Arrived in Bordeaux

 It was time to leave Paris; it was raining as we needed to walk a block from our hotel, the voco Montparnasse, to the Gare Montparnasse.  People stand in the main hall waiting for the track number to be posted, often 15 minutes before departure, but we got a little more time than that.  The tickets (in our case on my Apple Wallet) were checked as we entered the platform.

We boarded; for my one time on the TGV I booked the best, the full-service Inoui rather than the budget Ouigo, and in first class.  I booked the upper level for the view, and the stairs weren’t as shallow with luggage as The Man in Seat 61 (helpful site for rail travel) suggested.  We settled in at the seats facing each other at the end of the car, next to the luggage rack.  

We took off, the train’s Wi-Fi was spotty and it didn’t work to order from the snack bar on the phone, but I went and got some food and drink as we covered the distance in such a short time, sometimes going over 300 km/h.

A crowded train, and it seemed this dog needed to move

Mustard fields

The speed displayed

On arrival at Bordeaux St-Jean station, we exited and saw the tram lines, but no apparent place to get a taxi.  I needed to do some looking, and it seemed we were in front of Hall 1, and to our left we needed to go past a jutting out to Hall 2, where there’s a taxi stand.  There were a few people waiting with no taxis, but the cabs came one by one until one was ready for us.

We got to the Quality Hotel in the city’s large pedestrian zone, where the driver needed to ask for the bollards to drop so the cab could enter.  The room wasn’t ready even after 2, so we wandered a little, noting how lively the streets are.  When the room was ready, we were impressed at how big a room it was, a suite by some definitions.  Still the toilet room was separate from the other bathroom, on different sides of the bed.

 

After a brief rest, to eat early we went to Le Grand Café.  A few pictures of crowded streets, prominent squares, and the Miroir d’Eau reflecting pool.

Place de la Bourse

Place du Parlemenr

Porte Cailhou

Miroir d’Eau

These are good impressions of a lively city in a short time, tomorrow we board the cruise, and we look forward to more time in Bordeaux at the end.

Finishing time in Paris

 This morning we went to the Picasso Museum.  Yesterday I booked tickets for admission there, and I couldn’t save them as Documents there as I’d done for the Petit Palais show.  I had the printable version and asked for help at the hotel desk; that ran into complications. The desk agent figured how to take a screenshot and AirDrop it to her phone to print. It occurred to me: could I just have kept a screenshot of the mobile version to my photos, so I could have found it easily?

Anyway, we took the métro to the nearby station and I was glad to have Google Maps guide us down the series of streets to the museum.  The museum had a special arrangement of the collection putting it into a new perspective at the fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s death. There was much to appreciate as it showed the range of styles in the artist’s long career.  The one work I photographed:

Afterwards, we got an Uber to Sacre-Coeur, since Margaret hadn’t been with me on the previous Montmartre walk.  So we had a new walk in the neighborhood and a creperie lunch.

After getting a bit downhill, we got an Uber back to our hotel in a Tesla, interesting to experience along with the landmarks.  I then got to see Amy from our SlowTrav days, and her husband Larry, very nice to catch up.

Our time in Paris was winding down, and we didn’t have a very busy schedule; we enjoyed what we could.  Crowds of people are out in the evening.

Hoping for the best in getting to Bordeaux in the morning.

Paris, not keeping too busy

 The main things to report for Wednesday and Thursday:

A walk in Montmartre, starting from the risqué Pigalle area to the quiet picturesque back streets climbing to Sacré-Coeur.

A more genuine windmill

Vineyard within Paris

In the afternoon, the Petit Palais for the show on Sarah Bernhardt, the great actress who also became a managerial figure in French theatre, dying a century ago.  The show had many memorabilia of her, including costumes: here’s one of Cleopatra:

The next day, we went to the Ile de la Cité to see Notre-Dame from the outside as it’s being rebuilt, and then the Sainte-Chapelle.  We had reserved tickets, waiting outside for our time with the security check for a short time inside.

Crossing the Pont Neuf to the Left Bank, we had our fill of steak frites at Brasserie Le Nesle.

A couple of practical notes: like in Amsterdam, card payments are accepted for small amounts, but I haven’t seen staffed places be cashless.  On arriving at the Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau station for the Petit Palais, again I saw turnstiles taped off and people going around them; when we entered the station after the show, the turnstiles were operating and they were new: I guess a couple of times we happened on situations where people got free rides as the new gates were being installed.

Gettting to Paris

 It was nice interesting that for an Air France departure from the U,S. check-in opened 30 hours before departure. Even if a Business Class upgrade offer was out of our reach, we could manage to pay a little for seats in the front row of the main cabin, and we took that offer that showed up at check-in. 

We got the bus to Boston Logan Airport, check-in was normal, and we found that, at Terminal E, used almost only for international flights, a domestic flight on Sun Country Airlines was at our gate, delayed over four hours.  There was no alternative gate for our flight, so the inbound aircraft needed to wait, delaying the cleanup for our flight and everything after that.  

We boarded and found it nice to have the front row economy seats. Even if it was billed as standard legroom, it felt better to have the wall in front rather than a row of seats, and the third person in the aisle had infinite legroom.  I heard not to have great expectations of AF’s food, and the chicken rice pilaf was ok. I pretty much didn’t sleep, but the flight was short enough and it was nice to have the A350’s big windows. The screen also had a camera view of the takeoff and landing. 

We arrived about an hour late.  We were at Hall M of  Paris CDG Airport Terminal 2E.  It took several turns and descents to get to the underground train to Hall K to start our way out.  There was the odd setup where we needed to start one way to turn around and choose which lane to take based on passport nationality.  For those that qualified, including the U.S., we went through e-gates, putting the passport on a reader while our faces are read to determine a match.  Then there was a hall with signs to the different baggage carousels (our bags were ready).  It was about an hour after arrival that we got into the taxi line; there were many people but it moved quickly.  We noted the chill in the air after we came from a hot spell in Vermont. We got into a taxi and it took over an hour in rush hour traffic to get to our hotel in Montparnasse.  

The desk agent said the room would be ready shortly, but I reminded her that I’d booked the previous night.  We got what was called an upgraded room, maybe slightly bigger than the basic.  Even this modern hotel had the traditional French practice of a toilet room separate from the bathroom. The neighborhood has a lot of modern buildings, with the Tour Montparnasse and other high-rises nearby.

After some rest, we took some walks around the neighborhood, including the historic theatre street Rue de la Gaîté.  

The next day, our main outing was to the Musée Marmottan-Monet; in many visits to Paris, often focusing on museums, I don’t remember having been there, and we liked the good collection with several Monets.  We went there with a Bolt rideshare and returned on the métro, having bought Navigo Easy cards that can be loaded with tickets.  At La Muette station, the turnstiles were taped off and people went around them, so no fare was taken from the cards; I don’t know if we missed some procedure that we needed to follow.

As we sometimes like to do even if it’s against local custom, we had one main meal in the mid-afternoon, Chez Papa near our hotel.

Pissarro painting; I hesitate to take pictures in museums.

Planning the spring 2023 trip: really, another cruise?

 We got home in November 2022 with good thoughts about our river cruise experience, and the benefits of becoming repeat customers with Uniworld were also appealing.  There was one offer that expired the day after our return, too soon to think about doing this.  

Just a little later, there was another sale offer for the Bordeaux cruise, which is where I was focused, an area of France where I haven't been and has been of interest to me.  As I remember, I initiated a booking on the budget deck and it was showing sold out, but I contacted them and they got us a cabin.

As we booked the cruise, it was uncertain what the rest of the trip would be.  First, for the flight over, I was planning to convert credit card points to airline miles.  Among Chase's partners, being based in the U.S. for a transatlantic trip, I think first of United, but as their transatlantic miles price is usually over 30,000 miles each way, I was finding better deals on Europe-based partners.  I first looked at Aer Lingus to go from Boston to Bordeaux via Dublin, but it became clear that there could be problems being on an island and something going wrong with the one flight to Bordeaux.

Seeing that Air France via Paris would be better, it gradually came to be that we could spend about a week in Paris before the cruise.  Even after using IHG points for the stay in Amsterdam, the leftover points, annual free nights for having two credit cards with them, and a 10% rebate of the Amsterdam points meant that we'd have a free Paris stay just by buying a small number of points at the cost of less than a night.  We'd be convenient to Gare Montparnasse, where we could experience the TGV train to Bordeaux.

On the Flying Blue program, a one-way Boston-Paris flight could be had for 17K miles; I think it helps that Boston is in a lower-distance mile band.  There was also a bonus for converting American Express Membership Rewards. (I should also note that there's a money component to award booking, larger than with U.S.-based airlines.) I started the booking, and with a confirmation code there was an error message that I needed to call.  I understand that this is common with award bookings on points just transferred from another program, an effort to watch for fraud.  It took a few calls, some cut off, but the outbound was booked.

I was still thinking in terms of some time in Italy after the Bordeaux cruise, but it came to be that we didn't want to be away for so long, and there weren't great options for getting from Bordeaux to Rome or another Italian gateway.  We finally decided just to return home after the cruise, a connection from Bordeaux via Paris, and I completed that reward booking with a similar need to call.

In both directions, we were booked on the later of Air France's two flights on the route.  In late December, I got a notice that our flights had been changed: those flights were taken off the schedule for those days.  We were on the earlier flights, and that's how the outbound stayed, but a few days later I got an email in Spanish with a link to AF's Mexican site saying the original flight was cancelled, and not showing us having anything.  The originally rebooked flights were still on the timetable, and I made a call that got that reinstated.  There was another notice changing our flight out of Bordeaux to something still earlier, and the cruise line will probably want us up really early for their transfer to the airport.  Oh, and our bid for an upgraded stateroom was approved, much closer to the cruise start than it was last time.

Going over, our flight arrival is set for 6 a.m., and I was able to add an IHG free night so our room is booked for the previous night and we can have it ready on arrival.  We look forward to interesting times, having seen about the ongoing protests in Paris, apparently generally not affecting travelers all that much, and we don't have too much of an agenda.

But back to the plans to go to Italy: we're looking for a trip there in September.  Margaret has been looking to take Business Class when possible; I look at Flying Blue's Promo Rewards every month, and I understood I was seeing a good deal out of Montreal, which is about the same distance as Boston for us.  With a bonus for converting Chase points to Flying Blue, I booked a September trip in Business going over and Premium Economy on the return, looking good even though there is a notable monetary component to the booking.  I later learned that these didn't meet the definition of Promo Rewards; they're the low end of the dynamic rewards pricing, but we'll make the best of it.  Also, I completed the booking, after sleeping on it for a night, on the day that Flying Blue started charging for seat assignments on awards, but then they got the system fixed so they didn't charge on North American routes.

The return home

 For the start of our return home, we had arranged with a driver Barbara had recommended to pick us up at the hotel at 8.15.  He kept us updated on the phone, the construction on the street delaying him by a few minutes, and we started the trip with him needing to back up the Mercedes van some distance on the lane turned to dirt by the construction.

We arrived at Schiphol airport at 9, and it was a pretty smooth check-in and trip to the gate. I'd heard that most of the epic problems at the airport were resolved, but once in a while there was a bad day.  We'd taken the cautious approach of arriving early, there were two flights at our gate before ours, the last one delayed in leaving the gate so we needed to move to another one.

The flight to Madrid on Iberia Express had a few minutes delay and they charged for food and drink.  When I bought a Croque Monsieur I was worried about not getting it right away, but it was cooked in the galley after the order.  Even though this was a Schengen flight it arrived at the 4S satellite terminal at Madrid, and there was a long trip, with a curving underground train, to get to the main Terminal 4 and baggage claim.  This is quite a large terminal complex used mostly by Iberia.

We got the baggage and, as we'd decided, left our checked bags in the left luggage office.  Even going with just our carry-on backpacks and taking a taxi, the trip was stressing us: there were many taxis but also a long line of people, but it moved quickly, with dispatchers directing us to cabs.  Our driver turned on the meter to the fixed €30 fare and, like on the return trip, took reckless moves.

Maybe it would have been better to stay at an airport hotel and have it optional to go into the city, but it was a nice enough night, on an award, at the Indigo Gran Via, centrally located.  Even arriving after 4, the room wasn't ready yet, but it was ready quickly.  I just made a brief stroll out, spotting a red carpet event practically next door and looking into the very busy El Corte Inglés department store and its food court at the top.  The city was full of people out.

View from the store at sunset

We decided to have a room service meal, and later I had the free drink that was offered at the rooftop bar with this view:

In the morning we picked up croissants and coffee from a bar, then got a taxi to the airport.  I got the bags from left luggage, found the designated bank of counters for our flight, then learned there was another bank for Business Class check-in.  When check-in was done, it was still a long trip to the satellite terminal and we didn't have that much time in the lounge, where I needed some of the time to deactivate my Italian phone plans and change SIM cards.

We got to the gate and boarded our Business Class seats, I think Margaret's first time ever in that class, and my first since true lie-flat seats became the standard.  Margaret liked having a window seat by itself, and we liked the food and drink selections, my main course being a beef cheek dish.  We'll consider it a great flight, even if there were problems navigating the TV screen and getting usable Wi-Fi.

We landed in Boston, a delay getting to the gate meant we couldn't get the ideal shuttle bus to our home area, but fine to wait another hour, and we were home and the trip was done.  This trip covered a range of memorable experiences, in generally mild weather, and we'll try to think of what to do next.

Amsterdam, Finishing Up

 A few things to note about these few days in Amsterdam: on Monday we explored the Jordaan neighborhood, more with locals, and found some street markets and more canal views.

About the popularity of bicycles, I can show the multi-level bike parking lot at Centraal Station.

Instructions for the IJ ferry are only in Dutch, saying that one side was only for fietsers, which was the first Dutch word I learned on a warning sign entering Belgium at age seven: bicyclists. 

Tuesday we went to the Rijksmuseum; rather than the easy metro or tram we were looking for the taxi or Bolt. Going over although I’d established where the taxi stand was, there were no cabs there, and I got a Bolt car to arrive.

We hadn’t previously established a time to reserve a visit, and needed to figure out that tickets could be bought at the museum shop outside for immediate entry.  We ate at the museum cafe, with ordering and payment entirely done by QR code.  We had the great art works to see in the museum, but the crowds were a distraction.

At the end, calling a Bolt again, we didn’t know about the designated pickup spot on a side street, and when we found the car the driver was taking off saying he’d cancelled.  We did another call: just the wait was much longer than a public transportation trip would be, but the road routes gave us interesting looks at the city.

One more observation is that most payments here are cashless: the bakery where we get coffee and croissants demands payment by card.

One more walk to get pictures of Dam square:

We have a driver booked and hoping for the best for going to Madrid tomorrow for a night before returning home, hoping for the best.