Holiday plans
Feb. 14th, 2026 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustMy birthday this year will be a semi-significant one. Five years ago I had a proper, significant, ends-with-a-zero birthday (I wrote about it at the time): but of course it was not a good time for special birthday holidays.
This year, therefore, I have some catching up to do. I was just beginning to think about how I would like to do it - France by train, perhaps? It's about time I visited Strasbourg... Then GirlBear suggested that - well, I think she suggested that she andboybear come and visit, but we decided that the really fun thing would be to go somewhere together. So now I was looking for somewhere that had something special about it, but was also Bear-friendly (not Abroad, not too far north): and I booked a long weekend in Portmeirion, which I have wanted to visit since - well, you can probably guess. I have added a week beforehand in north Wales (actually near Chirk, which I had never heard of, but which sounds interesting).
I was very excited about this that I carried on planning. D. has already booked our midsummer getaway, near the Moray Firth (that is, not far from where we spent his last birthday in Aberdeenshire, but nearer the coast). It has been my plan all along to go on from there to Orkney, and now that is also booked - nothing ambitious, but overnight ferry north, and a few nights at the Foveran...
durham_rambler has found a travel company who do rail holidays in France, so maybe we'll make that happen in the autumn - last week's travel section had a piece about Metz which would combine nicely with that trip to Strasbourg. And we have other things planned: the home-town-reunion get together (not in his home town), the Folk Festival...
It could be quite a fun year, in fact.
This year, therefore, I have some catching up to do. I was just beginning to think about how I would like to do it - France by train, perhaps? It's about time I visited Strasbourg... Then GirlBear suggested that - well, I think she suggested that she and
boybear come and visit, but we decided that the really fun thing would be to go somewhere together. So now I was looking for somewhere that had something special about it, but was also Bear-friendly (not Abroad, not too far north): and I booked a long weekend in Portmeirion, which I have wanted to visit since - well, you can probably guess. I have added a week beforehand in north Wales (actually near Chirk, which I had never heard of, but which sounds interesting).I was very excited about this that I carried on planning. D. has already booked our midsummer getaway, near the Moray Firth (that is, not far from where we spent his last birthday in Aberdeenshire, but nearer the coast). It has been my plan all along to go on from there to Orkney, and now that is also booked - nothing ambitious, but overnight ferry north, and a few nights at the Foveran...
durham_rambler has found a travel company who do rail holidays in France, so maybe we'll make that happen in the autumn - last week's travel section had a piece about Metz which would combine nicely with that trip to Strasbourg. And we have other things planned: the home-town-reunion get together (not in his home town), the Folk Festival...It could be quite a fun year, in fact.
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Date: 2026-02-14 08:55 pm (UTC)Metz is nice and has a Pompidou centre outstation.
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Date: 2026-02-15 10:59 am (UTC)And the Guardian mentioned the Pompidou centre, though what really appealed was the cathesral, which apparently has Chagall windows ...