Introduction to our Europe trip:

Our planning for a 2025 vacation was late given Lana's Dad's illness and then his passing. We all miss Lana's Dad Mr. Wong. 


Our decision was to spend our vacation in Europe and begin with a couple of days in Barcelona with the  primary reason being Sagrada Familia as we last saw it quite a few years ago when it was still being built. We were eager to see how much progress had been made on Gaudi's vision. Also, Barcelona was reasonably close by rail to get to the south of France.


Online pic of Barcelona, Spain


We booked with Le Boat for a canal boat on Canal du Midi. One of our friends had spoken with me about their trip many years ago on Canal du Midi and it looked like a novel way to navigate the French countryside. We booked a 40 foot boat to share with our friends Al and Pat. Our reservation was for seven (7) nights. We were pretty excited.


Map of the Canal du Midi in the south of France west of Provence.



After our canal experience the plan was to spend time in Lyon and Dijon prior to making it to Paris for our flight home. We have never been to either city and both are known as gastronomy capitals of France. We have spent time in Paris on three previous occasions. 

Map of France so you can see Lyon, Dijon and Paris.



We organized everything inclusive of Rail Europe for train tickets. For this vacation we took planes, boats, trains, trams, taxis, bicycles and did a lot of walking. We left Thursday, October 2nd and returned Sunday, October 19th. 


Lana summarized her experience as being very inspiring from the French/Spanish cuisine, art and culture. She did not realize how much she needed a vacation and change of scenery until we arrived in Barcelona and was very happy about being away. I simply enjoyed everything about our adventure and we have lots of stories and photos within our blog. Big difference this vacation as I decided not to take my Macbook laptop and wait until we arrived back in Vancouver to create the blog. 


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