November 4 - Not Recommended Sleeping in the Paris CDG Airport

I know Duncan already wrote the Europe wrap up, but our night in the CDG airport is worthy of a post so that someone someday can avoid the problem we had. Our flight to Amsterdam (then onto Johannesburg) from Paris was the first Air France flight of the day leaving at 6:40 AM. They told us to get there 2 hours ahead to check in. Because it was so early and CDG is outside of the city we knew that we needed to get a hotel near the airport and had started the search before we left the US. All the hotels were completely booked or 300 Euros. Once we were in Europe we checked again 2 weeks and then 1 week before we were to fly to Amsterdam and had the same results.

We now had the option of finding another hotel in Paris but the metro would not open early enough for us to get the (RER) train to the airport to get to the airport to check in on time, so we would be forced to get a taxi for 50-60 Euros on top of a hotel room which we would only sleep in for a couple of hours. We made the decision to sleep in the airport to avoid all this expense for not enough benefit.

Duncan did some internet research and found several sites that talked about the conditions in major airports for sleeping. The comments about CGD were not pleasant but most of them were about CDG 1 and not CGD 2 where we would be. While we were certainly not excited about sleeping in the airport we decided to go for it.

The night before this endeavor we were very fortunate to have found a very comfortable hotel, All Seasons Hotel, for 50% of there usual charge. Not only were they a short walk from Gare de Lyon where we arrived by train via Milan the night before but they were also a short 3 block walk to the post office so we were able to send a large box back to the US with all of our Europe guide books, hats, gloves, scarves, my wool coat and a sweater (the cost was E 39.50 and the post office supplied the ready make box complete with sealant). Not only were we quite pleased with ourselves for figuring out the sending of the box and subsequently ridding ourselves of 14 pounds of weight, but we had a great night sleep and a huge hot breakfast the next day at the hotel. I tell you all this because it was these happy memories were what helped us make it through the night at CDG.

The day before our flight we checked out of our hotel but they allowed us to put our bags in storage and hang out in their lobby using their free wi-fi. We decided to leave the hotel around 4 to beat the rush of workers returning to their homes and head for the airport assuming we would check in, go through security and then find a corner to set up for the night. We arrived at the airport and Duncan went to complete our online check in at the kiosk. It wouldn't let him check in. He tried again and it pulled up flights to Amsterdam later that night but not our flight the next morning. An Air France agent saw he was having some trouble and told him to just go check in with an agent at the desk. So we gathered our belonging and went to stand in line for an agent. We were stopped at the entrance to the line and asked which flight we were on, when we answered Amsterdam tomorrow, the gate keeper said, you can only check in 2 hours before your flight, you need to come back tomorrow, the desk opens at 5 am. What!? Duncan asked some more questions and the answer was basically you should find a hotel for tonight.

Having never experienced an airline that only lets you check in 2 hours ahead (most of our experience has been you can check in 24 hours ahead), we had not anticipated this. So we searched around and found the only metal wire bench that didn't have four armrests. It only had one, making it possible to lie down and stick your feet under the last armrest. We pushed our bags into a corner locked them all together and then locked them to the bench. We read for a while and then tried to go to sleep, but we were near the baggage claim and flights continued to come in for several hours. When it did finally get quiet we slept for a little while only to wake up totally freezing. We had made ourselves little beds out of our sown together sheet sacks and were using other clothes as pillows, but one of us (we kept trading locations) was on the cold tile floor while the other was on the cold wire metal bench. We had assumed we would get to check in and be in a carpeted area.

After throwing more clothes on ourselves we went back to sleep again only to wake up and realize that they had closed the bathroom near us which we both needed to use. Duncan went searching for the next nearest bathroom and found three closed before he found an open one 15 minutes walk away. The interesting part of this was that by no means were we alone. Just in our part of the airport 2F there were at least 30 other people sleeping.

By the time the noisy floor buffing machines were turned off it was 4:30 and we decided to get up. Fortunately the bathrooms opened shortly thereafter and we got cleaned up for our flight. We checked in guessing we maybe got at most 2 hours of sleep. Next time we decided that we will try at all costs to not have an early flight out of CDG. It would have been much better to fly into Amsterdam and spend the night there before our Joburg flight. This is just one of the many things we are learning on this trip :)

Andrea

November 3 - Europe Wrap Up

Two months ago this week I left Sound Youth Counseling, grateful to be finished, so encouraged and excited by the staff and new executive director who will carry on the good work there. Four weeks ago today we flew out of Seattle. We have managed to cram much into the past month, wonderful people and places, more trains than we can count, a smorgasboard of culinary delights (ok – and a lot of bread and cheese in our room!) Cities, countryside, it has all been great. Of course there are times when we are beat and we have discovered that we must build in down days. Doing an ongoing trip is a little different than doing one where you know you will be back in your home in three weeks. Andrea mentioned that we had hoped to have another night in Rome but where we were staying was completely booked. We had already decided that we would return to Levanto and L'erba Persa so we showed up a day early and Grazia had a room ready for us. So three more nights at this wonderful place gave us time to rest and gear up for the next few days of travel. It had been quite rainy since Rome but Saturday we woke to bright blue skies again and while not quite warm, it was warm and sunny enough to walk down to the beach for me to get my first Mediterranean swim in along with a horde of surfers who had shown up in their wet suits to ride the waves.

We were able to catch up with the blog a little (and again a huge thank you to Damien in Rome for getting our pictures to us!) We haven't been able to download the Picasa program that allows easy uploads but at some point we will have some slide shows ready to go as well. We also were able to have more conversations about politics both in this country (relating to the education demonstrations going on) as well as in the US with the election. And I picked a few more olives with Claudio who true to his word has given me a liter of fresh oil which will be ready for consumption in two months! We've wrapped and padded it well. Hope it will make it!

I'm writing this on the train from Milan to Paris. We hadn't planned on spending the night there last night, but it was the only way to get back to Paris to catch our flight to South Africa. When I went to get reservations for the train at the station a few days ago, there weren't any! Nothing. The station agent told me to go into Levanto and ask a travel agent as sometimes they can access a few seats that the rail agents can't. Huh?! This I did, without much luck. Finally the travel agent who had looked and looked for seats from all sorts of cities and connections found a couple, but when she printed them out she noticed they weren't Eurail Pass tickets but the pass that rail employees would use if they were traveling. We talked about options and to cut a long story short, took a chance today and hoped that no one would notice. And it seems that is the case as our tickets have been checked by Italian and Swiss conductors and no huge fine has been thrown at us. This is really another huge thank you Jesus for us. We have had so many things on this trip work out whether finding renters for the house or getting Andrea a new pump, we are very aware of God's kindness to us and care for us. We think we are supposed to be learning a lesson about trust – which really has been a theme for me this whole past year. 'Will you trust me with everything?' seems to be the question. So we are very grateful and we are learning to trust more and not freak out when each new thing comes up.

Briefly on Milan...we had to spend the night so we could get the early train out this morning. Since we had a few hours in the evening, we walked down the main avenue to the Duomo, Christendom's fourth largest church after St. Peters in Rome, St. Paul's in London and Sevilla's in Spain. Really glad we went as we were able to sneak inside as mass was going on and see another beautiful church. While other churches in Italy went with Renaissance domes, Milan went with an incredibly ornate gothic style. It can hold 12,000 people. (St Peter's – 60,000 inside! Not in the square!)

The other note from last night concerns my super model wife. So going to the Duomo we walked through the fashion center of this major fashion capital of the world and it was unbelievable the looks Andrea got especially by the girls passing by who thought she was someone they should know. It was quite fun for me to walk behind her and watch people do double takes at this tall beauty walking down the street. What gave her away though is the dude walking next to her in his green fleece. No fashionista would be seen with this guy!

Ok, so we just passed Turin and are entering France now. A couple just got on the train with two cats in backpacks which they have now taken out and are sitting with leashes on their seats! OK seriously, we have been going for a couple hours and the cats just sit there. One is up on the back of the seat. We have actually seen more well trained pets (mainly dogs) like this on this trip. Dogs walking into stores with their owners – no leash. Evidently dog training is a little more successful here. We spend the night in Paris tonight and then the following night at the Paris airport (not so much fun, but you do what you have to do – hopefully we can find a tv and watch election results!) before catching an early flight to Amsterdam and then down to Johannesburg.

PS – quick update – November 4 – Election Day in the US and the world is watching. As big a day as it is in the US, it might just be bigger around the world.
We stayed at an All Seasons Hotel last night. Found it for half off – and can I say how great it was. All the places we have stayed have been great and you can't really compare, but this I think was wonderful icing on the cake. Slept well and great great breakfast. It's the little perks...
If you are counting we have slept in 14 beds in the last month. It's a beautiful warm fall day in Paris. The sky is blue, but fall is beginning to move in and so we head south for a couple more months of our endless summer!

Duncan

Finally, Our First Post!

We had hoped to start our blog by saying hello and goodbye from Seattle, then Bonjour from Paris. Instead we greet you with our first post from Le Grand Hotel, a five story historic, formerly glorious hotel, now run more as a hostel in the village of Chandolin – perched some 6000 feet up in the Swiss alps. Chandolin is supposedly the highest year round inhabited village in all of Switzerland. Dawn is just beginning to streak the sky as I write this and from our room we can push open the skylights in our room and see the back side of the Matterhorn as well as four other famous peaks. Rick Steves has nothing on this! We attended a wedding last night (more on this later) and this morning feel a little like Cinderella waking up wondering if all we encountered even in the past week has been real. Here's a brief (ok, it's actually not so brief, our parents want to know what is going on! Read what you want!) recap of the last 10 days or so. Most of our posts won't be this long, but we need to do a little catching up. Many of our posts will also be specific to Andrea's experience navigating this journey as a type 1 diabetic. As we mention, we hope this blog will help others be able to see and travel the world better no matter what obstacles they face.

Wednesday, October 1. We bid Tacoma farewell just as dusk was approaching, making the drive up to Seattle largely in silence, lost in thoughts and memories of the past 5 years (7 for Duncan) that we have spent in this town. It was dark by the time we arrived in Seattle where we were warmly welcomed by Andrea's parents. September was an intense month for both of us. I stepped away from Sound Youth Counseling (also after 7 years), Andrea spent much of the month applying to grad schools, while at the same time we were packing up our house and preparing for this trip. It is one thing to pack for a two part nine month trip, but when you are packing up your entire house and getting it ready to rent, it's a little more hectic! We're grateful to a couple friends who helped us out and also our parents who definitely helped in cleaning, loading and storing.

Time in Seattle was spent with last minute appointments, time with family and what seemed like the never ending process of packing and paring down, ensuring that we were prepared as possible for this trip. On Saturday we attended the wedding of Rosann Collins and Hale Rankin. It was 30 years ago this year that 'I went to school in the jungle' (some of you might recognize the title of the book by the same name about Chefoo School -my elementary school – deep in the jungles of the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia). It was also 30 years ago that I would have met Rosann as she would have been in second grade at Chefoo at the time. Since that time we have stayed in the same sphere of the world, going on to attend the same boarding school, Faith Academy, in the Philippines, living in the same dorm for several years before both ending up in the Northwest United States as this is where our parents settled after leaving Asia. Anyway, it was a special day, a special wedding filled with references to Indonesia (where the Collins worked) even Sticky rice and mango – hmmm I've had that at a wedding before! For me it was a fitting start to this journey we are on, coming full circle in many ways. Many have heard me say that one of the reasons for this trip is that I spent the first half of my life in Asia and the second half so far largely in the US – now I would like to take a year and see where I might end up spending the rest of my life! It was lovely to catch up briefly with a couple classmates not seen in many years (Lisa Doty, Jon Brichoux). Again amazing to see how time flies, hearing about their teen and almost teen children. Crazy!

Monday, October 6 – we found ourselves relatively calm and with it for which we were grateful as the previous days we had been feeling the pressure and stress of getting ready. We're doing this whole trip using miles from Northwest (soon to be Delta – oh so sad) so our routing for this first part of the trip was a little funky, hoping down to Portland (PDX)(25 minutes), 10 hours to Amsterdam (AMS) and then a quick 45 minutes or so over to Paris (CDG). Charles De Gaulle was not nearly the nightmare that I have sometimes heard it described as (we actually had a few more issues rushing through AMS as our flight in there was somewhat delayed and we weren't sure we would make our connection.) The train was free into Paris that day (don't know why), figured out the Metro and made it to the Hotel Anjou where we managed to stay awake until about 6pm before our eyelids closed only to open around 11 pm again. However we were grateful to be there and have a clean bed and room!

I should say that getting to the hotel wasn't exactly as smooth sailing as described above as we quickly discovered that one of our bags has decided to be the bane of our existence. Usually when we travel we just take a carry on roll on suitcase each. We haven't checked bags for years. This time the amount of medical supplies that Andrea is carrying literally fills her entire roll on carry on. So we have a big green dufflebag with wheels but it is just awkward and cumbersome – not helpful when you are wandering around trying to figure out transport systems etc. We have already managed to get stuck in at least one turnstile with it but that is another story!

Wednesday October 8 - First full day in Paris – In which a nice French cafe is not so nice...
So once we got going for the day, we took our time exploring and wandering down streets eventually making our way toward Paris's most famous landmark. We wanted to do the typical Parisian cafe thing at least once so we stopped at one cafe (to remain nameless so far but maybe we will post it at some point!) Nice white linen tablecloth silverware, glasses. Andrea has a hankering for Onion Soup and orders that while I ask for a sandwich. The waiter looks at us and asks is that all? When we reply yes, he picks up the setting, whisks away the nice white linen, and replaces it with a paper place-mat and a spoon for Andrea. Clearly we had not spent enough! So that put a little damper on our lunch. But we were still pretty entranced with this city of 2 plus million. We continued meandering side streets until we rounded a corner and all of a sudden there were mobs of people. We knew we were close to something and then there it was the Eiffel Tower. I was surprised to be as impressed and intrigued at seeing this for the first time. Perhaps it is the fact that there are so many – hundred, thousands of people all there to see this one thing. Even though I have been many places around the world, I realized I have never been to a tourist attraction of this size where everyone is there to see it. When you are in London at any of the sites, you are always surrounded by Londoners so you don't realize how many people are tourists. The other thing that we realized is that evidently tourists don't walk the streets of Paris that much – they either take the metro or their tour buses. There were very few walking the streets we were on. Maybe we just find the non tourist streets – that is more our style!

Thursday, October 9 – In which we meet a Thai family...
So breakfast yesterday in the little breakfast room was like pushing through a mob. Today, a much different story – just a handful of us including an Asian family. I always keep my ears open for conversations and was not disappointed as I heard a few Thai words. I went over to them and asked if they were from Thailand. We were quickly given names and contact information for them in Bangkok for when we get there next year. I think we were both excited to be able to talk English and/or Thai together. Their English was flawless – the daughter had done a student exchange to Arizona, mom had done one years earlier in New York and dad had learned English in Australia. It was a great way to start the day! We spent the rest of the day walking, first to Ile de la Cite - the island in the Seine River that has several sights to see including Notre Dame and St. Chapelle – lunch by the river then continuing up the river to the Louvre, Le Jardin des Tulleries and back up past the Eiffel Tower before heading home.

Friday, October 10. Made our way across town to Gare de Lyon to catch the train to Switzerland(this is where the old green dufflebag got stuck in a turnstile!) A sympathetic woman behind me tried to get the attention of the gate attendant with no success. Eventually I wiggled my way out and the gate opened. Train to Sierre (Switzerland) via Geneva. Arrived in Sierre and found ourselves in a world that was a cross between a Colorado/Washington ski resort and Orange County, California. We were surrounded by very hip and fashionable kids and teens of all ages (a little Lord of the Flies esque) bumping the latest hip hop from their Audi lowriders. Not exactly what we were expecting. We quickly learned that Sierre and the valley it is in, is a fairly affluent wine/ski valley – surrounded by vineyards on the lower slopes and amazing chair lifts and gondolas leading up to the higher slopes.

We were here to attend the wedding of Beth and Vincent. Beth is a childhood friend from North Thailand. She and her sister Anna were best friends with my sister Esther and remain so today. Our family spent Christmas with them in England three years ago. Both were in Esther's wedding and Esther was in Anna's wedding in England last year and was invited to be a part of Beth and Vincent's wedding this year. We, not knowing anything about the date of the wedding, just happened to plan to be in Switzerland at the same time and were kindly invited!

Anna and her husband James, picked us up at the station and drove us up the narrow mountain road initially surrounded by vineyards then trees bursting with autumn color up to the village of Vercorin depositing us for the first night at the Hostellerie d'Orzival - a fantastic little hotel with unbelievable views from 4000 plus feet up looking down into the valley (their website does not do it justice). We walked into our room (knowing that it was going to be a little pricey to stay here) and both thought, this is so worth it. Pictures don't do it justice, but compared to our 'adequate' but oh so small and basic room in Paris, we had died and gone to heaven! Friday night was a dinner for family and out of town guests where we heard we were going to have a special traditional swiss dish with cheese and potatoes called Raclette. Expecting some sort of casserole thing we were surprised and curious to be served a single potato and some melted cheese on a plate. Hopefully the pictures do it justice as it was really good – but something new for sure. Two servers kept two huge wedges of Raclette cheese under a burner which continually melted the top layer of cheese which is then scraped onto a plate with the potato and served along with different kinds of dried meat, salami etc. And as soon as you finish your one potato and cheese they bring you another. As with fondue you are supposed to drink wine or hot tea with this dish to keep the cheese from turning into a huge leaden mass in your stomach!

Saturday, October 11. A beautiful dawn led to beautiful blue skies. Andrea and I walked around the village, looking at chalets. We stopped in at the church and heard the music for the wedding being rehearsed. I was really moved by one piece played by a string quartet and one of Vincent's nephews who played a xylophone like instrument. There is probably some beautiful French word for it. Anyway, just amazing – joyful and haunting at the same time. This wedding was a family affair. Vercorin is Vincent's family home/village. His parents and each of his siblings have a chalet there – not sure that any of them live there full time, but it seems that this place bears their heartbeat and soul. All the siblings and family members were involved in making this day happen. The ceremony itself began at 3 and was in French and English (Vercorin is located in the French speaking part of Switzerland). I think thought that Beth said there were 28 nationalities and 14 mother tongues among the 150 guests at the wedding! Both Beth and Vincent have lived all over the world ranging from Chechnya to Sierre Leone. The ceremony was followed by aperitifs at Vincent's parent's chalet where in the field adjoining they had brought in several special swiss cows with full on bell ringing regalia to provide the right ambiance! Following aperitifs, all the guests drove to Chandolin, across the other side of the valley, down the tiny one lane hair-pin curve filled mountain roads and up to Chandolin located on an even higher peak on the other side where the reception was held last night. All the guests were given their rooms, filling the entire hotel and then gathered for a lavish feast – truly a feast in every sense of the word. We filled up our plates with everything imaginable from the buffet only to discover the second course which perhaps came at 10:30pm was lamb and potatoes. Dessert followed as well as speeches and toasts with the dancing beginning around midnight. Swiss wedding parties go all night and this was no exception. We held on until one but the bride and groom were up until 5:30 with guests before rejoining the group at 8AM for breakfast. All in all, a truly spectacular, joyful, over the top event like I have never been before prompting my Cinderella comment earlier.

Following breakfast we took photos with all those who had grown up in Thailand and then walked to an even more outrageous lookout point before returning to Vercorin with Esther and Jon and Anna and James. Stayed the night in a beautiful chalet belonging to one of Vincent's sisters. Yummy dinner produced by James.

Anna and Beth have both married wonderful generous men who live and love well.

Duncan (for Andrea too)