France
Travel Adventures to France
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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,…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent France Adventure 4.0 – Final
Côte d’Azure It’s Friday morning right now and the end of our trip is in sight. By Sunday we will be heading back to the airport for our return flight home to Vancouver. Well, hopefully on Sunday. As of this morning, this is not 100%…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent France Adventure 4.0 – Part 4
Driving, Not Walking Now that we’ve moved down to the Bordeaux area, the one big thing that’s changed for us since leaving Paris is that we have a car. The small Bordeaux town of Margaux that we are based in really doesn’t have many amenities…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent France Adventure 4.0 – Part 3
The Real Taste of Paris The other day we went out for breakfast to a local café and of course we had croissants and coffee. That first bite of fresh croissant is always the best as you taste the crunchy exterior and the soft, chewy…
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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…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent France Adventure 4.0 – Part 1
You’d think that after making three previous trips to France that we would have moved on to other places in the world to visit. After all, wouldn’t it be natural to just get tired of going to a single country time after time? Of course,…
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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.…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure – Part 4
Shopping Mecca You knew that it was just a matter of time before I talked about shopping. For all of the places that Barb and I have been to, we are both of the opinion that Paris has the best shopping in the world. I…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure – Part 3
The first night on any of our trips to Europe is always the toughest. In general we start running out of energy around 6PM but we usually try and stay up as late as we can the first night in the attempt to get our…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure – Part 2
I have to state for the record that I’m quite impressed with the amount of stuff that Barb packed into her suitcase. We had decided to take our small carry-on luggage on this tip as it was only going to be just over a week…
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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…
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The Making of Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure
I guess it goes without saying that the secret’s out now. As more and more people were made aware of the details of our next Excellent Adventure, there’s no point in being coy about it anymore. By this time next week, Barb and I will…
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Barb & Baden’s Excellent French Adventure ver 2.0 – Final
Note: this email was originally composed on Oct. 11, 2004 Shopping as an art form Some of you may have picked up from previous Excellent Adventures that Barb and I have a liking for shopping when we travel to Europe. This is pretty much true…
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Barb & Baden’s Excellent French Adventure ver 2.0 – Part 5
Note: this email was originally composed on Oct. 9, 2004 Driving like maniacs No trip to Europe would be complete without commenting on the driving habits of the locals. In general, there’s lots to be envious of in France as the have an excellent highway…
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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…
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Barb & Baden’s Excellent French Adventure ver 2.0 – Part 3
Note: this email was originally composed on Oct. 4, 2004 Day 4: As today was our last day in the Burgundy region, we ended up spending it in Dijon again and did some shopping. We really planned on doing most of our shopping in Paris…
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Barb & Baden’s Excellent French Adventure ver 2.0 – Part 2
Note: this email was originally composed on Oct. 1, 2004 Preface: I`ve been having lot`s of computer problems since I got here. I am now sitting in front of (gasp!) a Macintosh at the local post office writing this. The last post office I was…
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Barb & Baden’s Excellent French Adventure ver 2.0 – Part 1
I was thinking to myself the other day that we really like the airport. Ok, so were at the airport right now waiting to fly out to France so whats not to like you’re probably wondering? Fair enough question but we *really* like being here.…
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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…
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Barb and Baden’s Excellent French Adventure – Part 4
I was asked how many people are getting this journal. The number is now at 51 people and it has grown with every trip for the past 2 years. It is being sent to 5 countries outside of Canada from Germany to Indonesia. Our adventures…
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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…