2016 European Vacation

Did you drive? I'll NEVER drive in Italy again.

Easier than in the USA

Just a little picky note from a born Londoner... the district named Soho only has one capital letter in its name... unlike SOHO (Small Office/Home Office, a category of small business)... or SoHo (Manhattan, short for "South of Houston Street)... Glad you had/are having a good time... whenever I go back to London the prices make my eyes water...

Really McG - what part of Italy freaked you out driving-wise?

I thought the scariest bit was getting off the ferry at Palermo - but somehow I hit a zen spot where I thought of it as a video game and it was all fine.

The amalfi coast was a bit freaky on their Republic holiday and Lake Lugano was strewn with side mirrors but for the most part Italy was no worse than Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal - and I grew up driving on the left.

Yes, when we went around Tuscany. My husband drove in Florence though, it was where we rented the car - I was chicken to start out driving there.. but I drove in the countryside, small towns (we traded off). I would never drive in Rome, but then they have a good transportation system and we walked a lot. Uh, they drive differently there.. speedy, no traffic lanes, at least back then, but they can stop on a dime. Each time I went to Rome I would start out the first day walking across roads by following italians, but soon enough got better at it myself. I remember thinking I should walk steady.. they will count on you to stay at the same pace..

Adds, I did drive the autostrada in Tuscany, didn't mind it.

Ha! I see that, in my first post on this thread I warned against driving, and suggested trains instead! Although a car is good in Italy for outside the cities.

I really enjoyed the Isle of Capri.

McG, I beg your pardon. Inspired by you and your good writing, I started to type up one of my old diaries, fairly rough in the first place, but now I don't think it is appropriate for me to post while, on the other hand, you are in the middle of your excellent story telling.

I'll post what I typed as a new thread, so not to lose it, but I plan to shut up until you tell more, which I'm strongly interested in.

July 7, 2016
Got up early as we were taking the train through the Chunnel to Paris. Everyone was awake and packed well before we needed to be there heeding my last warning about being late. The train station wasn’t really too far away and as we still needed breakfast away from the gypsy camp in the dining room of the hotel and we had plenty of time I decided we could walk and find something along the way. Some grumbling, but it settled down. We found a nice pub right across from the Train Station called O’Neils’s. I had never had food at an English pub so I did not know that there were rules you were expected to follow… Like the fact that there was no waitress and you had to order at the bar… Sat for a few, I asked what people wanted and went through the process. Imagine that though, a pub right across from a huge train station were people from all over the world go through and not have any kind of posted rules about ordering. So, I got to play waiter. Got coffee and juice and waited for food which turned out to be really good so the pub did have that going for them.

Got to the station, figured out our track and that we had to go through Custom’s… I snag I had not counted on. This was post Brexit so maybe that’s why? So, long lines to get to train. It was a bit silly… Stand and shuffle for 20 minutes only to hand over a passport and asked “Where are you going?”, “Business or pleasure?”; “Ok, thank you.” And then carry on. Got to train and again had the table in the middle with 4 chairs. Was a ok train, but not as nice as last one. This train ride I decided to rest so plugged in the earbuds and sleep mask from the airplane and sleep all through the Chunnel experience… duh. I was excited about that and wanted to see it. Instead I forgot and slept. Woke up just outside of Paris so I got to see that Paris was not all glitz, glammer and shiny things.

Arrive at Gare Du Nord, get unloaded and stretch. I liked Uber so thought we could get one… ho! No internet access in the train station, that’s a good one. Love that. Ok, so let’s take a taxi and we walk around to the taxi stand. As we approach a well-dressed black guy comes out of the shadows. “You looking for a taxi? These guys will rip you off come on and I will get you a better taxi.” I see the Taxis are like 20 feet away and I’m like “No, thanks, we’ll just grab one of those over there.” This was the scary part, as he grabs my arm to lead me over to elevator bank. I yank my arm from his grip and tell him “No thank you!” and tell the fam to head to the taxi’s. Then one of the Taxi drivers comes through the door and starts yelling at the guy in French while we go around him to the proper taxis. Driver comes up behind us says, check your pockets and stay away from that guy. *whew* We stayed at the Hotel Astor – Saint Honore which was a nice hotel. The guys at the front desk were always helpful. But, both rooms had one queen size bed. Can’t have that so we have to get one room on first floor and other room on 5 that had twin beds. That’s fine. The rooms were nice and the bed was comfortable. We had a central, ummm, I don’t know, thing in the middle of the hotel where we could go through the window and sit. Not an arboretum, or a courtyard, but like a patio? Anyway, we only have today and tomorrow in Paris so we decided to just drop stuff off and head out.

We walked down to “L’eglise de la Madelaine” which was unexpected. It’s just this big ol’ Greek style temple in the middle of the city. We continued down to the “Bibliotheque-musee de l’opera” which was also unexpected and really beautiful. It was a lot of fun walking the streets of Paris. Especially seeing all the small groups of soldiers near every monument with their machine guns and trucks. Added to the local flavor. We passed a McDonalds and you know we gotta stop in. See the “Royal wit cheese”. I had to call my credit card company because I was charged twice at the stupid crappy ordering kiosk. It was also hot. Took a while to just figure out how to call them. +11 then number if you ever get caught un-awares. Got that straightened out and we continud down the road to… the Hard Rock Café, Paris. I had that planned the whole time, but no one else knew what I was up to. Got our T-shirt and then on our way to proper Parisian stuff.

There is a small mall down the road that has every boutique inside of it. It was a compressed version of Harrods. One thing my wife really wanted from Europe was a Salvatore Ferragamo handbag from Italy. That was her thing, she knew what it was, what color, what design, everything. So, walking through this mall which is really 2 buildings. One building is female and the other is all male. There are several floor and in the middle is this amazing dome of colored glass and a sculpture of the Eiffel Tower. It was a cool building called “Galeries Lafayette”. Inside here was a Ferragamo dealer. This place was crawling with tourists. Like the booths had ropes up because only so many customers could safely fit in the small areas they had so lines formed of people waiting to spend small fortunes on stuff. I mean like 20 people per 10 square feet. It was crowded. Anyways, guess who bought themselves the handbag they wanted? Not my wife, the thing was €600… Euro’s now, I learned. That’s crazy. Told the saleslady we’d come back tomorrow as we needed our passport to buy it because of taxes and stuff. You can get tax money from large purchases back if you fill out a customs form. While looking around the rest of the mall we found an odd art installation by a company or artist called “Toilet”. It was a series of rooms that were decorated in ridiculous stuff. It was interesting to see though but the rooms were F’ed up. Just absolutely crazy. Then we looked for shoes and mall weariness set in upon me. I can’t handle walking slow around a lot of people for a long time. We spent like 2 hours in this place.
Continuing down the road, we passed the “Chapelle Expiatoire” in the “Square Louis XVI” and then completed the loop back to the hotel. Told everyone to rest a bit and we would go for dinner in a bit. The nap turned out to be a bit longer than expected. Everyone was tired so we just grabbed a bite near the hotel and went back to our rooms. I didn’t want to just see my hotel room while in Paris so I called my son and told him I was going to look for a store and get a coke or something and was wondering if he wanted to go. My wife and daughter showed no interest. So, 10pm my son and I head out looking for an open convenience store. Well, in America, we have gas station/convenience stores every 20-30 feet. Not so in Paris.

We walked down some back streets and next thing I knew, we were on “Ave. des Champs-Elysees”… Well, heck. Look to the right, there’s the “Arc de Triomphe”. Look to the left and there is the “Place de la Concorde” and a big ol’ Ferris wheel. Walking across the road, we walk along the “Grand Palais”. This huge bldg. with all kinds of cool architecture and statues. How did this thing survive the war? Little further and we get to the Seine and a good view of the Eiffel Tower at night. One of the things I wanted to do was see this stuff at night. Lots of pictures later we decide to walk down closer and see what else there is to see. Meanwhile, we had passed 3 military patrols armed to the teeth. Remember, just the previous weeks there had been terror attacks, riots, strikes and all sorts of mayhem. So, seeing the military presence was both soothing and terrifying at the same time. We walked along the Seine down to the Pont De l’Alma Bridge. We’re taking some pictures and some guy comes along and starts chatting us up. “Americans?” he said in an American accent. “Canadian.” I reply. “If you wait til midnight, it lights up and dazzles for a bit.” And then he walks off into the night. Look at my phone ad it’s like 11:45 so what the heck right? But, let’s move down a bit. I hate people and have trust issues sometimes…

It’s true though! At midnight, the Eiffel Tower looks like a roman candle kind of. A whole bunch of bright strobe lights make the whole thing twinkle. Quite cool actually. I the middle of the Tower, they had a soccer ball suspended because of the Eurocup still going on. So, after midnight, downtown Paris, we head back to the hotel. Pretty much trace our steps back except we took Avenue Montaigne back to Champs-Elysees instead of Ave. FDR. Was a refreshing walk and checked off one of the things I really wanted to do.

July 8, 2016
Next morning, we have breakfast at the hotel and compared to the last hotel, it was quite satisfying. Today we had tickets to the Eiffel Tower. To the top and look around that area. Again, we walked from the hotel as it was early and not too hot yet. We ended up walking down Ave Winston Churchill after crossing the Champs-Elysees and we get to pass the back side of the Grand Palais and see the Petit Palais next to it. We get to the Pont Alexandre III Bridge and there is a photo shoot going on. A dozen models all hiding in the shade while one is out posing in front of the camera. Using the bridge with the Eiffel Tower in back as a back drop. They looked like they were wearing wedding gowns or some such stuff. Across the bridge was a huge park leading to the “Musee d’Histoire Contemporaine, des Plans-Reliefs and de l’Armee”. We skirting it and walked the south bank of the Seine and then weaved our way along the streets with the Giant tower as our objective. They had most of the park next to the tower all barricaded off because of the Eurocup… So, that sucked. We couldn’t lay in the grass and drink wine and hit eat other with loafs of French bread. The line to get tickets was already ridiculous. I get out my phone that has my tickets on it and I look at the first ticket and it says Sun, Jul 10, 2016. I pause… What the heck? I bought these tickets months ago. Why do they say July 10? We won’t even be in France on the tenth… ARGH!!!! So, they are small, maybe they won’t notice. We stand in the much shorter advance tickets line and lo and behold, it works! We are able to get in through the long ticket line to get in. Well, feeling good now. Go to one of the legs after taking a bunch of upskirt pics of the Eiffel Tower and stand in the elevator line to go up top. Sweating a bit due to ticket mix up. Getto gate… “Can you make that bigger?” “Uh, yeah sure.” “That say July 10, you can’t use that.” “Huh? Did my agent screw that up or something?!” I act indignant trying to hopefully be able to sway the agent… “You need a ticket to go up.” “Next!”

Ok, at least the lines are shorted in here. €60 later we have right tickets and on way to the top in tiny elevator. The top was nice. Great views. Makes you realize just how big Paris actually is. Goes for kilometers every way you look. We hang for a while, take a lot of pictures (as an aside, I purchased a new cell phone for the sole purpose of using the camera on it. I used the excuse of I am not buying a phone with a camera, I am buying a camera that can make calls. So I got a Samsung Galaxy 5 edge and it has a really nice camera on it. It also has the ability to take an SD memory card, so I added a 32GB card for photos.) Took panoramas, selfies, land marks, you name it. But, all good things must end and we head back down. Stop at first level to go to gift shop and water and stuff. Then, couldn’t figure out how to get back down to the ground. They had some of thos glass floors you can make yourself sick on. They were neat.

Back on the ground, the Arc D’Triumph was next. Hey! I have an idea! Let’s walk! *groans* from all. Well, it looked closer from the top of the Tower. We did get to pass the American Embassy though on the way. We get there and that thing is big. You don’t get a feel for how big things re until you are actually there. It was really big. Also a traffic circle with like 6 lanes going around it. I figure there had to be a tunnel somewhere but my dogs were barking. We walked down the Champs-Elysees and had lunch at “Pizza Vesuvio”. It was alright. Called Uber and got a ride back to the hotel. My daughter was beat, so again, I suggest a nap and we’ll go out later. This time, I didn’t nap. I let people rest about an hour and I get ready to go. My daughter is feeling well so I excuse her from the walk. I grab the things we need including a secret item and we get a cab to “Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris”. It’s quite nice. Walk around the front, take pictures, notice we can go inside, which we do. It’s big and dark and gloomy inside, but wow! What a great building! My wife is Catholic, we found a small alter off to the side and she lit a candle and did her thing. We then walked around the outside where I took the most French picture possible. A young couple walking their bikes leaning on each other and he had a loaf of French bread tied to the back of bicycle… It was a good picture. From there we walked over the river to the main land and headed towards the Louvre. Walking along the Seine but the sun was in our face the whole way. It was hot and bright. We got to the back end of the Louvre and the back side was open into the court yard. We were able to walk through the courtyard to the North side of the Louvre where we found an average sized crowd of young people doing stuff in a square in front of “Conseil d’Etat” building. They had a “We are Paris” thing built and they were skating and biking and general doing stuff. I immediately felt old and out of place so we marched on.

We found another tunnel through the side of the Louvre and we were in the front courtyard with the glass pyramid. It was the “golden hour” for pictures just as the sun was setting. Got some great pictures. There we were, standing on the steps of one of the greatest museums in the entire world. A palace dating back centuries hold art centuries older. 200 yards from us was a carnival with stupid assed carnival music and rides and food… Just… grumble.

Wanted dinner, and to get back to hotel. Once again, no one knew what they wanted to eat. So, we walked to “Place Vendome”. From there, I hailed a cab and we went back to the Lafayette mall and with my passport in hand, bought my wife her handbag. Boy was she happy. We grabbed dinner around there somewhere and walked back the hotel and got ready for the fun of driving out of Paris in my rental car. I had set up a deal through Eurocar to rent a Renault family trickster to drive to Milan through Germany and Switzerland. I was hoping it would be a good trip.

It's been like that since the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994. It's immigration control and customs. You pass through the checks for the destination country before you board the train in the departure country.

The UK is no Schengen country-

Yes, I know! (?)

Another terrific read.

Your voice really comes across well.

Such a guy - secret item

When my wife and I visited the Eiffel Tower, she didn't want to go to the top, but I did, so she stayed at the lower level.

Really enjoying your blog, because I visited Paris when was in the USAF stationed in Morocco, and when I visited there with my wife on a European tour that covered several countries, all the way from England through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and back to England.

Great read - keep it up!

July 9, 2016
Our last day in France was started with an unrushed breakfast. Everyone was ready and we had plenty of time. We grabbed a taxi back to Gare du Nord train station where we would be picking up what I thought was going to be a crappy French car. I did not pay a lot for it and had picked out a smaller car. We get there and all of the paperwork is done, rental dude gives us the keys and tells us it is in lot 53 on platform -5. Huh? -5? “Yes, go down the stairs over there and the elevator is just there.” Alrighty then… Find the elevator and go down to -5 and discover that we are near parking spot 1. Parking garage, so we can go left or right. I obviously chose the wrong direction. We eventually find spot 53 and there is no car there. Great start. Walk back to the elevator and take small flight of stairs down and find some guys washing cars and doing general maintenance. I walk over hoping they speak English and explain my predicament. “Oh yes, 53 is right over there.” And he points to a new Infiniti G30… Well, now, this is something. I was expecting a low grade Renault hatchback. Instead, I have a 2.2 liter turbo diesel with every option under the sun. Wherever the sun was at that particular time, it got a little brighter. Pack everyone up and get to know my new ride.
This car was freaking awesome. When I put it in reverse, it gives a top down picture with cameras facing all four directions and then a backup cam next to it. I didn’t even know something like that existed. Seriously, it’s like a camera rose out of the top of the car and gave a 360° view of what was around me. It had sensors if you got too close to anything. It had auto braking if you got too close to something. This was perhaps the best auto I’d ever driven. To Germany!

I input the coordinates to Kaiserslautern Germany into the inboard GPS and we headed out of Paris. Apparently French people have a string aversion to morning because the streets were near barren. I had been worried about traffic, but driving this early was great. Never had use the horn, stop abruptly or swear at anyone. We eventually met up with the A-4 and headed east.

Highlights: At one of the places we stopped to use the restrooms, I took a right instead of a left. GPS took us on a round about way to get back to the A-4. Driving along and we see 3 girls dressed out if full cos-play of Phoenix, Scarlet Witch and Wonder Woman walking down the road (These are super heroes if you don’t know). I mean great costumes. Normally this wouldn’t phase me, but I had no idea where I was or why these girls would be dressed as they were. Drive a little further and cars were parked all up and down the road. Kids in all manner of costumes. I figure out that there must be a cosplay convention (Like ComicCon) around where we were. My son wanted to go and look, but No! We have a schedule!

Once we got into Germany, I noticed that traffic sped up. Keeping up with traffic I notice that I am going 180kph… well, let’s see what we can do… I got up to 220kph and still had to stay in the middle lane as I was getting passed, but that was more than fast enough for me.

Eventually everyone in the car was asleep and the car was humming along and then it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I needed to take a break. Road hypnosis at 200kph was a really good way to die. Pulled over, everyone woke up and I said I needed a break. I let my son drive, told him to keep it under control and take his time and I crawled into the passenger seat for a 30 minute nap.

When I was a wee lad, we lived in Germany. We lived in Wiesbaden 1970-75 and Kaiserslautern 1979-83. So, I was going to show my family where I used to live. We finally got near Kaiserslautern and I turned off the A-4 in Landstuhl as there is a neat castle there. Thinking I could remember the roads form 30+ years ago was a mistake. I was close, but never found it. I did find the road that lead me to Vogelweh though. That is the small area in Kaiserslautern where the military people all lived. Everything was fenced off. What the heck? I saw a military police car in front of us so I followed him and everything continued to be fenced off. He eventually came around to a gate where a young MP came over and I got to tell him my story. Well, thanks to Obama everything had been fenced to protect US people from terrorism. This wasn’t the same time it was 30 years ago. Had to turn around and drive slow past the house I used to live in and the schools I went to. Kind of put a damper on why we came here.

Drove down town and started looking for a place to eat. Stopped at a gas station to fill up and ask where a good place to eat was. I love when people are helpful. Trying to talk to attendant in broken German when someone decided to help and translate for me. Walking out, an older lady said hello and I found a nice retired American couple who were in town visiting the son. They had just eaten in a nice Italian place just down the road. Awesome! Thank them and we go eat lunch. If you ever do go to Germany, bring cash. Seriously. It’s like the entire country doesn’t trust credit cards. I had a bunch of Pounds, but no Euro’s in my pocket. Didn’t need them in France. After lunch, we got back on the 6 which the A-4 turned into at the border, and headed towards Stuttgart where I had made reservations at a dinky roadside Inn… more on that in a minute. The rest of the drive was uneventful. Our eventual destination was in Ofterdingen at the Steakhouse 27 restaurant and Inn. Yep. Pull in, and a nice fella comes out and asks “Can I help you?” with a bit of a German accent. Turns out that this was the portion of the journey that I booked myself. Everything was off by a day because of the original overnight flight… We had reservations the previous night… The good part was that they were really cool about it. They charged us for the previous night as we never showed so they comped us that night.

The hotel was nice. It was really just a big house. They people that owned it had rooms on the same floor as us. It wasn’t 5 stars, but it did ok. Unloaded our stuff and went out to see the sights before it got too dark. Found a McDonalds and kids wanted a cold drink. They don’t take credit cards… We had no cash, so we had to leave. *SIGH* This would be a continuous issue for us tomorrow.

Went back to hotel, tried to stay cool and got a little bit of sleep that night.

Again a good read..

I had to look up what kph means - we name it km/h in Europe.

You're correct about credit cards - they aren't liked in smaller shops and restaurants here. We mainly use debit cards. And mostly cash.

I recall that (debit / cash vs credit) from the 1980's. Canada had started using debit by the mid-70's but it wasn't as prevalent as it was in Europe.

Different countries/different habits