St-Tropez

It was Margaret's birthday, and we made our excursion to St- Tropez.  The traffic was intense; I directed the TomTom GPS to the Parc des Lices garage for this once-in-50-years trip. There were vehicles crowding into the entrance from multiple directions. A van with Dutch plates cut in front of us, the passenger found it was too tall, and made us back up to let them out with people behind us. 

We found the busy Place des Lices market, went around there, and to a harbor café.  We didn't have lunch plans that were too ambitious, selected Le G for a pleasant birthday meal. 

The GPS took us down a narrow street that I wasn't sure was correct, but we wound up OK, including some extra circling of roundabouts. 

Back in Grimaud, for the evening, we hoped to go to a nearby creperie, but there seems to be a problem of limited places being open Monday and Tuesday. We wound with a pizza, not great. It's hard to review this full Grimaud stay, but it was an interesting return. Pictures:

Memories, getting to Grimaud

  Although the setup for the marathon appeared to allow traffic in one direction, we decided to leave the apartment before the start, go to the front of the train station, and get a taxi to the airport. At a fixed fare of 25 euros on Sunday, we got there much earlier than our scheduled pickup time, and sat with coffee for that time so the return time in Rome would be right. 

When we got the car, it was a Fiat 500L like last time, but automatic, which is overall preferable, especially without owing a supplement. It is a confusing type of automatic; with one setup it's semi and calls for shifting, although it doesn't have a clutch.

We took the autostrada-autoroute with some tie-ups on the Italian side. I planned a lunch stop for the last Autogrill on the Italian side; it turned out to be a snack bar with sandwiches. The tollbooth took a credit card at the staffed booth. Not many cars were crossing the border. In France there were three lanes in each direction all the way.  There were three booths that took a fixed toll, then a short segment with a ticket to hand in. 

I found my way close to La Maison du Prince, where we were staying. We checked into this small historic B&B. Wi-Fi is not that strong, and I'm typing this on the iPhone where I'm not used to typing much of length. The lady was maybe wanting to be too helpful in directing me where to park, but it's worked out well overall. 

We did a little exploration of the village of Grimaud, my house was not as I remembered it.  We had dinner at the restaurant I remembered, l'Ecurie de la Marquise, very nice with steak as it got crowded with the colorful waiter, speaking so many languages, needing to give attention so many places. 

In the morning, a bit more exploration of Grimaud, then a trip to the other picturesque village of Ramtuelle. We had lunch there at Saveurs Sincères, a burrata of mozzarella with truffles. Resting it off, here are a few pictures from Grimaud. 

Sadness, with more changes of plans

On January 10, 2016, my mother died following a stroke that she had over the Christmas period.  It is difficult to think of writing a full tribute, but it's impossible to measure the full scope of her influence on my life as a traveler.  Her interest in living in Europe meant that I spent formative years there.  My quick picking up of skills in practical matters such as navigation and transportation schedules complemented her talents in showing appreciation of the beauty of the places and picking up on local culture.  Margaret and I will look at our upcoming trip as a tribute to her as we revisit places where I lived with her.  In particular the trip to Grimaud will be interesting as I go back after so long and have conflicted views of my year there at 13.

So we've seen the consequences of making a booking so long in advance, that we continued to be notified of flight schedule changes.   Seeing where I left off in the last post on the flight changes.  In toying around with airfare sites as I often do, I found that the Kansas City-Miami flight was back on the schedule for our date of travel.  I called to see if we could get changed back to that, our original booking, regardless of SAAver award availability.  This agent was very helpful, calling another department to force a second award seat on the Miami-Milan flight, and it looked like a good booking for a comfortable trip.

Then the next day, I got an email of a new schedule change:  the flight from Miami would leave at 5.30 p.m. instead of 2.20, giving us seven hours in Miami.  We could take advantage of that with an outing to South Beach, but the later arrival in Milan would also be something of a concern in how we would get to Genoa.

Go ahead a couple of more months, and on the evening of my mother's death the airline sent a new email:  KC-Miami was off the schedule again, and they had us booked via Miami with a connection at Dallas/Fort Worth that was too short for comfort.  While trying to deal with getting back into routine things, I had to consider what effort I could make to get the least bad rebooking, which be going back to the option via Washington and the change of New York airports.  Then award availability turned up on the KC-LaGuardia flight, where service will just be starting two weeks before then.  I got that booking changed:  we'll go via New York, a change of airports but not an extra stop.

We'll have 7.5 hours to make the airport change.  We may just spend the time from getting to JFK in their Admirals Club, considering the hassle and transportation costs of leaving the airport, even for lunch within Queens.

We've also completed bookings at an apartment rental in Genoa, and a B&B in Grimaud, the limited option of staying in the village rather than the country or the faux fishing village of Port Grimaud.  The other thing that threw us for a loop was that I discovered that the Intercontinental Hotel de la Ville in Rome, where we were going to spend our last night on a program free night, would be closing down before we got there.  I was able to change that free night to the Indigo on via Giulia, in the area where Margaret and I went to school, so that should be nice.  At the time that I understand that people with reservations were notified of the closing, I couldn't have gotten that award night.  It has paid to keep looking at travel sites and boards.

Italy-France in 2016 coming into being

I haven't posted in over a year, since the end of our last trip to Europe; the booking of our next international trip becomes the occasion to revive this blog.

Pretty much since the end of that trip, and maybe before that, I had in mind the next trip, as usual with most of the time in Umbertide, but with the main side venture being to Grimaud, in southern France, where I lived for a year at age 13.  I generally view that year negatively, that at that age I was home-schooled and didn't have contact with peers.  I like the thought of going back with Margaret, showing the full success of having reached married life.

I've had in mind to go to Grimaud early in the trip, but I want to have the first leg of the open-jaw flight go to Milan rather than Nice.  I've accumulated a nice bunch of American Airlines miles mostly from credit card opening bonuses and the merger with US Airways, and it reached the stage where booking off-peak award trips for us will take less than half my mileage balance.  I see active people on travel boards talking about high airfares to Europe, when I've been able to go on miles most of the time, and the miles I've earned from flying have not been much of a key part of reaching these awards.

Reasons for flying to Milan are that flying to Nice on an AA award would probably require flying on British Airways, which has surcharges on awards that make it pointless to call it a free flight, and undesirable connections at Heathrow, and that a one-way car rental from France to Italy would have big surcharges.  Flying to Milan on AA's own flight makes it easier; they fly there from New York JFK and Miami.  JFK has its problems of needing a connection from Kansas City, and often the connecting flights on awards were only offered to LaGuardia, and we'd need to change airports on our own.  I was starting to think of starting our trip in St. Louis to use their non-stop to Miami, when last fall AA announced  the start of KC-Miami non-stop service.

I was thinking a lot about how to go about booking:  whether it was really needed,  I was going to see about what showed when the dates first opened for booking.  When that is can be a matter of confusion:  schedules open 331 days in advance, by you're more likely to start seeing SAAver awards at T-329.  Some people book their trips as one-ways; I was hesitant to do that in case an available  return date made it too different from a 3-week trip.  But AA does allow keeping bookings on 5-day holds.  I was aiming for a trip that ended by May 15, allowing us to go at the off-peak rate of 40,000 miles round trip, of which 10% would be rebated as a credit card holder.

So I started searching for an outbound 5 days before the schedule would open to allow returns through May 15.  I found availability to put on hold for the trip to Milan with one change in Miami, for a midweek date a few days before the ideal weekend dates.  With this, the return would be a few days earlier than planned, so I felt justified looking for return availability after a couple of days.  I had understood that I could modify the one-way I had on hold to a round trip or open jaw, but there was a message on my Hold screen that it could not be changed online.  Our preference was to get a return flight out of Rome, but what first showed was a one-change return from Milan.  I put a hold on that, and the options from Rome were frustrating.  Even excluding British Airways flights, and open to Air Berlin options with an overnight in Berlin, the frustrations with AA offerings were:  we were open to spending the night at the U.S. gateway, but what showed were options arriving at JFK or Philadelphia and then going to Charlotte or Miami for another connection or overnight.

I could book one of these and, as obsessive as I am, I would probably keep checking and eventually find a better option out of Rome, which we could change to at no charge as a trip between the same two cities, whereas if we booked out of Milan, we couldn't change it to Rome.  People on Facebook advised me to do the bad booking out of Rome and keep watching, but I was making plans based on going from Milan, having some time in Rome and taking the high-speed train, and perhaps getting a credit card for the purpose of having the points for a stay at the hotel attached to the terminal at Malpensa airport.

But then there was an opening for two out of Rome with one change in Charlotte; I held that and then completed the bookings as one-ways once we reached the outbound hold deadline and there were no better dates.  The option to put awards on hold is an extra consideration in award travel not being available, and then coming up; we need to consider what other people who are trying to book might be doing.  I mentioned to Margaret that there was the option of flying to JFK, spending the night, and then continuing with a connection; she kind of liked that, but it was no longer available.  I can keep searching for that, and the schedules may well continue to change with the completion of the merger; there's some question whether Rome-Charlotte service will continue.

So we have that basis of the trip booked:  the outline of the plan is, on the early-morning arrival in Milan, take the train, spend three nights in Genoa, which I haven't really seen, then rent a car to go to Grimaud for three nights.  Then go to Umbertide for our base until we go to Rome at the end.  There will be more to think about, with the flight dates established.