Roseyland

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Okay, so I told you that the trip was over, but it’s not quite over, I mean we are still in France. We took a taxi to the Charles De Gaulle airport 4 hours before our flight. I thought that this would be way too much time, but I had no idea what the airport would be like, and I figured better safe than sorry. Turns out 4 hours was just about right. Here is the American Airlines check-in area, and this is just for the New York and Chicago flights. It took over an hour to get through the check-in line and about 45 minutes to get through security after that. Not the most fun I have ever had. I’ve never seen an airport as chaotic as Charles De Gaulle. I went through LaGuardia at Thanksgiving once, and it was crazy, but not this crazy.

Here is a view of the gate area after we got through security. I took this from an elevated cafe area where I had one last Pain au Chocolate before leaving France. I don’t think I have mentioned pain au chocolates yet. They are basically a croissant with dark chocolate baked in. I was a big fan, they were chocolaty, but not overly sweet. Pain au Chocolate is pronounced (Pahn-ah-shoc-ah-lot), it’s very fun to say.

The flight was long, we left Paris around noon and arrived in Chicago at about 2:30pm (which was really like 9:30pm). There isn’t much to say about the flight except that 777s are way more fun than 767s. If at all possible, you want to travel on a plane with personal video screens. In Chicago, I only had 1 and half hours to get though customs, re-check my bag, and go through security again in the domestic terminal. That was just enough time. It took me one hour to get to my next gate, but I made it. When I finally arrived back at my condo, the cat celebrated my arrival by meowing at the top of his lungs for a good 30 minutes. I think he was a little pissed. I stayed home the next day, and he pretty much never left my side. Poor guy. Here are most of the touristy trinkets I bought on my trip. I bought French wine at Harrods in England (that makes sense), a mini London double decker bus, a mini Eiffel tower, and then I threw in my left over money, Oyster card, and Avenue Q program. I still have the money. I figure I can use it when I go back.

I have about a million things left that I want to say, but I can’t keep blogging about my 9 day trip forever. Instead, I’ll just cram everything that is left into this one post. First, a video of naked women on the streets of Paris. Someone in my Twitter stream posted a link to this video right after I got back. Perfect timing. I love this video because it really feels like paris to me, the architecture, the language, the naked women. Actually I didn’t see any naked women in Paris. I must have done something wrong. Regardless, I’m totally addicted to this song now. I have it on my iPhone and the iPod in my car. Check it out, there is no actual nudity in this video, but it might not be work safe. Try to watch it in HD if you can.

If you are like me, you want to know how much all of this cost. I’m a little worried that it is uncool to talk about money like this, but this is the information I always want and can never find, because nobody will just come out and say how much they spent. Lucky for you, we don’t have decency standards here at Roseyland. I was going to give a detailed line by line cost analysis, but it got to be too complicated with me paying for some things and my aunt others, and exchange rates, etc… The bottom line is that this trip cost about $4000 per person. Here are the cost of some of the items per person:

• Plane tickets - $1000
• Hotels - $1000 (per person)
• Train ticket from London to Paris - $175
• Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath day trip - $130
• Normandy D-day day trip - $300

If you add up the numbers above, you are probably wondering what I spent the last $1400 on. Good question. We didn’t really do anything lavish or expensive. All I can say is that between food, taxis, metro rides, and entrance to various attractions, it all adds up. I took $400 in Euros and Pounds with me, and I easily spent most of it. I also used my credit card a lot. If I had it to do over again, I would probably use more cash and avoid the foreign transaction fees on my credit card. If you are a Bank of America customer, you can use your ATM card at Barclays ATMs in England and BNP Paribas in France without paying any fees. Of course you still have to hope that Bank of America gives you a decent exchange rate. Also, you can’t use American credit cards at self service kiosk in Europe, because American credit cards don’t use the chip and pin system that European credit cards use.

A question I have been asked a few times is, “Which did you like better? London or Paris?”. Ugh, this is pretty much impossible to answer. Paris felt a lot more chaotic to me. In my first few hours in city, I wasn’t sure that I was going to like it. Partly this was because of the pushy immigrants trying to sell me things and partly because I had grown attached to London. Paris definitely grew on me though, it’s an absolutely beautiful city. Paris feels more exotic than London, and having been to Paris makes me feel like I have truly been to Europe. That being said, I feel like London has a greater breadth of things to do. For example, I loved going to a show in London’s West End, which isn’t really they type of thing you can do in Paris. I want to say something like Paris has amazing things to see, and London has amazing things to do. Does that make sense? If I had to choose between London and Paris, I would reluctantly choose London. I feel guilty saying it, but mostly this is because I speak English, and speaking the language opens the door to a lot of experiences you might not be able to appreciate otherwise. I recommend seeing both cities though, and while you are at it, see the rest of Europe too.

I am an obsessive compulsive planner. I’d hate to go all the way to Europe and forget to see something important, so I had itineraries planned out with a number of different contingency plans. In the process of planning this trip, I came across a few good tools that I want to give a shout out to. The best tool by far is Tripadvisor.com, Tripadvisor has list of attractions, restaurants, and hotels, which are all rated and commented on by fellow travelers. Tripadvisor also has very active forums, where you can ask just about any question and get a useful answer. In addition, Tripadvisor owns FlipKey.com, which is a site that will help you find vacation rental apartments all over the world. If I ever go back to London or Paris, I will definitely look into renting one of these apartments. They usually have a minimum nights stay, but if you are staying long enough, they are comparable in cost to a hotel. If you are going with a group of people, an apartment can be significantly cheeper than a hotel, and a lot more comfortable/fun in my opinion. The nice thing about the FlipKey site is that the apartments are reviewed and many are professionally managed, so you feel like you know what you are getting into.

I’m not a big fan of travel books, but for this trip I purchased the Frommer’s London and Paris Day by Day books. I really liked these books because they contained sample iteneraies you can follow to get the most out of a small number of days in a city. I didn’t use any of these itineraries directly, but I found them helpful for making my own itineraries. These books also helped me prioritize different attractions and they gave me an idea of how much time I could expect to spend at them. One last thing, at Barnes & Nobel or Boarders, they sell these laminated Streetwise maps of different cities around the world. They fold up nicely, and it is really nice to have a map before you arrive, so that you are ready to go when you do.

I tried to learn a little French before this trip, and I even got a 6 month subscription to Rosetta Stone. For the most part, I like the Rosetta Stone method of teaching, and I was able to read French okay while I was in Paris. After I got back from my trip, I discovered Livemocha.com. Livemocha has free online classes for a bunch of languages, and I’ve actually been using them to keep working on my French. I think I like Livemocha better than Rosetta Stone, which is odd, because Livemocha is free. Livemocha also has a social networking aspect to it, and you can pay $12.95 for a travel crash course. I wish I had known about this before my trip, because a travel focused language course would have been a lot better for me than a general language course. Oh well, next time. If you are really serious about learning French, you might want to check out the Alliance Francaise which has a local St. Louis chapter. The Alliance Francaise offers a number of real life French courses, which are reasonably priced.

Okay, this is getting way to long, so here are my last bits of advice. I took over 1300 pictures, so make sure you have a big enough memory card. Also, have an extra camera battery to carry around with you. It would suck to have your camera battery run out half way through the day. Some people tried to talk me out of taking my computer on the trip, because some customs agents can get nosey or the computer could be stolen. I think this is silly though. Nobody ever even tried to look at my computer. I would make sure that you have a backup before you leave, and don’t have anything of a questionable nature on your computer (or camera, or cell phone, etc…). You might even want to encrypt your hard drive incase your computer is stolen. Also, make sure you have enough power adaptors before you leave, they have funny plugs in foreign countries, and of course make sure that you can plug your various electronics into a 220V socket.

I loved traveling to Europe, and I hope to go again soon. If I could go anywhere next, I would go to Italy. I even have the guide book already. Who wants to come with me?

You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.