Saturday, July 3 We’re sharing our hotel with support people from Cochonou, a French packaged lunch meat producer. They Couchonou folks will be participating in the Caravan that precedes every race and they brought with them about a dozen exotic vehicles including drop-top Citreon’s, panel trucks sporting enormous bakery goods, etc. The purpose for the …
Friday, July 2 While one major impetus for this trip was the Tour de France, today was largely about football. You know, the kind where the ball is round and the men wear short pants. Holland was playing Brazil in the World Cup quarter-finals and we had the great fortune to watch the game from under …
Thursday, July 1 Got up early (5:00) and I decided to see what Brugge is like without all the tourists, so I grabbed the camera and hit the streets. Typical European town morn with great looking bread and pastries being delivered, empty beer cans encircling the statues in the town square attesting to the prior evenings …
Tuesday, June 29 – Wednesday, June 30 The trip was marvelously uneventful. Both legs of the flight departed on time and arrived early, which defied the recent history for this route. Because we didn’t have a lot of confidence in when we might arrive at CDG, we didn’t make reservations for the train to Brugge. …
Over Kansas, via AA’s wi-fi and my iPod: looks like we’ll make our connection for the Paris leg with no problems. Just found out we have a little personal admin stuff we need to address while we’re traveling. Hopefully we can take care of it in Chicago. IPod battery life with OS 4 sucketh! Editor’s …
Despite months of pre planning and a relaxing evening, we still wound up a bit rushed with “out the door” stuff. Anyway, PHX-ORD flight seems to be operating OK. Only “Oh shit!”, aka “Oh merde”, thus far is Laurel forgot her recently cleaned, polished and refurbed ring.
Ok, so it’s 1330 CEST, but it’s just past 4 in the morn here, and I’m awake. Packing is done, cleaning is done, we’re in pretty good shape so I’m playing with Google Maps and trying to set up a little tracker.
Could it be I’m getting like WAY old? When traveling in a countries where English is not the primary language, I have this rule about never eating in a restaurant that offers English menus. It’s much more fun to be where the locals are. Plus the food is generally better and cheaper. I guess this all …
If it takes five bound folders, several dozen filed emails, a couple of really complex spreadsheets, a set of OneNote files and a SharePoint site to plan your Euro trip, you MAY be a techno-weenie. Actually, this is far more pre-planning and reserving than is the norm for our trips, but when your destination is …
It’s hard to believe, but one week from today we’ll be on our way. There’s still a little catching up on the DO list, but all-in-all I’d say we’re in pretty good shape. The one exception to this is that we never got around to seriously working on French language skills. The recovery plan for …