraper Festival)

* 15 September (same Sunday as the International Auto Ausstellung (IAA)), but restricted to certain parts of town

* 13 October (same Sunday as the world’s biggest Book Fair)

This new trend of keeping shops open on certain Sundays has been labeled a positive move by our economic experts. Long overdue, but all in good German time.

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