When you start contemplating a vacation -- ANY vacation -- you must think of the others going along for the trip, not just yourself. This is a key factor in interesting others to come along with you.
But you know it's never really THAT simple, is it?
There's always things that you really don't want to do that the others do, which means either you stay behind, and do your own thing, or you tag along, feeling like the proverbial 5th wheel.
Sounds like that is the way it will be in Paris, as my wife and nephew-in-law will journey to the Eiffel Tower, while I stay behind at Gare de Lyon, watching Europe's third largest rail terminal in full weekend operation. I saw Le Tour Eiffel in 2010, with my wife, as we went up to the second level of the structure, which was as far as we could get on the day we had in Paris. The line for the elevators to the top of the tower were in the 3-to-4 hour wait range, mostly with a large South African tour group. We figured we'd be back. Someday.
One of many decisions we'd have to make was to go on a weekend or during the week; unlike domestic air travel, specific dates are cheaper than others, so we just went for a target date and... voila! We were on our way! We'd hashed the schedules out, so it was time to start getting serious about tickets. Our first train will not depart until 19:15 from Paris to Venezia Santa Lucia, and our flight arrives Charles de Gaulle airport at 11:10, so that leaves about 7 hours (leaving time to get the train) for those two to do their thing. The N-I-L has never been overseas, so seeing this trip from his perspective will be a good thing. I just hope the connections hold...
Rolling with the punches, as it were, is a part of aging, in my opinion. But, I have to keep telling myself this as we go on, that not everyone will understand this concept. Just hope my travel partners will. Everything will be OK, missed connections or not, because we've planned for them. I hope.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment