Month: August 2018

Top 3 City Destinations That Will Make Your France Road Trip Perfect

France is definitely a great country to visit. Not only because of its beautiful landmarks and sceneries, the people are also very friendly and helpful. However, be ready with some very basic French vocabularies, such as “combien” and “un” to “dix”, as well as “tout droit”. These words will give you such a big help!

For a road trip with very limited time, Below are three top city destinations that you should include in your itinerary.

1. Lille

Perfect for old city lovers, Lille is a historic 17th century city. It offers historical landmarks, museums, heritage sites, shopping, art, great hotels, and restaurants.

You don’t want to miss this city, especially since it is so easy to get to via Eurostar from London (only 90 minutes from London). As for us from Den Haag via Ouibus, it takes a mere 3 hours 55 minutes ride. Both of these will arrive at Gare Lille Europe (signboard in the picture).

The building in the picture is Garre De Lille Flandres, the main Railway Station of Lille. It is a terminus for SNCF Intercity and regional trains. It is only 500m walking distance from Gare Lille Europe, and both stations are adjacent stops on one of the lines of Lille Metro.

2. Rouen

Rouen is a vibrant city with beautiful architecture. The buildings of Rouen shows elements of a Norman architecture, such as half-timbered houses and Gothic cathedrals. Below are some of the buildings worth visiting in Rouen.

The picture is of Le Gros-Horloge (the big clock). It is a beautiful astronomical clock set within a Ressainance arch that stretches over the street bearing the monument’s name.

Other beautiful places and buildings include Historial Jeanne D’Arc, Old Market Square, Grande Pharmacie Du Cntre and the churches.

3. Paris

Visit to France is incomplete without visiting this city of love! Paris has so much to offer it’s visitors. The main one, of course, is the Eiffel Tower. You can choose either to pay more by taking the lift to the first or second floor, or you can pay less and use the stairs! You can skip the long queue by booking online, but be sure to book on a much advanced date, as it is always sold out! Alternatively, you may book your visit with a tour group, which is the fastest way to go up (with a bit more to pay, of course)!

The city is best explored by riding the hop-on-hop-off buss. It will take you to the tourists attractions around Paris. You can then visit Arc De Triomphe and Champs-Elysees, the best shopping place in France!

If you are an art lover, or just want to see the Mona Lisa, head over to the Louvre Museum! The museum is very big, you may want to use the map provided to visit the highlights of the museum, if your time is very limited.

These are the three cities suggested for the city lovers who are having road trip to France. Happy planning and have a great trip!

Long Distance Inter-Country Bus Trip In Europe

We have been browsing what was the best mode of transportation to travel from The Hague to Lille (note: this is inter-country between Netherlands and France). After a thorough research, we have decided to travel by bus. Specifically, we chose OuiBus!

You see, when travelling with a small toddler, the trip needs to be in a budget and convenient. Any bus trip sounds perfect! And it would be easy peasy to research & book. Or so we thought.

We almost booked Flixbus, but then we found out that toddlers need to be safely strapped in a car seat. And it’s not provided by Flixbus. Plus, travelling 13 hours flight with a transit in between? Definitely inconvenient to drag a car seat along (though we did some research on how to bring car seat along throughout long distance flight and extensive trip, we just can’t bear with it).

Renting a car seat alone was also a difficult option, at least if we search it online. And we’re definitely not backtracking to return the car seat!

And so we thought, to make life easier, why not go for a train ride? And so we did our research again. The price was way above our budget. We got stuck.

Then we stumbled upon OuiBus. It did not require our toddler to be strapped in a car seat! Yay! The price was also reasonable. Double yay! Only problem: the price kept rising every time we accessed the website. It’s like seeing stock exchange, changing by the minute!

After persevering doing research, we stumbled upon a website that also offers Ouibus, and price was fixed! So we booked our The Hague – Lille trip with OuiBus via a website called BusBud. Highly recommended!

Below is some of the sceneries from the bus trip. Not much, as we were busy with our toddler.

And below is the station where the bus halted. We only had time to take pictures when we were queuing for restroom!

That’s all the sharing we have for our long distance inter-country bus trip in Europe. Hope it helps!