DavidGarvin2011

Today we bid farewell to jolly old England. Travel time to the airport, along with some paperwork to avoid paying VAT taxes, plus the usual security checks and being certain to get to the airport in time, all resulted in a 5:30 start for this morning. We gain 6 hours on the clock once we get home, so we are going to be tired by the time locals are having lunch. This 30-hour day doesn’t have the same appeal as the 25 hours days during our cruise last Fall. We had everything packed and had a arranged for a cab at 6:15, so we got started fine – EXCEPT that the elevator was turned off and we might have had to lug the bags up the stairs. But the Desk Clerk was able to get it ... read more

Our first formal tours of London were focused on Windsor Castle and on Hampton Court. The biggest difference between them is that Windsor was built as a fort and after creating the very fortified walls it was then embellished inside to be one of the homes of the king/queen. That needs to be contrasted with Hampton Court which was built as a palace for courtiers to have an elaborate lifestyle but being mildly fortified to resist any disorganized rabble but not to withstand an army. So those are the two main things we saw today. The skies were intermittently cloudy/sunny, but there was a wind which made it kind of cool today. Let’s start with breakfast. David had the classic English breakfast and Janet had the Continental Breakfast, both served in the hotel breakfast room. We ... read more

If it is Friday, then we must be in the Loire Valley. High level – we were picked up at our hotel at 6:30 this morning and return to our hotel about 8:15 this evening and in between we saw some pretty spectacular places. Since we had such an early start, we set the Palm Pilot and hoped it would have enough juice to run through the night (tried to charge it but without success). But it worked and we were up bright and early so a day which was mostly sunny, but occasionally cloudy with a couple of sprinkles here and there. It was cooler than the before and probably could have been a long-sleeve shirt day, but who knew? Our first impression was wrong. We had signed up for the Loire Valley Tour with ... read more

Hello from Paris. First let’s give a couple of updates before reporting today’s adventure. David has gotten the sniffles but is managing them with some Allegra. Janet’s allergy is getting better – she still has occasional coughing spells and feels tired because of not sleeping too well, but she is better than yesterday. Here is a great big THANK YOU to Mike & Sue for their very generous hospitality while we visited in Germany. They provided a very comfortable, spacious room for us to stay in, provided many delicious and diverse meals for us to eat, and shuttled us all over the countryside (even though they had to take 2 cars – double the gas – to accommodate all 6 of us). There were more places that they wanted to show us, but we just did ... read more

Hello from Germany again. We continue to have a couple of days to visit the Mike & Sue Dolan. We are still doing tourist items, but also have some family time too. We slept in today and then had another good breakfast. Mike took David to run some errands, with the first one being a trip to the bank to get a fist full of Euros from the ATM. Then we went to the train station to buy a couple of tickets for our trip to Paris on Wednesday. Fortunately there was a very helpful person who helped us operate the machine and issue the ticket (could have been pretty difficult otherwise since everything was in German). We have been able to call the tour agency and have reconfirmed our Paris tours for Thursday and Friday. ... read more