France

Travel Adventures to France

  • Our Excellent Return to the Sea – Final

    Transition Day Today is Saturday the 19th, and the whole ship is in transition. About 95% of the passengers have disembarked as they only booked a seven-day cruise ending in Civaateccia. Right now, the whole ship feels very empty as there are only ten cabins,…

  • Our Excellent Return to the Sea – Part 4

    It’s been six days since I last wrote anything about our trip, which is unusual for a three-week vacation. I always bring my laptop with me, and I try to write a little every day, especially in the early morning when Barb is still asleep.…

  • Barb and Baden’s Return to France – Final

    Sidebar I was originally planning on writing 4 installments for this Return to France adventure but for a number of factors this will be the final one. I’ll be covering a lot of ground, almost a 8 days worth. Missing the Crowds It’s now Sunday…

  • Barb and Baden’s Return to France – Part 2

    Getting Here It’s 4AM here in the Paris apartment we’re staying at where I’m writing this next installment of our Return to France Adventure. A bit more on that in a minute. Wednesday was our travel day getting to Paris from Vancouver and had its…

  • Barb and Baden’s Return to France – Part 1

    We needed to check our notes because we couldn’t believe that it’s been 12 years since our last trip to France. Of course, it’s been three years since we’ve been anywhere outside of North America, this Return to France trip is significant for us in…

  • Barb and Baden’s Excellent France Adventure 4.0 – Part 2

      Starting Off Just Right It’s been our experience that after a long day of traveling to a destination, checking into your hotel, it’s vital that things start off just right in your new destination. For us, it typically means that the place that we…

  • Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure – Final

    Touristy or not In many of my blog postings, I have thrown around the word touristy here and there. In most cases, the word is used by me in a negative-sounding way describing a place that that you may want to consider not going to.…

  • Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure – Part 1

    Paris subway sign as seen on our last visit in 2004 It’s been 8 years since we started using the term Excellent Adventure. It was on our trip to the South Pacific (New Zealand and the Cook Islands) in 1999 that I first began sending…

  • Barb & Baden’s Excellent French Adventure ver 2.0 – Part 4

    Note: this email was originally composed on Oct. 7, 2004 Food Glorious Food Day 6: Today began with an early morning delivery of our breakfast courtesy of Patrick. It consisted of the freshest croissants and a baguette – something that we have found that the…

  • Barb and Baden’s Excellent French Adventure – Final

    This will be the final chapter of our Excellent French Adventures. Before I continue, I wanted to expand on the experience that we had at the George V hotel that we visited a few days ago. When we entered the front of the hotel, there…

  • Barb and Baden’s Excellent French Adventure – Part 3

    One of the issues that we were obviously going to be facing was the language issue. For the past 25 years, whenever I told anyone that I was originally from Montreal, I was always asked “well, you must speak French”. My answer was always that…