Sardonic Dog

Originally uploaded by fauxbro.

I know I still haven’t posted any of the photos from our trip yet. I’ve put a lot of them up on Flickr, but haven’t got around to making a separate page for them yet.

In the meantime, I’ll post some of my favorites, like this dog.

Look at that face!

I have many thoughts on our trip and of course a couple thousand photos to troll through looking for gold. I’ll get started on that right away. I’ll post more about our trip (and perhaps a few of the small number of sketches I did) this weekend after I’ve had a bit of time to decompress and unpack and do all the returning to normal life things that one must do after a long trip.

Including starting the planning for our next trip: Mexico! But that trip is a long way off.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.