Getting slammed by jet lag

Morning started out well, we had breakfast at the hotel, then went out to explore the community.  Roissy is a small community of about 3000 inhabitants.  It has Gallo-Roman origins and an agricultural base until about the 1960s, at which time it was chosen as the site of Paris's new airport, Roissy Charles de Gaulle.  The Roissy in the airport name was later dropped and it is now just know as Charles de gaulle Airport.  Roissy's prime source of economy now appears to be hotels.  There is everything from budget hotels to high end hotels located here.  There are more than 5000 hotel beds in the community.

The main area of the town has maintained its look and feel of a small French town, easy to walk around in, lots of restaurants to eat at, at least two schools, two grocery stores, post office, town hall, bakeries, etc.  There is a lovely little park across from the hotel which was originally part of a chateau that had once stood here.

We did a bit of food shopping for ham and baguettes, got our French wine, Pelforth beer and some cider for me.  The presence of the humongous CDG Airport next door does not seem to have much affect on the day to day goings on in the town.  We took a few pictures, but by 11 AM jet lag had hit with full vengeance to we returned to the hotel for a long nap.

Excuse my dirty lens, I will clean it for the next installment.

looking both ways down the main street

flower shop and tattoo and piercing shop

the band shell

I think this tree is a catalpa

it has these ridiculously long seed pods

Nous sommes arrivés à Paris

Well, first leg of the journey is over and was uneventful, if you do not consider the announcement about 15 minutes prior to scheduled boarding.  "Ladies and gentlemen , this is a flight announcement for passenger flying Air France flight 379 to Paris.  This flight has been cancelled"  Whhhaaaaattttt..........  About a minute and a half later, someone at the service desk came on the intercom and said to disregard the previous announcement.  Wheeeeeew!!  It would have been annoying but wouldn't have ruined everything.  These days, because we are retired we have the luxury of building "pressure relief" days into our schedules, in part, just for this reason.

We departed Vancouver about 45 minutes late and landed in Paris only 5 minutes behind schedule.  Next was the hour long trek to first collect our luggage and then find the shuttle buses to the hotel.  Getting to the baggage claim included a train ride from one terminal to another, then retracing our steps a bit because I took us to the wrong carousel, then it was a hike across a very long terminal, up a couple of elevators and finally we were on the bus to the hotel.

We were able to get into our room early and I took a much needed nap for about 5 hours.  Then we went out to find someplace to eat.  Our hotel does not have a restaurant, but we are very near to a little town center, so a 5 minute walk we found several restaurants to eat at.  Food was good but expensive (or we just don't eat out often enough) - 2 appetizers, 2 mains, 1 beer and 2 cafes was 60€ ($90CAD).  Then it was back to the room and to bed by 10PM, erly for us.  We both were awake about 4AM and got up about 5 and are now starting to feel like things are becoming normal.  Today will be spend touring this little community we are in,  Roissy-en-France, and planning an outing for tomorrow.

I'll post pictures later.

Time for an "Idilio Español"

So, not being deterred by the many "hiccups" on our last trip we started formulating plans in September for another trip.  

This time we are heading off to the Iberian peninsula.  With some intense planning, lots of searching for the best prices and a lucky find, we are about to start an epic trip that will include 3 planes, 1 car, 3 trains, 1 ferry, an ocean liner, 5 different accommodations, and 5 countries all in 32 days.  

We will first travel to France, spending a couple of nights in the Paris area to get over the jet-lag that seems to get worse each time we travel.  Next we will fly to the Costa del Sol staying at Estepona, Malaga, Spain for 2 weeks.  We will do some touring in the area including Gibraltar.  After that we will hop a train to Madrid where we will spend two nights and see some sites.  Then it is another train to Santander, Spain, near the French border where we board an overnight ferry to Portsmouth, England.  We will spend a couple of nights in Southampton and finally cruise from Southampton to New York City on the Queen Mary II.  To finish it off, we hop a plane from New York to Vancouver by way of Toronto.  

The Queen Mary II was our lucky find.  A chance read of the newspaper during the planning process, twigged me to look at repositioning cruises. Low and behold, there was one leaving about the time we were planning to return.   We had to do some adjustments to the itinerary adding two days to our intended time away.  We got balcony rooms for $911.....score........just couldn't not do it.