France 2012

We're off to France next week, for 6 weeks, and my plan is to blog about it.  I love following the blogs other people write.   Usually I keep a pretty extensive travel journal that I type up in a Publisher newsletter format when we get home.  So I'm thinking it might be easier to just type onto my computer at the end of the day and share as we go.

A little background is in order.

The travel group this time consists of me, my husband Rick, his sister Linda, and her husband Tim.  We spent a month together in Italy a few years ago, and had a great time, so decided to see France together.

This will be my 8th time to France, so obviously I love it!  Rick has been there with me once before.  This will be the first visit for Tim and Linda.

We started planning our trip over a year ago.  We start the trip with a few nights in London, just for the heck of it, and ride the Eurostar train through the Chunnel to Paris.  We'll be staying in an apartment in Paris, a house in Provence, and two different apartments in Nice and Villefranche-sur-mer.  In between Paris and Provence we'll stay in small hotels or B&Bs for a few nights in each of these areas:  Normandy, the Loire valley, the Dordogne, and Carcassonne.   We'll be renting a car for two weeks while we traverse the western side of the country.  Otherwise, in Paris, Nice and Villefranche we'll rely on trains, buses and the Metro.

I've been warned by another blogger (son Andrew, of the Build blog) to have some kind of interesting angle as I write so as not to be "same old, same old".  My journals are filled with entries about food and foibles.  Hey, I love reading about those things on everyone else's blogs.  But, if we haven't seen or done anything interesting, you can bet I'll be interviewing other travelers as we go along to get something to write about.  And I have learned how to say, "I speak French like an infant", so we'll see how that goes over with the locals!

So this entry is a test, just to make sure I know how to let you know there's something posted.  

Tim and Linda, Rick and Kathy in Italy in 2008