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

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

The dates are set

Just purchased my ticket. I'll leave Flagstaff on June 24th and return on July 23rd. Here's the breakdown.

Outbound
Depart Flagstaff 6/24 @ 7:00 am Arrive Phoenix @ 8:04 am
Depart Phoenix @ 8:54 am - Arrive Philadelphia @ 4:48 pm
Depart Philadelphia @ 6:10 pm - Arrive Paris, June 25th @ 7:45 am

Trip Cost $640

Return
Depart Paris July 23rd @ 1:30 pm - Arrive Philadelphia @ 4:00 pm
Depart Philadelphia @6:15 pm - Arrive Phoenix @ 8:35 pm
Depart Flagstaff @ 9:40 pm - Arrive Flagstaff @ 10:33 pm

Trip Cost $685

The base fare for this roundtrip is $1,325.00 - taxes and fees are $119.31. Making a grand total or $1,444.31.

Well - that's the easy part. The next part of the journey is to sort out how to get from Paris to Valerie's mom's place in Lorient.

He who hesitates!

pays more for their flights!

I got approved to go back to work on Thursday the 26th of July!! Then I went to get my flights and found that the outbound has gone up to $640 and the return is now $685.

We plan to sort out the travel plans and buy the tickets later today.

Airfare

I started looking for flights this weekend. My ultimate goal is to fly round trip from Flagstaff, Arizona to Paris, France using US Airways.

Ideally I'd like to leave on June 23rd and return on July 21st:
Depart Flagstaff June 23rd - $630
Return from Paris July 20 - $764.
Total - $1,394 plus

The best pricing I can find would be to return on Tuesday July 24th
Depart Flagstaff June 23rd - $630
Return from Paris July 24th - $600.
Total $1,230 plus

One big problem with the return flight is that it gets back to Flagstaff at 10:33 which would make it pretty tough to be at work on Wednesday.

Europe 2007

Well, it looks like I will get to go to Europe this summer. Tentatively planning to head over on June 23rd and return the third weekend of July.

Welcome

Greetings from Flagstaff, Arizona!