Tag: France

The Champagne has Robbed Me of Any Ability to Think of a Title

Current Location: Reims, France

Let me attempt to start from where I left off:

Jon and I planned to leave Florence last Sunday and ended up spending an excruciating day at the train station attempting to get on any train out of the city. Ir was crazy hot in Florence and super crowded and we just wanted to get the Hell out.  Jon described Florence as the “worst place I have ever been.”  I had visited before for a day or two and had been underwhelmed as well, but people are always talking about how amazing it is so I decided that it deserved another visit.  In the end I feel that a long time ago, before it was so insanely crowded (like before cars or planes) Florence was a nice, beautiful respite.  But in the present state I can honestly say that I will never go back again. There are so many beautiful places to see in Europe! The crowds in Florence are stifling!

Finally we were able to get on a local train out of Florence and, after making three change overs on what should have been a two hour train, ended up in Venice. I had heard a lot of bad things about Venice, but I honestly liked it a lot. Maybe during the high season it is excruciating as well, I can’t say. But it was totally different from any other city we had visited and we found a really nice B and B near the heart of things so we couldn’t have been happier. 

Mental note though; don’t enter St. Marks Square with anything that could be construed as food in your hand.  Luckily Jon was able to shoot some footage of the reason why:

People were gleefully taking pictures with pigeons all over themselves, their children, their tables… everything. It was like the sheer numbers of pigeons flocking had made them completely forget that they are considered the rats of the sky…

From Venice we took a quick train ride to Vincenzia because Jon wanted to buy a watch to mark the occasion of him starting his residency.  We ended up at this family owned machine shop run by this amazingly nice Italian couple.  Jon picked out the watch that he wanted and they wrote everything up. The problem was when he took out his credit card to pay they said that they didn’t take cards because they were so small.  That is weird to our American sensibilities because everyone in the States makes large purchases on their credit cards. We didn’t have much cash on us, and weren’t prepared to spend money from our trip fund on the watch anyway. Jon had been planning to pay it off over the course of some months after starting his job.  So, the couple started calling everyone they knew: starting with the bank to see what could be done.  In the meantime the woman gave me a necklace for free that they had machined themselves from stainless steel. From this point on you can see it in the pictures as I haven’t taken it off.  They then called all of their friends who had shops to see if they could run our cards and then give them the cash.  Finally they found a friend in a neighboring town who had a cash machine and was willing to do that.  So the man drove us out there with our packs, we scanned Jon’s card, and then he gave us a lift to the train station! It was so nice of them! 

The watch business took so long though that most of the trains out of Vincenzia were gone. So we decided to take the night train to Munich.  When we got settled into our cabin the train worker came by and checked our tickets and told us that we had the cabin to ourselves. We were so excited! But then, just as we had fallen asleep we were violently awoken by someone trying to open our chain locked door. Jon opened it and this couple, who from their accents I presumed were Canadian, entered our cabin. I apologized several times for the fact that we had put our packs on the other beds explaining that we were told that we were by ourselves. They were unfazed and threw our packs into the top luggage compârtment.  But then, after they were all settled, the train worker came back, looked at their tickets and told them they were in the wrong compartment! I could have slit them. After seeing that all of their luggage was put away though he didn’t make them move. I could see that Jon was seething and the next day we spent about two hours wishing seriously bad things on them.   They were in 73: we were in 45. Who mixes those numbers up? Ugh.

So then in Munich, when we arrived at 6:30 AM, we started going around to find a place. After being turned down by about 5 places we decided to find a computer lab and see what we could find on there.  Once at the computer lab though we found out that there was some sort of soccer match that night and literally every single hotel under 250 dollars was sold out! (On a Wednesday!). It was unreal.

So… what else was there to do? We went back to the train station and boarded a train for Innsbruck, Austria.  (We have rail passes so it doesn’t cost us anything extra to take a train as long as it doesn’t require a reservation). I am sooo glad we did! Innsbruck is BREATHTAKING!!!  It has been the host of two winter Olympics. The mountains literally meet the town. It was HOT though! It was weird being surrounded by snow capped mountains and walking around in flip flops.  It was also weird walking around in two countries by noon…

The next afternoon we boarded the train yet again for Switzerland.  For those of you who don’t know, a few years ago when I was living in Portland I put an ad up on Craig’s List for a roommate. A girl from Switzerland answered my ad and we lived together until her visa ran out and she returned to Switzerland.  So, we had made plans to visit her for the weekend.  She is a cardiologist and was on-call the night we came in so we just ordered a pizza and hung out in her super sweet apartment. I don’t even think the pictures can express how cool her apartment was. 

The next day Christine had to work again until 5.  She gave Jon and I two free tickets to go up to Mount Titlis in a neighboring town.  We took the train over.  Once we reached the mountain we took the world’s first revolving gondola to the top.  It was spectacular! Once again it was green and lush at the bottom and snowy at the top. People were still skiing and snowboarding up there! It wasn’t that cold though at all. 

That night Christine met us in Luzern and we had dinner and some drinks.  Then we took the train back to her place and crashed. We had discussed plans of going to Zurich the next day, but when we awoke to a lovely Saturday morning we all agreed that we would rather have a relaxed day at home instead.  She made us an amazing breakfast with eggs, bacon, etc. and the best array of Swiss cheeses I could have imagined!  Then we did some more of this and that…. Later on we all went out to buy some groceries to cook out on her amazing terrace, buy ping pong paddles to play on her complex’s custom granite ping pong tables (with forged, carved aluminum “nets”), buy our tickets for Paris, and rent some movies.  Needless to say, we had a lot of fun.

The next day we had to get up super early because the only train available to Paris had been one at 6AM.  Sucky.  But we got to Paris early and had enough time to check into our hotel and hang out at Sacre Cour for awhile before totally crashing out for a mid-day nap. Our hotel was amazing. We had come to Paris to celebrate our first anniversary on May 12th so we definitely splurged on the hotel. It was sooo nice! The most amazing part was the balcony from our room with a panoramic view of the Paris skyline. There’s nothing like sharing a bottle of wine with your own private view of the Eiffel Tower.

The next day was our anniversary and we started out with breakfast on the balcony.  We got a bit of a late start so we went to the Arc de Triumph and Notre Dame and spent some time just walking around.  Later on we went to a phenomenal restaurant to celebrate.

The next day we checked out (but thankfully left our bags with the concierge), and headed to the Eiffel Tower. We had a picnic in the park and then went to get tickets. I had been up as a kid with my parents but every time I’ve been back to Paris since then the lines have serioiusly been a mile long. Yet another reason to travel in the off season- we had virtually no wait! It was so fun to go up to the top!

Okay…. Now I feel like I have been writing forever and I still have to load pictures…. Last night we headed to Reims, France in the Champagne region of France. Anyone who knows me at all knows I am a total Champagne-O so… needless to say, I have been mildly drunk through this whole synopsis… We went to the Tattinger cellars today… I have nothing to say for myself.


I may or may not have drank these bottles of champagne…

I am rapidly losing my buzz though so I’m going to try to finish this up ASAP.

Next location: London

You Can Take GM Out of Flint, But You Can’t Take Flintoids Out of GM.

Current Location: Nice, France

Jon and I have been spending the last four days in the French Riviera.  We took the train from Barcelona to Perpignan, France. When we crossed the border into France the passport police boarded the train and started going car by car checking passports.  The officer had almost reached us when he paused to look back at his fellow officer who had been knocking on the door to the bathroom since entering our car. Suddenly the door opened and this dread-locked, and seriously dirty, hippie girl rushed out and tried to hurry past the officer and go into the next car. He started calling out to her and following her and the officer who was about to question us rushed past and joined him. They ended up pulling that girl, and three of her travel companions off the train with all of their stuff, and questioned them on the platform beside the train.  Finally another officer boarded and glanced at our passports for a second and moved on. This was a point of slight worry for me because I’ve been having some problems with my passport. It was issued in 1999 before I went abroad to London to study for a summer.  After that I traveled for a few weeks to various countries, and since the EU passport freedoms had not been imposed yet, I received a stamp from every country I went to. Upon my return to East Lansing, I promptly misplaced my driver’s license and chose to carry my passport in the back pocket of my jeans on countless nights out to the bar. Then a year after graduation I moved to Dublin, and received a stamp, and traveled to a few more countries and received stamps… So… let’s just say that my passport has seen better days. It’s all crumpled, and the US seal on the front is pretty faded when compared to Jon’s. The edges of the pages have started to yellow from age, and in the picture I look totally different. My hair was halfway down my back and I was in mid-blink which gives the overall impression of me being totally stoned.  On top of all of this, when Jon and I first flew into Europe we went through Point of Entry Passport Control in Paris before continuing on to Madrid. For whatever reason those assholes just looked at our passports and didn’t stamp them. I didn’t think about it at the time but they have to be stamped upon entry! When we went to Morocco they questioned us at passport control as to where our point of entry stamp was, but ended up letting us go forward. When we re-entered into Spain they re-stamped us but the guy who did mine didn’t press hard enough so it looks like it says 2006 instead of 2008. I was really given a hard time by the passport control in Portugal and I think that if Jon wasn’t traveling with me with the exact same stamp, but one that had turned out, on his passport, they wouldn’t have let me forth.  Anyway, I guess it’s not a big deal in France.

In any case the delay caused us to get into Perpignan an hour late, but we picked up our cute Opal convertible and headed on our way. Opals are made by GM which we thought was appropriate considering we are from the former GM capital of the world. 

France has been wonderful! Everyone has been amazingly friendly to us.  The idea of the French being rude is greatly exaggerated. I just think the only place most people go to in France is Paris and you often find that in big cities people might be a little gruffer than in other places. It would hardly be fair if people from other countries judged how nice Americans are as a whole by the average New Yorker… I know, I lived there. It’s hard living in small places and having to fight your way for anything- a beer, a parking spot, a sandwich, whatever.

It is utterly spectacular here. I don’t have my camera on me right now but I will try to post pictures soon.  I especially loved the French countryside. It’s breathtaking, and peaceful and absolutely lovely.  I would love to move to France someday. It’s really been a great trip.  We went to the best preserved Roman arena in the world in Nimes (much better preserved than the Coliseum in Rome) and the aqueduct which was really cool.  But mostly we’ve just been touring along the coast, enjoying the weather and the scenery.

Tomorrow we head to Monte Carlo, Monaco for the day and we’re hoping to strike it really rich because we feel like we’ve been hemorrhaging money.  Wish us luck!

Next Stop: Monte Carlo, Monaco