London Transport

As soon as we've landed in Heathrow on Tuesday and, hopefully, collected our luggage, we're off to the London Transport window to buy our 7 day Travelcard...or is it 7 day Oyster card. We haven't figured out what it's called, exactly, but hopefully the attendant will know and we'll be set to jump on and off of tubes and buses for the next week.

Public transportation has a fascination for me so I've been pouring over my bus and subway, opps..underground maps. Transport for London has a Journey Planner on their site and I plan to make good use of it. Someplace in my reading I found a great map for a bus tour using 4 routes to tour London. Now all I have to do is find it.

London, here we come!

Mitch and I are going to London for a week, leaving Mon, Oct. 19 and returning Tues, Oct. 27. This will be our first overseas trip since Mitch was diagnosed with MDS, and started the monthly treatment cycle of Vidasa shots. So, it's a great experiment to test his stamina with the transatlantic flight and long days.

Here is our flight information....after watching fares for a month or more, we gave up and booked frequent flier tickets on American.
American Airlines , flight 104, leaves JFK on MON 19OCT8:20 PM, arrives LONDON HEATHROW 8:25 AM
American Airlines , flight 131, leaves LONDON HEATHROW on TUE 27OCT3:35 PM
arrives NEW YORK JFK 7:45 PM

We'll be staying at the Winrose Hotel near Paddington Station. Accomodations in London are very expensive. The Winrose is inexpensive (c. $120 per night), has free wi-fi, and full fry-up for breakfast, and is well reviewed on Tripadvisor...that website that Mitch loves to hate.

Here is what our room should look like

Steamtown in Scranton, PA

In honor of Nardi's birthday, Mary and Nardi, Mitch and I drove out 80 to Steamtown in Scranton, PA. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, Scranton had a lively railroad history based on anthracite coal and as a transportation hub for the northeast. Steamtown strives to preserve the history of steam railroading in the US and offers a lovely new visitor center, museum, train rides, and a roundhouse and workshops filled with tools to maintain and restore the old locomotives and cars in the collection. We walked across the RR yard into downtown Scranton for lunch. The town, full of colleges and universities today, doesn't seem as depressed as many American cities that have lost their industries. We had brunch/lunch at Mother's Table where prices seem to be about what they were in 1970 - just perfect! Here is a link to my Picasa pictures of the days outing.

Yes, it was cold and windy. The ranger said, "Welcome to Scranton where it's always November." I don't think that's true - heat and humidity in the summer are supposed to be terrible. But we had a great time, Mitch held up pretty well, and it was good to be "traveling" again. Steamtown is highly recommended.

Hiking in New Jersey

Not that Mitch feels like much hiking but we seem always to be looking for ideas when it's a beautiful day and want something to do. Here is a link (supposedly permalink - we'll see) to a NY Times article. http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/travel/escapes/08njhike.html Perhaps we'll be up to one of these hikes soon.

This Blog returns from the dead

Seeing as we inadvertantly flushed my other travel page when we changed Internet providers, I'm going to develop this as an alternative.

We've arrived in Paris!

Nous sommes ici! We made it this morning arriving at Charles De Gaulle a little bit late as we spent about 45 minutes waiting for take-off on the Newark runways. Flight was OK, a bit bumpy but I don’t mind that rocking when I’m trying to sleep. Mitch does not agree with this. I think we slept more than we thought we did which was not at all. Now we have checked into our first B&B and it is hidden way away in the countryside outside Honfleur. Our GPS appears to have taken us by local shortcuts because we left the highway early and drove about 5 plus miles on one lane tracks. But we got here after asking two natives.
The countryside is just beautiful – all green, flowers, lots of bright fields of mustard. We stopped at Giverny on the way. It’s a touristy, but very lovely town. The line was hours long for Monet’s Garden and House but there are gardens at another museum down the street and it’s a very quaint town so we walked around a bit.
Our room in the B&B is on the ground floor and we even have a little patio which, at the moment, is very hot. Weather is high 70s I would think and we probably both got a little sunburned just with the time walking around Giverny. The room is new and very clean and has one of those European bathrooms where the shower (all new) is right in the middle of the bathroom and everything gets soaked – no curtains, no nothing. Go figure!
We are going to try to stay awake long enough to eat dinner here. I’d like to drive into Honfleur and look around, but that may have to wait until tomorrow.
All is well, and although I just complained about the GPS we’d really be lost without it.

Off to Normandy and Paris

We're leaving tomorrow so it's time to put up some links and try to get organized at the last minute. Here is our brief itinerary, and you can check back for day-by-day details:
Penny and Mitch in France – May 7 to May 17, 2008

May 7, Continental # 138, leaving Newark at 8:05 p.m.,

May May 8 -Arriving Charles DeGaulle at 9:40 a.m. – confirmation number A5DNLS (P), A5CK6X (M)
Pick up rental car from Auto Europe at airport – voucher # 2754852-1, desk in each terminal tel: 33 148623875
Drive to Honfleur (2 and a half hour/ 135 miles) with a stop in Giverny (Monet’s Garden)
May 8 & 9 (Thurs, Friday) Stay at La Fraichette, Chemin de Cremanville, La Riviere Saint Sauveur, Honfleur 14600, France, 02 31 89 37 36– Thus, May 8, Friday, May 9 82.60/night includes breakfast.
Honfleur – scenic port town, lots of restaurants, escaped WWII bombing,

Rouen – day trip from Honfleur – one hour Rick Steves to see historical sights – cathedral, cobbled old town, Joan of Arc, Wm the Conqueror

Sat, May 10 – brief stop at Saturday market in Honfleur (9-12:30)
Drive between Honfluer and Bayeux (65 mi.) with at stop at WWII museum in Caen (RS raves about, allow 2.5 hrs, expensive 17E

May 10, 11, 12 Le Mas Normand, 8, Impasse de la Riviere, Ver su Mer. 02 31 21 97 75. www.ohotes.com/lemasnormand

D Day beaches tour a la Rick Steves (p.242)
Bayeux tapestry and self-guided walk (brochure, town map & D-Day tour brochure) from TI on a small bridge 2 blocks n. of cathedral)
Mont St. Michel – RS self-guided tour

May 13 – Drive back to Charles De Gaulle and drop off car – take RER B toward Robinson.Saint-Remy Chevreuses, front of train, get off at St. Michel/Nortre-Dame-Cluny station, take Blvd Saint Germain exit, walk in direction of traffic, 3rd rt. To
Hotel College de France, 7 rue Thenard, 75005 Paris (33 (0) 1 43 26 78 36)– reservations for May 13, 14, 15, 16

In Paris
Latin Quarter walk
Walk from Opera Garnier, or just from the Jardin des Tuileries, Orangerie Museum tour, Petit Palais
Day trip to Versailles – RER C5 train at St. Michel –5E/rd trip – 30 minutes, any train whose name starts with V goes to Versailles, get off last stop Versailles RG, exit turnstiles (insert ticket), turn rt out of station, left a 1st blvd, walk 10 minutes – allow 2 hrs palace, 2 gardens, 2 for transit (7.5E palace, gardens free, no cards
Montmartre walk
Festival Jazz a Saint Germain des Pres (photocopies) and walk neighborhood – Fri, May 16 many free events.