"Paris is Always a Good Idea"!

It’s finally time for our adventure to begin…

We took a chance on an airline that was new to us, French Bee.  Honestly, the prices were too good not to take a flyer on it  (see what I did there?!?).   When I say we took a chance, I mean it…this airline has terrible reviews.  But then so did my beloved Norwegian Airlines!  Now that we have landed in Paris, I would whole heartedly recommend this airline…You just have to be aware that it is a budget airline, so expect no frills.  That being said, I learned a little trick from my dear friend Chickie who always takes little gift for the flight crew to share.  So once seated,  I gave one of the flight attendants a box of my macarons for the crew.  Shortly after that they brought glasses of champagne to Gary and me, extra blankets and “comfort” packs with ear plugs/eye masks, and told us if we needed “anything” just ask.  Sadly, the only thing I wanted was something they couldn’t give me was a wider seat!  The meal was  standard airplane food, and the plane was new and clean.  I have to say, this is the only flight I have ever been on where I have seen the flight attendant clean the lavatories twice during the duration of the flight!  We will happily fly French Bee again! (But I still miss Norwegian Air.)

The first leg of our adventure is to take the train to Tours (1 hr. south of Paris) to pick up our rental car and drive to Amboise in the Loire Valley where we will make our home for 3 days. (We had decided that we did not want to pick up the rental car in Paris and have to drive in Paris!)  The glitch was that our plane landed at 4:40pm and the car rental agency (a one hour train ride away) closed at 5.  So we opted to stay at the glamorous Ibis Budget Orly Hotel, take a cab to the train station, then catch a morning train, after a good night sleep.  After checking in, we were all ready for a cocktail and a real meal so we headed next door to the Orly Novatel (how’s that for some fine French dining?!). We actually had great drinks and a lovely dinner (we were the only English speakers in the restaurant)  before heading home and falling into bed, exhausted. 

 

After waking several times in the night we finally gave up and got up at 4:30am and headed down to breakfast…surprised to see John and Babette also walking down the hall to the elevator, as they could not sleep either.  This time change thing worked out though, as we could watch the Warriors/Lakers playoff game as we ate breakfast!!

A quick UBER ride to Gare Montparnasse gave us our first (and very brief) sighting of the Eiffel Tower (don’t worry though, we will be back to see her again in a few weeks)…lots of traffic so we were thankful we got up so early!  Nothing beats European train travel…we were almost sad our train trip through the mustard fields came to an end, but super excited to pick up our rental car and really start our French adventure!

Originally we had booked a Peugeot 5008 which tickled me because my grandparents in Berkeley always drove Peugeots, so I was anticipating some sweet nostalgia!  But we were given a Citröen which is actually just perfect!  It’s a super comfy mini-van with tons of headroom, it comfortably fits the 4 of us and all our luggage.  For people “traveling light”, it sure feels like we have a lot of luggage…4 suitcases, 2 CPAP machines, 4 carry bags and a backpack filled with gluten free bread and crackers for Gary, and will get whittled down as the trip progresses!

Driving was a snap to get to Amboise!  John and Gary are going to trade off driving…John got to start.  We couldn’t figure out the GPS in the car so thank heavens for cellphones with Google maps!  I think we hit 4 roundabouts in the first minute and a half of driving!  We suddenly made a right turn and there was a huge chateau looming over the river as we crossed a bridge…Chateau Amboise!  As we drove deeper into the old part of town Babette and I were practically squealing with delight at all the quaint sights.  When we finally found our “home” we were really over the moon…more details to follow!!  (and more photos to come...super slow wifi in our "home" is a challenge I'm working on!)