VC’s Europe and CB Family TR - July 2- August 8 2018! Semi Live!

Enjoying your trip report and pictures. Wish I could travel like that but motion sickness ties me down. One close friend my wife travels with only packs their oldest worn out clothes clothes and throws them out along the way to make a lot of room for shopping, shopping, shopping. Does Europe every year and has it down to a science lol.

 

Not a cheap way to travel, but probably pretty fun lol

 

The two times Mrs. P and I visited Paris they were all extremely nice. Very warm people.

In fact, once they found out we were Americans, from TEXAS, and didn't carry around guns or own a horse they were floored. When I told them I've never even ridden a horse, or own a pair of cowboy boots, we almost became local celebs.

It helps to be apologetic when you can't speak much French and to not be overbearing and loud, which some tourists are. If you're respectful and follow local tradition you shouldn't have any issue with them at all.

And VC is correct. Hausmann's experiment in urban design is beautiful, as is most of France really.

They have a saying that you will rarely see the French on vacation in other countries. 'Why would God leave Heaven?'

 

This is the key. As long as you can say hello, goodbye, and good day in French, the locals aren't very rude. As long as you say hello in french when you first enter a place, locals will be friendly and almost all of them speak enough english to then converse with you. But they want you to say hello in french first. Additionally, some local customs may seem rude at first (like the waiter ignoring you for virtually your entire meal at a restaurant; the french consider interruptions by the staff to be rude and people dine very slowly there) but its easy to surmise that it's just differences in culture and nothing directed at you personally

 

Thanks for posting all the beautiful photos.

 

Have fun on the cruise! I’m taking my daughter on one from Barcelona next month!

 

So far only one National Lampoon moment....and maybe it was more the Amazing Race moment! rather than leave the hotel at 7 am and try to figure out the trains to the palace of Versailles, someone thought it would be better to use Uber in the morning. So need to leave by 8:15 to make it to our scheduled 9:30 tour... which allows to skip the line up.

Needless to say, no cars available when we ordered due to some of the transportation strike, kept trying to no avail. Sooooo ordered two taxis one for the girls and one for the boys. To get us across town in rush hour traffic to a train station to get us to Versailles. The girl car came first....and we are off. The boy car was about 10 minutes behind.

Made in to the train station found our way to the right train. Texted the boys they had 4 minutes till the train left and boom, the boys make it with one minute left. We eventually made it to Versailles but entirely missed our guided English tour. That wasn’t so bad, but missing the skip the security line was going to be outright gruesome so literally begged to still get the tour security line despite missing the tour.

After a couple of are you serious? Really? And a we need to speak to your manager, we were walked over to the group tours and whisked through security. It would not have been a pleasant wait in that line up!

 

Wow ! I bet you could talk your way out of resort fees too!