At SFO, no problems getting baggage checked and getting through Security. We enjoyed a Manhattan while waiting for our flight. The flight had a slight delay of approximately 15 minutes. The only issue on this flight was the turbulence towards the last half of the flight. Every time Lisa tried to fall asleep, the plane bounced around. Jim took his happy pill so he got about 4 hours of sleep (the two whiskies served after dinner also helped). Lisa got 1 hour of sleep. We had a 1 ½ hour layover in London. Jim was looking forward to going to the whiskey shop and also having some fresh hand pump ales before our flight. However, the travel gods decided otherwise. We arrived at Heathrow and were delayed getting to the gate by 15 – 20 minutes. ... read more

Tuesday October 23 Day 17 Another travel day and we made arrangements to have a taxi pick us up at our hotel at 9:45 AM to catch a train from Bruges to Brussels. The only ticket we had was for the train from Brussels to Paris, which was scheduled for 12:37 and we still needed to purchase our ticket from Bruges to Brussels. Our taxi driver arrived and was soon putting our luggage in the back of the van he was driving. He asked Jim why one of the bags was so heavy and Jim told him it was full of Bruges crap, the taxi driver laughed and loaded it into the van. On the way he chatted us up and we asked if Dutch was the language spoken in Bruges of which he answered “we ... read more

Friday October 19 After checking out of our hotel at 9:30 we left Beaune and once again found ourselves on the motorway towards the city of Dijon with the help of Monique. Our first stop was along the motorway to get some fuel and have a light breakfast. We know our day was going to be hectic because our trip to Brugges would be on four trains at four different stations. Our first challenge was to find where to drop off the rental car in Dijon. Monique did her best but was not as accurate as we would have liked. Somehow, with a little luck we found the Europcar office outside the train station and dropped off the car at 11:00 AM. Our first train was leaving Dijon at 12:01 and arriving at Gare Lyon in ... read more

Monday October 15, 2012 We checked out of our hotel (Le Mas des Carassins) in St Remy about 10:30 AM and headed toward Beaune for our next adventure. If you want to visit the Provence area, we would recommend St Remy and even this hotel. The hotel is walking distance to town but not in the thick of the tourist area. It would be especially nice in the warmer months to take advantage of the pool and outdoor area. The weather was cold, about 50 degrees and the winds were blowing about 30 MPH as we departed so we so agreed we had the best weather during our stay. We filled the car up with diesel, which again was another adventure since Jim’s French is limited to ordering food or beer but we managed. We discovered ... read more

Hi everyone, thanks for your interest in reading our blog. We decided to leave the hotel around 9:30 since we had no idea where to drop off the car and get to the train station. As Jim packed our luggage in the car it started to rain but we knew the weather report for Provence was going to be 75 degrees when we arrive later in the day. The one thing that really helped us so far was the GPS we brought with us. We never got lost and always found what we were looking for. Jim punched in the address for the drop off point for the rental car and we hit the road. French drivers are disciplined and always use their turn signals. As we approached Caen we filled up the car with diesel ... read more