France
May 22nd, 2007
Bonjour encore
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May 19th, 2007
Greetings from Paris
I type this from France’s computer (our friend France, of course, not the country, it would be absurd if there was only one computer for all of France). We landed yesterday at 9:40 am and hopefully got all the problems were going to have on this trip on the first morning. But that’s another story.
This is just a short note to let everyone know that we got here safely and met up with France this morning. And everything (after that first troublesome half day) has gone swimmingly.
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May 16th, 2007
Pre-Trip Jitters?
We leave for France tomorrow and I’m a bit antsy. I’ve been planning for this trip for so long that I’m ready for it to just get started.
Last night I had a little anxiety dream about the trip (the only bit I’ve felt so far). In the dream it was our first day in Paris and we’d been going around having a great time when, around 4pm, I suddenly realized we were meant to meet the apartment guy at noon, and now where were we going to sleep. I immediately hopped on the metro to set off for the apartment only to realize I didn’t know where I was going. So I began digging around in my bag for my metro map. The first one I pulled out was for the NY subway, and the second for something else entirely. It dawned on me that I had brought no map at all and now I was really screwed.
And then I woke up and realized how ridiculous the dream was. We would have noticed that we were still schlepping around or backpacks and I would never have not packed a map. I’m very well prepared for this trip and expect it all to go very smoothly.
I’ll keep you updated, though, if it should not.
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Apr 19th, 2007
One month
Four weeks from now we will be on our way to France.
And we are ready. Plans are all made, hotels are all booked, the car is rented and the train tickets are bought.
That is all.
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Mar 16th, 2007
Winding Down
In two weeks we are headed to San Francisco where we will spend 10 fairly low key days and we are both very ready for a vacation because we haven’t had any extended time off since September.
Planing for San Francisco has been pretty minimal as it’s an entirely different sort of journey than the one we’ll be taking in May. This trip is all about visiting friends and family, relaxing and probably an excursion to Napa and Sonoma with a possible overnight stay in Calistoga. But really there isn’t much required in the way of pre-trip planning apart from the rental car and a few emails and phone calls to people to let them know we’re coming. And since I’ve put Irene in charge of finding us a place to stay in the wine country, my work is done.
Which is good, because most of my attention has been focused on France. And now with two months until we leave, the planning is winding down as the itinerary is fixed, the apartment in Paris and the car for Provence have both been rented, and hotels have been booked for Avignon and Vaison-la-Romaine. It remains only to book hotels for Nice and the Luberon (and I’m in the process of doing that) and to contact the apartment people and arrange the details of our arrival.
One thing that pleases me about this trip is that even though we will be packing a lot in, we won’t be switching hotel as often as we might. We will have a minimum of two nights at two hotels and three and four nights at the others. This allows us to feel like we have a little bit of a base from which to explore the area. The logistics were tricky at first, but I feel like of got everything pretty solidly nailed down.
I really do enjoy the whole planning process and lately I’ve been listening to the A Year In Europe podcast and dreaming about what it would be like to drop out of life for a year and spend it traveling. And although it doesn’t seem feasible right now, some day I would love to do it. Although I think I would probably broaden the scope a bit and make it more of a round the world trip.
For now though, I’ll just have to settle for the two or three weeks at a time we can manage.
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