July 1
We are going to France to celebrate, among other things, our 25th wedding anniversary. We’ll also visit Belgium to see long-time friends there, and we hope to collect a small sculpture that we bought in Antwerp three years ago and expected to ship home only to find it cost more to ship than it was worth. So it’s been cared for by a friend near Antwerp all these years.
As we’d lived in Belgium and traveled extensively in France, and now having the internet as a tool, it should be easy to plan this trip. Not! Initially the difficulties arise from not being able to decide where to go, as we’d love to return to the Dordogne, but as we were going in October we decide, remembering our first visit to those parts when many hotels and restaurants were closing for the season, that we might be a bit late to visit southwest France. Next year we might try for spring in the Dordogne. We booked our flights on 19 May. (Later Delta made some changes in the schedule; the 11 am flight is gone, and we depart at 8:45, meaning 6:45 at the airport, leave home at 6:15 – and a six-hour layover in Atlanta. And there is probably worse to come as the airlines downsize after Labor Day. At least we will probably make our connecting flight! As there is only one flight each evening, the consequences of not making a flight are quite serious.)
August 1
Brittany/Normandy is the destination. With a detour to Paris to see some friends there (Dick grumbles, but really, how bad is it to spend a few days in Paris?) We stopped in Normandy many times during our four years in Brussels, but only once visited Brittany. Investigation a couple of months ago quickly showed that in order to do that we could not really rely on the trains – there are no connections Brussels to, say, Rouen, and the result is you train from Brussels to Paris, change stations (with, needless to say, your luggage) and take another train to Rouen. Then back to Paris, change stations, another (fast) train out to Brittany – and after that you must get around by car. So we decided we’d just rent a car and forget dragging our suitcases around train stations. (Renting a car entails collision damage insurance which will add 670 euros to the cost, but it turns out that the particular credit card we are using will cover that for 15 days or less – so, natch, we’ll rent the car for 15 days!)
August 8
As we will fly into Brussels, we debate about staying in Brussels for a night to ensure arrival of bags and so forth, but decide not to waste time but get on the road – gambling that all will be well! The initial idea was Lille, or even Tournai – but we’ve visited those cities several times, although not staying overnight (not necessary when you’re living in Brussels). The next idea was Amiens, a city with a wonderful cathedral, the largest in France, and edged by a large (242 hectares or 600 acres) area of fruit, vegetable and herb gardens, Les Hortillonnages, which guarantees a fabulous weekly market. There’s a fine hotel there right on the cathedral square. As many travel guides to France do not even bother to include the northern part of the country, we thought it would be reasonably easy to get a room on the weekend (no business travelers then). Not!
Years ago we planned a trip to Burgundy and did not keep a record of our reservation in Dijon. When we arrived at the hotel they denied all knowledge of the reservation, and as there was a large convention of veterinarians taking place in the area, the next spot where we could get a room was Macon, two hours away. (It turned out to be a great stop…but it could have been a disaster) We don’t know what is happening in Picardy/Artois, but we find that a large number of hotels in the area have no rooms at all for the weekend of 3-4 October. (This is the area of the Somme, one of the worst protracted battles of World War I, so it might be an event related to that.) We end up thirty miles/40 km east, in a town called Peronne, which I’ve never heard of before but which also has WWI history. The whole region is fascinating and worth visiting, so we should be fine – and the hotel we get is cheaper than our first choice in Amiens!
August 15
I’ve spent the last week searching our travel books, and internet sites, especially Trip Advisor, for recommendations about lodging, and finally complete the main part of the trip. Brussels is extremely expensive now, and not just because of the euro-dollar ratio; the EU now comprises 27 countries and others are hanging around the doorway, and Brussels itself is not expanding. Hotels are at a premium. A light goes on – Antwerp is not that far, a mere 25 miles, practically a suburb, and we only saw it by daytrips before. Bingo, hotel room in Antwerp booked, and hotel room in Brussels airport for the last night, as we have to be at the airport by 8 am. (Another long day, we’ll not be home until 9 pm El Paso time, almost 23 hours from the time we get up.) Rouen is the second stopping point after Peronne/Amiens. It has apparently changed considerably since we were last there some 18 years ago; lots more traffic and congestion, and at the same time the city center where some of the nicest hotels are is closed to vehicles. I don’t want to drag my suitcase through the streets, so we opt for a nice inn on the outskirts. We’ll drive into Rouen for sightseeing. The cathedral is of course very special but my favorite was the ironwork museum.
August 16
Dick does not want to reserve anywhere in Brittany! Just drive around with no fixed points. I’m not keen on that. We don’t know anything about where we are going (unlike, say, Spain, where we traveled practically every road in the western half of the country at least once, and there was an extensive system of paradores to choose from). And my French, last spoken on a daily basis in 1992, is not really a communications tool anymore, more aptly a miscommunication tool. But after an intense discussion, that’s what we are going to do.
August 17
Reviewing the books to take: Michelin green book, the Berlitz Travellers guide, Cadogan guide, some map books, etc. There really is no one book that is enough by itself but the Michelin comes close. Dick suggests that I should get a new edition of the Michelin, which is from 1991. I resist this, as it seems to me the regional attractions described in the green book haven’t changed since 1991, although the restaurants and hotels in the red books probably have! But he wins this one too and I’ll order some new editions today.
Ordering the books, I was astonished to find that some of the old Michelin strip maps from our days in Brussels and Madrid seem to be worth ten times what we paid for them. If only we had kept EVERYTHING!
August 18
Today finished booking the hotel in Paris – the reservation started on the internet but the site does not have a secure page for registering your card, so a telephone call was needed. Thank goodness for our Pennytalk card, at 5 cents a minute rather than ten times that much or more via AT&T.
August 22
More or less settled where we are going, Now to start thinking about how to pack – traveling in the southwest is easy, even in the winter, but the weather where we are going, especially Belgium in mid-October, is not quite so accommodating. In fact I’m not really sure what the weather is likely to be – three years ago we were quite chilly in Belgium in October but able to walk around in sandals in Rome!