Zigeuner

No worries about freezing in our room last night. The bathroom nuclear zone was keeping not just our room but part of the hallway nice and toasty. We almost didn't need to towel dry after our showers. The water evaporated quickly. Outisde our hotel window the parking lot was dry as well. There was even a glimmer of sun out over the Channel. It looked to be a rather promising day weather-wise. Now that France was expected to be back to her normal return two days after Christmas, we passed on eating the hotel breakfast. Instead we decided we'd head back into Bayeux and shop at the huge LeClerc foodstore we passed numerous times trying to get out of town. As I started us on our way I spied signs at the edge of Arromanches depicting ... read more

We gave ourselves a Christmas present this morning: we slept in an extra hour. Once I got up and looked out our hotel room window I was tempted to crawl back into bed. It was absolutely ugly out there: dark, rainy and depressingly deserted. There were only three other cars in the whole vast parking lot. But since Gail and her mother were in a different room on a different floor and since this once grand old hotel did not have room phones, I had to get up and shower first. In our bathroom was an overhead electric coil heater. Pulling on a thin string cord turned it off and on through three different heat intensities. It was a bit chilly so I yanked the cord two times to get to the medium warmth setting. After ... read more

Whenever we travel I always prefer to stay in the same accomodations for as long as possible. Packing up and moving every morning is a pain. Because we were covering so much territory on this vacation, we didn't get to experience that luxury too often. But here in St. Valery we were booked for two nights. That meant that today we could spend the whole day doing whatever we found interesting rather than having to get to a certain locale in time to check-in. Since it was a Sunday and only two days before Christmas we figured that most stores would be closed and that we'd have trouble finding breakfast sandwiches. Last night while sitting down in the lounge accessing the internet, the proprietor of the Hotel Henry IV walked in and inroduced himself. He was ... read more

Our plane actually landed at Paris De Gaulle Airport a few minutes early. Perhaps the bumpiness was the result of strong tailwinds. In any case, I made it across the Atlantic in one piece and without using the barfbag. Like all European airports, customs and immigration was quick and painless. It was a pretty nice hike from the arrival gate through immigration where the bored agent didn't even look at us to baggage claim. Unlike Philly or Newark, our bags were on the carousel within 5 minutes of our showing up there. After a quick potty stop and using the free video postcard machine to show our family that we made it there, we proceeded through customs where absolutely no one was checking bags or even asking if we had anything to declare. Our first order ... read more

I've been told that we get but once to celebrate our 60th birthday and since the end of 2012 would usher in that formidable milestone in my life, I wanted to do so in style. I was given the opportunity to pick where we would spend our Christmas Holidays this year and I opted to choose a place we had never been to before. Last February in my efforts to avoid doing the taxes for as long as possible I had stumbled upon this website: http://users.tpg.com.au/adsl8fbu/Clairanew.htm. I decided I'd like to rent out a nice house whereby we could stay in one spot all week while doing daily driving excursions to local sites. Down in the south of France we'd be near beautiful Provence, the Spanish border and many Cathar mountain castles. When Gail discovered that ... read more

Because of the Mardi Gras holiday and the ensuing brouhaha it had caused with our winter tire rental, we needed to get up early in the morning to meet with Annette Wagner, a representative of ED Winter Tires. She and her husband would be taking our car to their tire facility so that the original all-season tires could be put back on the car when they re-opened for business on Wednesday. One of them would drive our car while the other took the four of us and all our luggage to the airport. In a way, this was almost better than trying to cram all our newly purchased stuff and extra bag into the tiny BMW trunk. Annette could take us right up to the entrance of the airport. We wouldn't need to allow extra time ... read more