Vacations Blog

Back in June, when I posted my Local’s Perspective on Palo Alto, I tagged three UpTake friends to participate too: Claude from Les Explorers, Erica from Travel Blissful (formerly Blissful Travel) and Guido from Happy Hotelier. Reading their blog posts puts me in a mood for a European Adventure! Check out what they had to say:

Erica writes about her hometown Halmstad, in southern Sweden. Sweden, and most of Scandinavia, is on my travel wish list. Erica’s recommendations make me want to take off for the whole summer and visit those northern countries.

Guido writes about The Hague, Netherlands, a place I visited as a college student. Guido highlights several reasons to go back as an adult.

And Claude claims he is too busy to write about Provence! Oh, Claude, please write about Provence. My birthday is coming up soon, and I have almost convinced my husband that a trip to France would be just the way to celebrate!

Be sure to check out our other Local’s Perspectives, from Nancy Brown’s Carmel Revealed to Washington D.C. Revealed by Priscilla Macy. Would you like to share a perspective on your hometown? Send us your details at feedback at uptake dot com.

Happy Traveling!

I want to go to France.  I want to spend time exploring the museums, parks and squares of Paris and sip wine in the countryside.  It’s not happening in 2008 though, despite my plans.  The exchange rate with the Euro has sufficiently squashed my Paris dreams for at least one more year.  If you’re like me and stuck in the good ‘ole US for the time being, here are 5 ways you can feel a little bit French right here at home.

1.  Picnic in the Park – Grab a bottle of wine and a baguette from Vons and head out to your local park with your honey to beat the heat this summer.  There’s nothing more French than a good French kiss in the park with a shared bottle of wine.  In Southern California, check out the Long Beach Parks for great places to picnic under trees.

2.  Attend a festival – Paris always has something going on.  Chances are your local big city does as well.  Throw on your sailor striped shirt and artist pants and head out to whatever local festival is going on.  The city of Orange, like many cities, has a ‘taste of’ festival where you can even grab some French food!

3.  Go Topless, Legally – If the topless French Mediterranean beaches are what is calling you across the Atlantic, find your local nudist colony or beach.  Many have ‘open house’ days when non-members can experience the freedom of going commando for a day.

4.  Drink Some Wine – thanks to growth in vineyard sciences many regions of the country now have local vineyards in previous under developed places, such as Temecula.  Find one close to you and go for a tour and a tasting.  Some even will let you stomp the grapes in the fall!

5.  See the Masters – Find your local art museum and go see some of the French masters.  If you’re in So Cal, splurge and go to the Getty Museum and have a cup of espresso and a croissant while you’re there to complete the French experience.  Close your eyes (or rather your ears to the English being spoken) and it’s just like Paris!

Whatever you do, make sure to do it with style – that’s what will make it truly French.  Bon Voyage!

*Thanks to La Belle Province

Paris, France, March 2008

From guest blogger, Andrea Widburg, of Andi’s Answers

When we traveled in Europe last winter, we had to deal with two immutable factors: the long distances we had to cover and the high cost of lodging. We hated to spend our days stuck on trains, rather than walking around and sight-seeing, and we hated to spend our nights paying $300 for a small room with a half bathroom. A sleeper train seemed like the logical solution. There are lots of websites that give information about this way of traveling (see here and here, for example) and they all make it seem very civilized and easy. They’re almost correct.

We took our first sleeper train from Paris to Venice. Although we had very carefully and specifically booked a cabin just for the four of us, we were promptly led to a cabin that already boasted two other people. Fortunately, the conductor was a sympathetic type, and the train wasn’t too full, so we finally got a cabin all our own.

Our cabin had two lower berths that functioned as seats during the daytime, and two upper berths that folded up against the side of the car when not in use. I didn’t have a tape measure, but the berths felt as if they were about two and a half feet wide. The train company provided a thin nylon sleeping bag that served as both a top and bottom sheet (much like the sleep-sheet used in hostels), a small pillow, and a thin blanket. Our luggage was stuffed under the bottom berths and placed on shelves above the top berths.

The good part of the sleeper train was that we did sort of sleep. We took our shoes off and got to lie down. The train had that nice, relaxing chugga-chugga-chugga rhythm, and there were mercifully few horns and whistles. The kids were initially too excited to go to sleep but exhaustion finally overtook them and they blinked out.

The bad part was the fact that the berths were extremely uncomfortable and, for my tall husband, way too short. Also, getting to the bathroom was no fun. You had to crawl down from the berth (since my husband and I slept on top), put on your clunky winter shoes, unlock the door (which inevitably woke the spouse), and then stagger down the rocking aisle to a very cold and, usually, somewhat dirty bathroom. If there was no toilet paper, you staggered back to your cabin, got the toilet paper and started all over again. Multiply this not just by your own bathroom stops, but by the children’s, and you’ve got a pretty lousy night of sleep.

Of course, after all this discomfort and inconvenience, we woke up to find ourselves in beautiful Venice. Once there, although we were tired, we spent quite a nice day sightseeing. In other words, the plan worked perfectly, with us doubling up on travel and lodging and not wasting any daytime hours sitting on a train. So even though I really did not enjoy the experience, I ended up doing it all over again when we traveled from Venice to Rome, and I’ll do it again the next time I’m in Europe.

From guest blogger, Andrea Widburg, of Andi’s Answers

Paris in the spring is the stuff of poetry, Paris in the summer is the most popular tourist time, and Paris in the winter is a great time to go, especially when you’re traveling with two active elementary school aged children. We went to Paris last winter right after Christmas and, while the crowds were still overwhelming, it felt almost empty compared to the usual summer traffic. Here are some of the things we discovered:

The Louvre Museum is a great way to stay out of the rain. Our kids are very active, and they need room to roam. The Louvre museum, at almost 200,000 square feet, is so huge that they got more than enough activity. The collection is also awe inspiring.

Though the children would really rather have their nails pulled out than spend time in the average museum, even they were thrilled to get an up-close view of the Mona Lisa. They were also completely charmed by Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s imaginative paintings, which use fruits, vegetables, flowers and plants to create portraits. As for me, as a Medieval Flemish painting junkie, the Louvre was art heaven.

Another exciting place to visit was the Conciergerie, the former palace and prison in which Marie Antoinette spent her final days before meeting Madame la Guillotine. It’s a grim place, and the small, but excellent exhibit (which includes a guillotine blade that was still used in the 19^th Century) gives you a hint of the horrors it held for its unfortunate residents. The children, needless to say, were thrilled.

Right around the corner from the Conciergerie is one of the most uplifting places in all of Paris: the Sainte-Chapelle, a small Church from the mid-13^th Century that has the finest stained glass windows in Europe. Even on an overcast winter’s day, the interior is radiant. Between the windows and the painted surfaces, one has almost no sense of the stone bones underlying the chapel’s construction. Although the children were pushed to their limits for the half hour we spent inside, I don’t think they regretted it, because even they recognized its extraordinary beauty.

Lastly, if you have active children and find yourself in Paris in mid-Winter, go to Versailles. We started with a tour of the Palace’s interior, which stunned the children with its gaudy magnificence. By tour’s end, however, they simply collapsed and couldn’t get out of there soon enough. Fortunately, “getting out” took us onto Versailles’ grounds, and we spent several hours wandering around there. We visited Marie Antoinette’s exquisite Petite Trianon, made especially poignant by the fact that we’d earlier soon the grim cell in which she lived during her last days. There was also room just to run. Because of the cold, most people weren’t lingering in the garden, so my kids could really stretch their wings, with pauses to look at the swans, sheep and ponies that still live in Marie Antoinette’s silly little model farm. Because of the combination of eye candy and space that Versailles offered on a winter’s day, I have to say it was probably the best day we spent in Paris.