The second train of (Not Quite) All the Small Things had brought me across Belgium into my second Benelux country of the trip and my 29th ever, Luxembourg. As with many smaller nations, the country and its capital city share the same common name, although the country is officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, whilst the city is technically Luxembourg City.

Having spent some time travelling on and reviewing the Dutch rail network, I had the rest of the day to explore some more of The Netherlands and so started heading towards another of the country’s major cities, Rotterdam. However, before making it to Rotterdam, there was one more town I wanted to visit. Gouda.

Having arrived into Utrecht onboard an ICE International service, I headed to my hostel to check in, freshen up and most importantly have a nap. Staying at the BUNK Hostel a stones thrown from Utrecht Centraal station, it was just a few minutes after getting off the train that I was checking in.

With a rare spare Saturday available to us, we decided to venture out for the day and, with cheap LNER tickets available, a trip to Leeds was decided on. Whilst Leeds is a city I’ve travelled to by train numerous times, I’ve never actually stepped outside the station and so was excited to see what Yorkshire’s largest city had to offer.

Whilst Normandy has plenty of destinations for day trips, our location in the west of the region meant we were not far from the border with Brittany and only an hour or so from the Breton capital, Rennes. Deciding to take a day to explore the city, we made a relatively early start and drove to the outskirts, planning on heading into the centre using the city’s metro.

Having based ourselves in the south-west corner of Normandy for our holiday, we were able to explore plenty of the region, with the occasionally foray into Brittany. Whilst these day trips were all thoroughly enjoyable, none were really long enough or in-depth enough to justify their own blog posts and so this post covers seven extra places to explore whilst in Normandy