A Free Man (and Woman) in Paris, Unfettered and Alive . . .
So, only two months later, you have my six part series on Mr. Bean and my trip to Paris over Thanksgiving weekend, 2006. I didn't think it would take me so long to write; but it did. Also, putting all of the pictures in the blog really was a pain in the neck. Speaking of pictures, although there are none in this particular post, you will see a ton in the upcoming 5 posts on the trip. Those pictures were all taken by myself, except for those taken of me by Mr. Bean; and of course, the "couple" pictures. Also, some of the pictures of Mr. Bean show him actually podcasting on his I-River, such as at the Louvre, Versailles and the Eiffel Tower. You can hear those podcasts at SATURNcast or Saturn Diary. I hope you enjoy it!
Pretrip
So, Mr. Bean and I had planned for a year to go to California for a week and a half over Thanksgiving. He had been about 20 years ago; and I had been never. We were going to start in L.A., work our way through Santa Barbara, Hearst Castle and Madonna Inn, Carmel and end up in San Francisco. I asked a ton of questions of Fodorites on the U.S. board, made ALL of my hotel reservations, some dinner reservations everything. And then the unthinkable hit. In October, my promised addition of another week of vacation at work to my two weeks fell through; and I was told I would get it in 2007. WHAT?!?!?!?!? And I had already used by two weeks for a week in the Adirondacks and a week at WDW. What were we going to do?
And as our wedding anniversary is in November, we always go away for it instead of buying each other unneeded presents. And I, the consummate planner, have the trip completely planned out by September. Now, it’s the end of October, what am I going to do? But Mr. Bean had a great idea – why don’t we go to Paris? We last went in October 2002 and it was for a whirlwind 2 day adventure. So, let’s spend a relaxing 4 days this time – I know, it sounds crazy but it works for us. Last time, we were in Europe for 8 days for an event for Mr. Bean, we spent 2 days in Rome, 3 days in Geneva (where he spoke at the United Nations – talk about cool!); and 2 days in Paris. So 4 days in Paris was a long time to us.
Question was, where in the world would we get plane tix cheap enough from upstate NY to Paris without breaking the budget? And the answer was: No where. The cheapest I could find was about $1000 pp which I just could not do. So I then decided to look at places out of NYC – and I found Air France was having a GREAT special of only $400 pp from JFK to Paris, nonstop. I loved the price and the one flight was great for me as I hate flying with a passion – it scares the heck out of me – so the less planes, the better. Now the only thing was to convince Mr. Bean that driving three hours to the airport over a busy time of year was not a big deal. It took awhile to convince him. He first had me check the cost of flights from Albany to JFK were – more than the flight from JFK to Paris – how sad is that? Then he wanted to take the train to Penn Station, then a taxi or bus from there to JFK – I asked on the Fodor's U.S. board and everyone confirmed my belief that it was too convoluted and took too much time. Then he found out about a bus that goes from Albany to JFK – it took six hours – if we drove it was only about 3 hours. Finally, I convinced him driving was the way to go; but boy, he was not happy about it.
Then, I had to find a hotel. After reading reviews on Fodors and Trip Adviser and my success with Best Westerns, I found the Best Western au Trocadero for only 83 Euros a night. It sounded really good in the reviews and I loved the location, but I admit I was a bit nervous as the price seemed too good to be true – and Mr. Bean was picky. I was enamored with the reviews which said some of the rooms had a view of the Eiffel Tower – for which I made a request. So I kept my fingers and toes crossed that we would get such a room.
So before we left, I had spent a total of $890 on airfare and $415 American on hotel for four nights – not too shabby, I thought – especially as everything seemed so last minute to me which I don’t like.
I then did the normally anal retentive thing I do and I planned our itinerary – I had graphs, charts, maps, explicit directions, recommendations for Fodorites on restaurants for which I made reservations, and exact metro directions for everything. I then had a notebook filled with all of that information, plus my tour guide maps. It always blows Mr. Bean away with the amount of detail I go into; but he always likes the fact that I do it. An important note though – even though I make those specific itineraries, I don’t feel obligated to follow it to the letter. If we want to spend longer in some places, that’s fine – I just would rather be over prepared than under. Mr. Bean probably would disagree with this, but if he saw my itinerary for this trip, and compare it to what we actually did, I think he would then agree.
I admit I did feel a little bit un-American going to Paris on Thanksgiving. And when we told people of our plans, you would have thought we were intending to kill a bald Eagle or something. “How could you not celebrate Thanksgiving?”; “Do they celebrate Thanksgiving?”; “How will you get turkey?” I could go on and on – but you know what, we would do it again in a heartbeat!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006.
So, the first day, I actually had to go to work so I didn’t “officially” have to take the day off. Why, do you ask? Because my vacation days were all done; and I was taking off Wednesday as my “birthday” day, a month late, which we are allowed to do. As a result, I actually had to work for 6 hours before I was off to get away to Paris. Talk about an excruciatingly long, boring, mundane six hours where I was going stir crazy and all I could think of was getting to Paris. I was miserable.
Finally, at noon, Mr. Bean picked me up for our 3 hour drive to JFK. Although it was a beautiful day out, Mr. Bean complained the whole drive down on how he couldn’t believe we were driving like this, it was going to be miserable driving in NYC, how EVERYONE he talked to said we should have taken the train to Penn and then the bus or whatever to JFK, blah, blah, blah. I finally tuned out and thought of Paris. And guess what? He was wrong – yes it was a bit busy, but not bad at all. We got to the JFK area; and Mr. Bean started worrying about getting a parking spot in long term and how in the world would we get to the terminal from there? I had already researched that issue, of course, but I was just letting him vent away. And surprise, surprise, we found a great parking spot only about 10 rows away from the tram area and went to catch the tram to get to our terminal. Mr. Bean grudgingly admitted it was easy. And we were the first Terminal stop.
Once we got into the Terminal, it was about 4:15 p.m.; and I was shocked. The place was EMPTY. And when I mean EMPTY, I mean EMPTY. I think I saw maybe 30 people and most were employees. I’m not kidding you, I think it took 30 minutes TOPS to get through Air France’s lines, get rid of our luggage, have the super kind Air France agent change our seats so we had an emergency row with only two seat in it and through security. It takes longer than that to get through security at our home airport and I always thought that was fast. I have a feeling though that, if we had left the Wednesday before Thanksgiving instead of Tuesday, it would have been a totally different story.
So we were at our gate about 3 hours earlier than necessary. We didn’t mind though. We had dinner, checked out the stores, I took my “don’t freak out on the plane” medicine, I had my “don’t freak out on the plane” glass of rum and coke and then we were off. We actually left about 45 minutes later than expected, but it wasn’t too bad.
We loved our seats. We were in the front row right after first class and it was just Mr. Bean and I. We each had our own TV’s. The food was actually pretty good which always surprises me on a plane. The only thing was that, although the airplane was great, the service was not so hot. I asked for water midway through and you would have thought I was asking for government secrets. We hardly even saw any flight attendants at all. All in all though, the flight was good and I even slept a little bit and was able to forget where I was and what I was flying over.
Pretrip
So, Mr. Bean and I had planned for a year to go to California for a week and a half over Thanksgiving. He had been about 20 years ago; and I had been never. We were going to start in L.A., work our way through Santa Barbara, Hearst Castle and Madonna Inn, Carmel and end up in San Francisco. I asked a ton of questions of Fodorites on the U.S. board, made ALL of my hotel reservations, some dinner reservations everything. And then the unthinkable hit. In October, my promised addition of another week of vacation at work to my two weeks fell through; and I was told I would get it in 2007. WHAT?!?!?!?!? And I had already used by two weeks for a week in the Adirondacks and a week at WDW. What were we going to do?
And as our wedding anniversary is in November, we always go away for it instead of buying each other unneeded presents. And I, the consummate planner, have the trip completely planned out by September. Now, it’s the end of October, what am I going to do? But Mr. Bean had a great idea – why don’t we go to Paris? We last went in October 2002 and it was for a whirlwind 2 day adventure. So, let’s spend a relaxing 4 days this time – I know, it sounds crazy but it works for us. Last time, we were in Europe for 8 days for an event for Mr. Bean, we spent 2 days in Rome, 3 days in Geneva (where he spoke at the United Nations – talk about cool!); and 2 days in Paris. So 4 days in Paris was a long time to us.
Question was, where in the world would we get plane tix cheap enough from upstate NY to Paris without breaking the budget? And the answer was: No where. The cheapest I could find was about $1000 pp which I just could not do. So I then decided to look at places out of NYC – and I found Air France was having a GREAT special of only $400 pp from JFK to Paris, nonstop. I loved the price and the one flight was great for me as I hate flying with a passion – it scares the heck out of me – so the less planes, the better. Now the only thing was to convince Mr. Bean that driving three hours to the airport over a busy time of year was not a big deal. It took awhile to convince him. He first had me check the cost of flights from Albany to JFK were – more than the flight from JFK to Paris – how sad is that? Then he wanted to take the train to Penn Station, then a taxi or bus from there to JFK – I asked on the Fodor's U.S. board and everyone confirmed my belief that it was too convoluted and took too much time. Then he found out about a bus that goes from Albany to JFK – it took six hours – if we drove it was only about 3 hours. Finally, I convinced him driving was the way to go; but boy, he was not happy about it.
Then, I had to find a hotel. After reading reviews on Fodors and Trip Adviser and my success with Best Westerns, I found the Best Western au Trocadero for only 83 Euros a night. It sounded really good in the reviews and I loved the location, but I admit I was a bit nervous as the price seemed too good to be true – and Mr. Bean was picky. I was enamored with the reviews which said some of the rooms had a view of the Eiffel Tower – for which I made a request. So I kept my fingers and toes crossed that we would get such a room.
So before we left, I had spent a total of $890 on airfare and $415 American on hotel for four nights – not too shabby, I thought – especially as everything seemed so last minute to me which I don’t like.
I then did the normally anal retentive thing I do and I planned our itinerary – I had graphs, charts, maps, explicit directions, recommendations for Fodorites on restaurants for which I made reservations, and exact metro directions for everything. I then had a notebook filled with all of that information, plus my tour guide maps. It always blows Mr. Bean away with the amount of detail I go into; but he always likes the fact that I do it. An important note though – even though I make those specific itineraries, I don’t feel obligated to follow it to the letter. If we want to spend longer in some places, that’s fine – I just would rather be over prepared than under. Mr. Bean probably would disagree with this, but if he saw my itinerary for this trip, and compare it to what we actually did, I think he would then agree.
I admit I did feel a little bit un-American going to Paris on Thanksgiving. And when we told people of our plans, you would have thought we were intending to kill a bald Eagle or something. “How could you not celebrate Thanksgiving?”; “Do they celebrate Thanksgiving?”; “How will you get turkey?” I could go on and on – but you know what, we would do it again in a heartbeat!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006.
So, the first day, I actually had to go to work so I didn’t “officially” have to take the day off. Why, do you ask? Because my vacation days were all done; and I was taking off Wednesday as my “birthday” day, a month late, which we are allowed to do. As a result, I actually had to work for 6 hours before I was off to get away to Paris. Talk about an excruciatingly long, boring, mundane six hours where I was going stir crazy and all I could think of was getting to Paris. I was miserable.
Finally, at noon, Mr. Bean picked me up for our 3 hour drive to JFK. Although it was a beautiful day out, Mr. Bean complained the whole drive down on how he couldn’t believe we were driving like this, it was going to be miserable driving in NYC, how EVERYONE he talked to said we should have taken the train to Penn and then the bus or whatever to JFK, blah, blah, blah. I finally tuned out and thought of Paris. And guess what? He was wrong – yes it was a bit busy, but not bad at all. We got to the JFK area; and Mr. Bean started worrying about getting a parking spot in long term and how in the world would we get to the terminal from there? I had already researched that issue, of course, but I was just letting him vent away. And surprise, surprise, we found a great parking spot only about 10 rows away from the tram area and went to catch the tram to get to our terminal. Mr. Bean grudgingly admitted it was easy. And we were the first Terminal stop.
Once we got into the Terminal, it was about 4:15 p.m.; and I was shocked. The place was EMPTY. And when I mean EMPTY, I mean EMPTY. I think I saw maybe 30 people and most were employees. I’m not kidding you, I think it took 30 minutes TOPS to get through Air France’s lines, get rid of our luggage, have the super kind Air France agent change our seats so we had an emergency row with only two seat in it and through security. It takes longer than that to get through security at our home airport and I always thought that was fast. I have a feeling though that, if we had left the Wednesday before Thanksgiving instead of Tuesday, it would have been a totally different story.
So we were at our gate about 3 hours earlier than necessary. We didn’t mind though. We had dinner, checked out the stores, I took my “don’t freak out on the plane” medicine, I had my “don’t freak out on the plane” glass of rum and coke and then we were off. We actually left about 45 minutes later than expected, but it wasn’t too bad.
We loved our seats. We were in the front row right after first class and it was just Mr. Bean and I. We each had our own TV’s. The food was actually pretty good which always surprises me on a plane. The only thing was that, although the airplane was great, the service was not so hot. I asked for water midway through and you would have thought I was asking for government secrets. We hardly even saw any flight attendants at all. All in all though, the flight was good and I even slept a little bit and was able to forget where I was and what I was flying over.
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