Interim Reports Anyone?

I'm just wondering how our various BYSAPC subcommittees are performing.

Melanie, are you getting lots of cool info on the rural part of our adventure?

Mike, have you started to unravel the puzzle that is dining in Paris?

Teri, are you and your design minions hard at work on the graphic design and fashionwear parts of the plan?

Our videographer Steve assures me that he is busily putting the finishing touches on the script what will no doubt be a masterpiece of cinema. Project X is still in pre-production but his early plans involve having us reproduce the invasion of Normandy using the Marjorie II as our landing craft. That and something involving the macarena. It gives me chills just thinking about what else our own personal Federico Fellini will come up with.

Jen, how are those French lessons coming? Are you ready for your translation duties?

I think we need to make Colleen our official Geographer. She tells me she has run through our entire trip in great detail on Google Earth. So cool!

Strange Interview

As Teri will testify, Rick Steves is my favorite travel writer. Ever. On our first trips to Europe we followed Rick's intineraries from his travel books fairly closely. Teri got tired of hearing "Rick says to see this" or "Rick says to go there" as we traveled to France, Italy and the UK.

And Teri can further testify that David Sedaris (see picture) is one of my favorite humorists. In fact right now I'm reading his latest book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames.

For several years Sedaris has been living in Paris, Normandy and London and his latest book largely revolves around his adventures in Paris.

Rick Steves has a public radio program on travel, which I download on I-Tunes. So imagine my delight when I discovered this week that my all-time favorite travel writer was interviewing another one of my favorite writers about living in Paris.

The result is just hilarious, although not always intentionally so. Actually, I thought the interview was pretty disastrous. The Paris of David Sedaris has very little in common with the Paris that Rick Steves writes about. For example, having lived in Paris for years, Sedaris still has never set foot inside the Louvre. Rick has written a big chunk of a book about European museums dedicated to the Louvre and the art in it.

Sedaris does discuss his favorite fast food joints, to Rick's bafflement.

It was uncomfortable at times listening to Rick struggle to find common ground with Sedaris and failing pretty miserably. In all fairness there are some moments in the interview that are both genuinely funny and enlightening about France and the French.

If you want to hear it for yourself, here's the link:

Rick Steves interview with David Sedaris

266 days and counting

It was exciting to me to see today that we are 266 days out from the trip. My goodness, how the first 100 days have flown by this year (June to June).

In order to prepare yourself

Here's something else that crossed my transom. I'm on the mailing list for a travel agency newsletter. Occasionally it contains something interesting. The topic this week is a rant about the Charles de Gaulle airport.

Teri and I have flown out of CDG and even connected flights there a few times. Personally, I'd rather fly through CDG than Houston any day. IAH is one of my least favorite airports anywhere. We'll be doubly blessed on this trip since we'll be flying through both of these airports on this trip.

At least we won't be connecting at CDG. Anyway here's the newsletter article. Enjoy . . .

In this newsletter, I'd like to talk about one of the most frightening things in travel today--a tight connection at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG).

I know better than to try, but on my recent trip home from Venice to Houston, I tried anyway.

The only other connection would have required my family to wake up at 3:30am, leave our cruise ship for the airport at 4:30am and lay over for five hours at CDG. I decided to live on the edge.

I took the connection offered by the airlines when I booked my tickets--one hour and 10 minutes. By the time my flight from Venice arrived in Paris, my flight to Houston had already departed.

All travelers know that sooner or later your number comes up and something goes awry, but attempting a short connection at CDG, Europe's most-delayed airport, is like playing Russian roulette with no empty chambers in the gun.

CDG is France's own Bermuda Triangle, where people and their luggage go quietly missing in huge quantities on a daily basis, only to emerge later, unable to explain what happened or where they have been.

At any given time, there are enough people lost or stranded in CDG to line the entire course of the Tour de France, elbow to elbow. In fact, if you took all these travelers and stacked them on top of each other...well, that's probably not a good idea.

We queued up at Air France's service desk, and when I reached the front of the line, the agent confirmed what I already knew, that there was no other flight that could get us to Houston that day and we'd be spending the night.

I asked about our luggage, and she seemed surprised to hear that people traveling from Venice to Houston might check bags.

"Ohhh," she winced, shaking her head as if a grave mistake had been made. "You will need to go to baggage services to retrieve your bags."

Where is that?

"Take a left and walk 10 minutes."

I learned long ago that most people who work at CDG have given up on providing complete directions to anything that is not already within sight. They seek merely to move you along. I had been given the standard directions to anything and everything at CDG.

Eventually, in baggage services, it was explained that bags "in transit" cannot be retrieved. Why? It's simple:

"If these bags could be retrieved, they would no longer be in transit, and these bags are in transit, making retrieval impossible."

So rather than disturb our bags, presumably still enjoying some forward momentum, we were each given a small box with one white T-shirt, a toothbrush, a razor, an impenetrable pouch of shaving cream and laundry detergent--in case we decided to wash the clothes we were wearing in the sink in our hotel room.

We stepped outside and joined all the other misconnected people waiting for hotel shuttles. As vehicles of all sizes pulled up, we heard the song of the frustrated over and over again.

"Is this the bus...?"

"No."

"Is this the place...?"

"No."

"Do you know where...?"

"No."

To be clear, I don't blame the people who work on the airplanes or the people who work in the airport for the way the airport operates. These are problems that cannot be solved at the individual level, and possibly not at the country or planet level. This is inefficiency of galactic proportions, and a galactic solution may be required.

And please don't get me wrong--I like France and the country's new, no-nonsense, pro-American president, Nicolas Sarkozy. He has pledged to clean up the inefficiencies and out-of-control bureaucracies that stifle the French economy.

I even like Air France, mostly. I have enjoyed good crews and clean, modern planes with this airline. I believe they are hampered by the sad reality that most of their flights begin or end at CDG, Europe's most illogical airport.

For example, what are the airlines at CDG hiding from? There seems to be no signage outside or inside the terminals that lists airline ticketing/check-in locations.

Security checkpoints could also use some attention. Earlier in our vacation, standing in a very long security line for a flight to Barcelona, I couldn't help noticing that each conveyor belt was allocated TWO trays, which meant that only one person at a time could go through the laborious process of emptying their pockets and removing their metallic objects.

Maybe it's a job creation project since it results in lines that move at about 1/5 the theoretical rate and thus requires 5x as many conveyor belts--and operators.

Then there's Terminal 2, a series of loosely connected buildings identified as 2A to 2F. They all sound so close, but that's just one of the inside jokes CDG plays on travelers.

Terminal 2 covers an area roughly the size of Belgium. Strike out walking from 2A to 2F and your passport will likely expire en route.

My advice: Always allow extra time for connections at CDG if you can. Never take the last flight of the day to connect to a cruise or tour departure--where the penalty for a missed connection or cancelled flight is so steep. If you want to live dangerously, do it on the way home.

So, President Sarkozy--and I really am pulling for you--where should you begin such a massive undertaking as making CDG consumer-friendly?

I'd go straight to the airport and ask disoriented travelers what they're looking for and how long they've been at it. I'd try to find out why so many jetways sit vacant while so many planes park in the hinterlands and bus their passengers to the terminal.

I'd watch what's happening at Air France's self-check-in kiosks, which time out after two seconds of inactivity and force everyone into an "exceptions" line manned by a single agent.

I'd talk to the shuttle drivers and service managers that aid the helpless and hopeless and finally, to that guy that works in the information booth--as soon as his break is over.

"How can we improve this system," I would ask, and I can almost hear his suggestion:

"Take a left and walk 10 minutes."

A Suggestion for our Producteur Exécutif

I don't know if you've ever seen or heard of the Where The Hell is Matt? video. If you've never seen it, it's just a series of short clips of this young guy doing a very silly dance in spots all over the world (including Paris). Sometimes he's by himself and sometimes he's dancing with others. A gum company sponsored his travels and the video. The whole thing is just a couple of minutes long. It's one of the weirdest and most beautiful things I've ever seen.

So, if you've never seen it, why don't you check it out. click here to see Matt

I told you it was cool.

Okay, so I'm wondering if we could do something similar on our trip. At a few of the more visual stops along the way we could do "something" together. Maybe dancing, maybe something else. Then our producteur/directeur could put a couple of minutes of video to music. What do you think Steve? And the rest of you, are you in? Get those creative juices flowing--I smell Oscar!

In France Our Election Would Be A Landslide!

Today's topic is the presidential race my friends and specifically how the French feel about it. It should give you some insight into how the French think about us.

Below are a few paragraphs I stole from Charles Bremner, the Paris correspondent for the Times of London. A recent poll shows the French want us to elect Obama in the upcoming election by a 10 to 1 margin. Wow! I'll get out of the way and let Charles tell us what's going on.

If anyone needed proof of France's love for Barack Obama, le Figaro offered it today with an opinion poll. This finds that 80 percent of the French want the Democrat candidate to win the US presidency while only eight percent favour John McCain.

The poll was carried out by TNS Sofres on September 2 and 3, before McCain benefited from the Sarah Palin bounce but it gives an idea of the overwhelming wish in France to see a President Obama take office. Eighty-six percent have a good opinion of him compared with only 35 percent for McCain. The strong support cuts across social class and the political spectrum.

The BBC found pro-Obama feeling to be strong worldwide in a poll this week, but the passion seems to run higher in France than anywhere.

There are reasons for this.

France has an idealised and schizophrenic view of the United States that dates back to 1776 when King Louis XVI helped the colonial insurgents fight Britain's peace-keeping force. France feels that it has a founding share in the nation which bestowed jazz, GIs, cocktails, JFK and Clint Eastwood on Europe. It dislikes what it sees as the more primary, messianic and intolerant America that is represented by Republicans and personified by George W Bush.

Given the demonisation of Bush, it is surprising that the Figaro poll found that as many as 18 percent of the French hold a favourable opinion of him.

French misunderstanding of the USA has been glaring in the coverage of Sarah Palin. TV reporters have been at a loss to explain hockey moms and the excitement over a woman whose pitch is patriotism, religion and family values. France prefers American frontier heroes of the fictional kind, courtesy of John Ford or Sergio Leone. Few have noticed that Palin invented a French name for the company which she registered earlier in her career -- Rouge Cou. "It’s a classy way of saying redneck," she told The Anchorage Daily. "It’s a French word, rouge is red, cou is neck. It’s for marketing and consulting, in case I wanted to go that route" (No doubt she has been told that it should be Cou Rouge).

Parlez Vous Fromage?

This post is more for La Reine de vin et de fromage (Teri) and her lady in waiting (Cathleen) than anyone else.

Somehow I have been made a charter member of "Club Fromage" by the Cheeses of France Marketing Council. They have a fairly extensive website devoted to all things French and cheesey. I'm not sure how I ended up on the list, but there's a lot of good research material for anyone who wants to get a little more basic knowledge about the French cheeses we'll be consuming. Of course the best way to research French cheeses is to taste them.

Here's the link to that Cheeses of France website.

I'm sure you've all heard this story, but it bears retelling here. Teri's very first "real" communication in French in France revolved around cheese. She was served a bit of cheese at a cafe. It was love at first bite and she was determined to find out what it was. "Quelle nom du fromage?" she asked the waiter in her incredibly American accent. I think we were all surprised that the waiter understood what she wanted to know.

Turns out the cheese in question was cantel, still a favorite in the Henley house when we can get it and the budget allows for it.

Bargain Bin

As you no doubt know, New Orleans mostly dodged a bullet this week. As I write this, Colleen is still hunkered down at the hospital safe and sound and our friend Laurie is lodging at Chez Henley, awaiting the all clear so she can head back home. Talk about answered prayers!

And I have more good news for you tonight. I'm not sure if you've been following the currency markets lately, but the dollar has had quite a rally against the Euro over the last several months. You can read the story from the Wall Street Journal below, but here's the bottom line: everything in France is now 10 percent cheaper for us than it was just seven months ago.

That means every meal, beverage and souvenir in France is 10 percent off. Right now the whole country is on sale. Of course there's no telling where the Dollar will be vs. the Euro. nine months from now, but the trend is our friend.

Go Yankee Dollar!

NEW YORK -- Plunging oil prices bounced the dollar to a seven-month high against the euro Tuesday and a nearly two-and-a-half year high against the U.K. pound.

Crude futures closed below $110 a barrel Tuesday as it became clear Hurricane Gustav would not inflict anywhere near the damage seen three years ago, when Katrina smacked into New Orleans and oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, putting a serious dent in the overall U.S. economy.

The surprisingly good news on the storm front, and the dollar's subsequent gains, helped convince even the most skeptical currency observers that the greenback's big gains since mid-July constitute a true reversal in its long downtrend.

The euro fell as low as $1.4466 Tuesday, its lowest since early February and more than 15 U.S. cents down from a record high of $1.6040 on July 15. The pound dropped to $1.7784, a level unseen since April 2006.