The main problem though is the language: spanish isn’t really easy to learn, and you know – I am a bit lazy too, so I always delayed this trip

Luckily a friend suggested me a very interesting way to learn it by attending some Spanish courses in Buenos Aires , which was also one of the town I had in mind to visit! another good solution to learn is thanks to the possibility of internships Argentina .

I am really thinking to take advantage of those possibilities, maybe this summer when I’ll have finished my regular school, and I’ll have more free time to learn a new language, which is always a good thing to do, both for your curriculum and for pleasure.

The beautiful streets above are located again in Moulin, that typical medieval village I went to visit some years ago. There are lot of houses and details that were really well preserved through the course of the years, as you can see also from the other pictures below:

sitting right in the middle of the town this huge gothic cathedral was really beautiful, even if I can’t remember his name, but I remember well its giant dimensions and its gothic decorations, like this “gargoyle” that you can admire below:

all in all, really a town full of history and culture, with lots ot offer, even if isn’t a very popular town, surprisingly.

The next day we went to visit another place called Chateaux Chinon, located in the same area but a few km north, bordering the natural park of Morvan, at 700m on the sea level. Even this small town had a particular feeling, even if wasn’t so rich in historical monuments as Moulin: the fact that was so close to a natural park, and the surrounding mountains made it a very cool place for the nature-lovers like us.

The picture above represents the town hall, in the middle of the town. Not bad, don’t you think? it was full of green zones with various flowers and plants, all around it.

So this trip in Bourgogne, one of the less known areas of France, came to an end. I have mixed feelings and memories of it: the great historical monuments, the medieval atmosphere, but also the cold and rainy weather (due to the period I went to visit). Still if you love nature, history and good wine (it is one of the best french region for wine production!) I recommend you take the time to make a trip in Bourgogne: you won’t regret it!

We rented a house for one week for the amount of about 260 euros, quite cheap compared to our prices! as soon as we arrived nearby the small town of Decize, the owner showed us the place, which I must admit was very cool. Two floors, detached house, with 3 bedrooms, a big kitchen and livingroom, and a very big garden of 2500 square meters!

Since we originally came to look for houses, we were already enthusiast about this one, and we wanted to ask the owner if she was interested in selling it! the garden was quite cool, with many trees, in particular a red apples one which had so many fruits on it, and some of them lying on the ground.

We took care of “cleaning” the garden from all the apples, and they were absolutely tasteful!

As I told you before, once we were there a few days, we realized that the plan to go living abroad wasn’t really possible at that time. Even if the french language, very similar to our italian, wasn’t really a problem, the feeling of being so distant from all our places and our beloved ones in the end made us change our mind.

So we decided to turn it into a normal small holiday, with a very particular flavour, since is really unusual to visit those places in autumn

I liked a lot the town of Decize, even if in general I must admit that all the places we saw were cool, from the small town to the medium-sized one, indeed it’s still possible to find many medieval traits, in the houses and expecially in the gothic churches.

The picture above is only a small sample of what you can find in the town of Moulin, which was very close to Decize. The house were really splendid, and the small old shops contributed to create a wonderful atmosphere. Really a place to visit if you like those sort of things!

it was just in front of our holiday village on the Red Sea, when we taveled here a few years back. As you can read, they don’t seem to really care a lot about the tourist health… if you slip on the rocks, drow, scratch your feet on the coral reef, etc, in one word: if you have ANY kind of possible accident there, is your fault!

Clearly I was quite surprised… having such a signpost in the shore just in front of the holiday village isn’t really encouraging! to be honest though, it wasn’t really located in front of my holiday village, but a few meters away on the side, so perhaps that was already “outside the range” of our village…

Hohenschwangau covered by snow

And I couldn’t leave without taking a look to the 3rd castle nearby, Linderhof. It was covered by snow too, and was closed to the public, however you could still access the outside, which is nice anyway even during winter (even if of course during summer is completely different with all the flowers, etc). It was cool, a strange quiet and at same time majesty was surrounding all the place, almost an intimidating atmosphere.

We explored it for a while, remembering how was different from the summer view, and we had a good time, a feeling of peace, relax.

Linderhof’s park during winter

During the last day of our short winter holiday, we decided to randomly explore Oberammergau surroundings, it’s one of the thing I like more. No predetermined goal, no time, just our instinct: we traveled by foot, following a strange white cross that was on a hill close to the village, and we passed through a wooden bridge…

…and lastly we spotted the cross, and discovered that every year the village people make a “passion play”, a really nice Christian tradition. You can read the whole history in the official site here: www.oberammergau.de

White Cross

Since we had still a few hours left before leaving, we took a short drive and started to walk into a nearby wood (of course was all snow-covered). Once again, there was a really weird atmosphere in it, of peace and mystery together, maybe also because the sun was fading and the darkness was slowly but constantly enveloping the landscape.

We stopped at one point where there was a small river, and we could hear a distant waterfall noise, or something like that. We were too much curious to find out what was hiding behind those woods, but it was really late and almost night, so we thought that was better to get back to the car.

We swore thought to come back there one day, to find out what marvelous nature’s masterpiece was hiding in that “magic wood” of the bavarian region…

a distant waterfall noise… what was hiding in that wood?