Preparations for France

My wife and I are going to France for three weeks tomorrow. I hope to be posting pictures and stories of our journey so that family, friends and interested persons on the internet can follow our experience and take from it what they may. It will be a trip full of culture, food, history, art, architecture, and above all...life experiences.

We hope to spend a week in an apartment in Paris, then take the train to Amboise in the Loire Valley and rent a car to punt around for four days, then drive to Dinan in Brittany for another four days, next drive to Bayeux in Normandy for another four days (see a pattern here), and finally two days in Paris (oh no, there goes the pattern).

In preparing for a trip, after I know the destination, I first make a list of what I want to bring. Then a week later another one. A week after that I make another one. Finally I take all three lists and make a combined one. I find that by doing so I don't miss anything after I combine the lists.

While I'm making lists, my wife and I get the Rick Steves travel book of the area along with an Eyewitness travel book. We found in our trip to Italy a few years back that Rick's down to earth frank reviews and explanations were a breath of fresh air. His accommodation and restaurant recommendations were also spot on and enhanced the trip. The Eyewitness travel books has lots of pictures and cutaway views of places and things that cover a broader area, but their recommendations are geared for a higher price point and are diplomatic in nature (no personal opinions). By having us both read the same books, both of us find different things to interest us and we both contribute to the trip.

This collaboration is then typed into a computer and printed, separated by place, so that we have a quick guide and reference to places, addresses, websites and travel schedules. I purchased a Samsung Galaxy tablet for this trip to use as a GPS, look at pictures that we take, store the pictures with two USB sticks (paranoid that way and we take lots of pictures) and to have the previously mentioned travel information on it. I've tested it out and the sequence goes like this: Open document in tablet, click hyperlink in document (if near wi-fi) or open locus map program, go to destination. Easy!

We're also bringing two cameras. We found on the last trip that each of us having one proved that two shutterbug eyes are better than one. Different perspectives, lighting and interests made for better memory treasures.

See you here in a day.