Saturday, June 30, 2007

Lazy Saturday in Lorient

Well the first week has gone by pretty fast. Meeting up in Paris went easier than I thought would be possible. Even though my plane was 50 minutes late out of Philadelphia I still made the rendezvous point 15 minutes before Valerie. From there it was relatively easy to get the RER to Gar du Norde and then the Metro over to Gare de Montparnese.

The true excitement for the day came when we had to switch trains in Rennes. Our 1st train was supposed to arrive at 16:12 and our train out was supposed to leave at 16:22. The 1st train was 5 minutes late which made for quite the mad scramble to make train 2. I was dragging two big suitcases up the ramp while the clock read 16:21:30. Valerie was still getting our tickets posted. Fortunately for us the conductor took mercy and he held the train about 30 seconds so we could get on board.

Monday morning we are off to Arles in Southern France. We should be down there for 7-10 days. Planning to spend Mon-Fri in Arles then getting a rental car and visiting Nimes, Pont du Gard, Roussillon and other villages in that area.

Please excuse the butchered typing - the French keyboard I am using is interesting to say the least.

Doug

Saturday, June 23, 2007

It's go time!

Well, I leave tomorrow morning. It's been a busy month and I obviously haven't made time to update. Valerie and I got a France EuroRail pass. Four days of train and 4 days of car rental for $845. The plan is to meet up at the Paris airport, take the RER and Metro down to the Montparnesse train station, then use the first day of the train pass to get to Lorient. We hope we can get out on the same day. They only allow a certain amount of people with passes on each train. I guess there are worse places to be stuck for a day than Paris!

We plan to use two of the train days getting down to the Provence region of France and play it by ear once we get there. Valerie tells me there aren't a lot of places to get on the internet where her mother lives so updates may be vary sporadic.

C'ya