Blogs from France, Europe - page 1299

We had an early 07:00 AM start today. We met in the ship’s theater, for our assigned bus number for the Beaches of Normandy excursion. We usually do not use the ship’s shore excursions, but I had difficulty in finding an available private guide who could meet us in LeHavre and supply us transportation to the D-Day Beaches area. Most companies wanted us to make our own way to Bayreuth, located about 2 hours from LeHavre by car, or 3 ½ hours by train. Things were quite organized, and the groups on each bus were kept to a maximum of 40 passengers. This actually allowed us to spread out and have 2 seats per person in the back of the bus. Tom even had the entire last row to himself, which afforded him the opportunity to ... read more

Well, I will be adding in a proper entry again, hopefully soon. However, tonights project was using the campus comuters to take photos from my camera, back them up on my ipod, and make sure they were all turned the correct way. Currently I am dumping the whole lot of them from my week in France (and first day in Northern Ireland at Cat's house) into a new photobucket account, MCAllenPics at: http://s226.photobucket.com/albums/dd142/MCAllenPics/ I didn't bother to sort out good from bad or do captions. So your welcome to peruse at your own risk of bordom and/or confusion. Also, note that they post themselves in reverse order, and that you may want to hit "refresh" after using the link in order to ensure all the pictures are displayed. Peace, Allen... read more

27, rue Damremont This was our first venture into renting instead of staying in a hotel. The process went easily with this company, www.frenchyrentals.com . It is the Damremont one. Payments were made by PayPal and our contact, Darrin, kept in regular touch, even sending us a Paris Pratique. They did require a €200 down security deposit which irks me. The €800 per week rental fee seemed to fit into our usual range for hotel rental. I was a little tentative about renting an apartment, even starting a thread on the Fodors forum entitled, “Renting an apartment - Is it worth it?” The door to the street is non-descript, blending into the anonymity of hundreds just like it. Inside the entrance door, everything was dark as we fumbled around trying to find that switch which ... read more

Greetings from rainy Chamonix! We completed the tour yesterday and used our rain gear for the first time....for only about 10 minutes. We can not believe our good fortune....it is cool now, rainy and cloudy and as we look up, can not even see Brevent....2500 m above us were we stood yesterday. It was a long final day....over 9 hours and 2000m down. I think we are in shock a bit that we completed it and that everything went so well. We slept well last night and were at a loss this morning as there was no trail ahead of us! As neither of us are shoppers we tired of that and headed off to the pool. We had a great time on the water slide....seems like we crave the exercise haha! We got quite the ... read more

Paris is cold and the sky is incredible when we arrive. Fast moving, low hanging storm clouds, intermittent sun, and a biting wind all push those feelings of euphoria that come from traveling and finally being off the train after 12 hours. It's a welcome change from the heat of Spain and Florida before that. So this time around we get into Paris' Austerlitz station at 0900 with only a name and phone number for our couchsurfing hosts and an "international" phone card that we can’t figure out how to use in order to operate a Paris pay phone. I don't know what it is about foreign phone cards and me, but my brain becomes thoroughly non-functional when it comes to their correct use. During our Scandinavian trip we never figured out how to make a ... read more