Jan 26th, 2007
An apartment in Paris
Plans are really starting to firm up for our trip.
Over the weekend I wired the deposit for our apartment in Paris. It’s near the Canal St. Martin and across the street from a metro stop (important). The neighborhood isn’t exactly in the center of things but it’s near enough that everything is easily accessible (also important). We will be stationed there for a week before moving on to Provence. The apartment even has a washer and dryer which is a very nice little bonus.
I found the place through Paris Attitude, and so far my dealings with them have all been smooth and professional. I will update on the rest of the process when we get back from our trip (or on our trip, depending on how much internet access we can swing).
The only other major thing to do before we leave is rent a car, which I will look into more thoroughly next month.
Oh, and figure out were we’ll be staying in the various stops in Provence and Nice.
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Jan 11th, 2007
Soundwalk Paris
I’m very excited to see that Soundwalk has some new Paris walking tours. Five of them, to be exact. I am a big fan of both this concept in general and this company in particular (as you can see from my review of two of the New York tours).
I all ready plan on getting at least two of them (the Marais and the St Germain tours), and may break down and get them all. I know we won’t have time to do all of them, but they will be fun to listen to anyway.
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Jan 5th, 2007
Further Adventures in Travel Planning
I feel I should post an update on how the planning is going, so here it is.
Remember last time when I said I thought I had the itinerary pretty well fixed? Well I’ve changed it. After much deliberation, juggling, rearranging and other machinations, I have decided that there is nothing for it but to drop Lyon from the trip. This made me a little sad, but things just fit more easily with it gone, so it went. Also, I have dropped the amount of time we are spending in the Riviera to three days instead of five and added the extra time to Provence.
I have updated the itinerary to the right to reflect these changes.
Now, a lot of this schedule is dependent on the renting of a car for four days, which is dependent on finding a good deal on an automatic (I can’t drive manuel and Irene has expressed a reluctance to drive). And even so, it is an extremely packed schedule (which is a bit of a speciality with me), but should be doable.
The Riviera section is still a bit nebulous, as I am just now reading that section of the book. It should be firmed up fairly soon though.
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Dec 12th, 2006
Fixing The Itinerary
I feel like at this point I’ve got the basic skeleton o f the trip locked down apart from one point. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it to include Lyon in the trip or if that time could be better spent in Provence or the Riviera.
Right now I’m leaning toward yes, it should be included, even if it is a brief stop (which it most likely will be). Originally I planned on us spending two nights in Lyon, but now I’m thinking one night will have to be enough. We can take the morning train from Paris spend the rest of the day and the night, and the take an afternoon train out the next day to Avignon.
This plan is still slightly in flux but here’s how I’ve got it breaking down so far:
7 days in Paris, 1 day in Lyon, 5 days in Provence, and 5 days in the Riviera.
And EasyJet offers very inexpensive flights from Nice to Paris, which means we don’t have to waist precious vacation time circling back to Paris at the end of the trip.
The itinerary has been updated.
P.S. I should make it clear that my hesitation in stopping in Lyon is not because I don’t think it will be a worthwhile stop, because I’m sure it will be, but because our time is limited and we would be going directly from big city (Paris) to big city (Lyon). If anybody has an opinion on this they’d like to share please feel free to leave a comment or email me directly.
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Dec 7th, 2006
Let the planning commence
So last night I received not one, not two, but three, three new books on France. One, Let’s Go France 2007, from the fine folks at Amazon and two from my connection at Rick Steves. Those would be the Paris 2007 and the Provence 2007.
Now I can dive into the meat of the planning process, which I have actually all ready started.
For instance I discovered that we can fly from Nice to Paris for around $23 on EasyJet. Which means no long train trip eating up most of a day towards the end of our trip. We can actually fly to de Gaulle the morning of our return and make it there in plenty of time to catch our outbound flight.
This will make planning a bit easier as we no longer have to worry about making our route more circular.
Très Bien!
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