Let the planning begin! FRANCE

It’s time to start planning for THE VACATION. This is THE VACATION that we’ve been talking about for a while (2 years??). We have finally nailed down dates and I’M SO EXCITED!!!

Frenchie and I are finally going to France. I cannot wait! 2.5 weeks of blissful travelling through France. Yes it’s not going to be all awesome and happy and stress-free. I’ve travelled enough to know that those things never happen. At least not when you’re traveling with me. I can find the stress points in anything and everything. The great thing is we have plenty of time to reduce the amount of pain points as much as we can.

First pain point is always flights. I hate having to change airlines, change planes, go through customs in two different countries, you name it. While I enjoy people watching in airports, there is ultimately never enough time in between flights to do so unless you have a LONG lay over and then it sucks for other reasons. We’ve fixed that: Direct flights from our wonderful city to Paris. Now let’s pick one point of stress that could occur here. It’s a 9.5 hour flight. :O That is a long time to be on a plane! I will most definitely be bringing several books with me, the iPad, iPod and chargers for both. Thankfully, the flight there is over night and we’ve paid a little extra to get a “comfort kit” which includes a pillow, blanket, eye mask and various other things (like wine) to help make the trip that much more enjoyable. (Let’s be honest, am I really going to sleep on the way to France? Excitement will likely get the better of me.)

In our planning prior to booking flights, we have several places nailed down that we want to visit for sure. The places have changed a little since we first started talking about going to this beautiful county, but there are several that have remained unchanged. Loire Valley, Bordeaux, Paris. Those are our Big Three that will not be missed.

We’ve gone from thinking we could do Nice, Lyon, Marseille, Normandy, the Big Three, maybe Lorraine. Then we looked at how far things were, the train/drive time and the fact we’d get a day at most in each place. Now we’ve decided that we’d much rather enjoy our time in fewer places and get to know the areas better. Still have the Big Three in the itinerary, but have added Normandy and Carcassonne and Marseille.