Day 1 June 17, 2014 San Diego to LAX to Paris

We both woke up multiple times much too early, before we finally got up at 7:30 knowing, “Today is the day that we are going to Europe!”

The planning has been going on for months and months.  It was last summer while Dick was at a conference in Istanbul, that he heard that the conference will be held this year in Paris.   He said, “Sweetie, would you like to go with me to Paris next year?” The answer was a resounding, “Yes!”  And the planning began. 

It was Dick’s idea, that as long as we would be in Paris, Denmark and Norway are only short train rides away.  And if we were going to go to Denmark, then Patti got the idea of seeing whether it would be possible to try to look up a relative or two from there.  Her father’s mother and grandfather, and mother’s grandfather, were all from Denmark.  On both sides of the family, some of Patti’s now elderly aunts had traveled to Denmark, but not for 15 or 20 years.  It took some phone calls and letters, but two aunts produced some 20 year old addresses, and Patti wrote letters last Thanksgiving.  And we waited.  At last, emails began to arrive, “Greetings from Denmark!”  And so, over the past 5 months, letters, emails and SKYPE calls have taken place, and now we travel to go meet many of these long lost relatives.  Cousins, and children and grandchildren of cousins, second once removed, or who knows what the exact technical relationship is.  Only, that they are related, and we are going to meet them.  This will take place at the end of June, so many more adventures before then!

So now, we finished up all of the work (everything you must do to leave before five weeks!  A lot!), did everything one must do to leave your home for a month, packed our bags (more on that later), drove from Oceanside to Los Angeles, parked our car at a funky backpackers hotel that allows people to park for $5/day rather than the $15-20/day that are charged close by the airport.

We have spent time over the past several days doing battle with AT&T trying to get our cell phones set to help us while in Europe.  Dick will have an international roaming plan on his phone, while Patti’s phone needed to be “unlocked” so that we can buy a local SIM card while in Denmark to be in touch with all of our relatives while there. This took multiple emails, several phone calls, a visit to an AT&T store, with more follow up while sitting at the airport.  The days of just getting on a plane and calling people when you get home are gone.

We decided to take the advice of travel guru Rick Steves, and travel what for us was VERY light.  We have for the next 28 days two smaller roller bags and a daypack (that also contains Patti’s laptop.)  We loaded one of the bags with both travel and gift books and checked it then we walked quite smugly through the airport watching some of the folks with suitcases piled on carts.  We are hopeful that indeed we have everything we are going to need.  Cool and a bit scary….what if we forgot something critical, or we don’t have the right close….guess we’ll have to buy something in Paris, huh?   We will let you know how the light packing went.

Then we did all of the waiting and checking in, and caught our flight-on-time leaving LAX at 6:35 on Tuesday June 17th, to arrive mid-afternoon on Wednesday June 18th in Paris.  A flight of over 10 hours with a little sleep, and a couple of movies, and time spent meeting our very first “interesting people of the day” on this trip. 

We joined about 300 other travelers as we boarded our Air France 777.  We had seats near the rear of the plane (guess our lower fare did not warrant better seats).  We had two aisle seats and someone was willing to trade one so we could sit together. Once in the air we found that they were going to keep the plane very cold.  We bundled up in the airline's blankets and tried to get some sleep in the cramped quarters.

We sat next to a very nice couple, who had offered to give suggestions of places to go and eat while in Paris.  We chatted in the night, and in the morning, as promise, Teo (and Scarlet, his wife) gave us a list of a number of great restaurants.  When Patti asked if he was from Paris, we heard “the rest of the story”.  No, he is a history professor at UCLA who does an undergraduate seminar in Paris history for 3 and ½ weeks each summer.  They were on their way a to begin this, a couple days ahead of the students.  Lovely, lovely people, and they were able to give us lots of great ideas, and even an invitation to join them as part of a walk on Monday to catch one of his walking tours.  We will see of we can work it out, but how generous and helpful they were.  The trip is off to a great start!

During the next 28 days we will take another short plane flight, take trains between Paris and Amsterdam, then to Odense and Copenhagen Denmark, then off to Oslo Norway, and around to several places in Norway, flying out of Oslo on July 15.  We are hoping that our light bags will be a continued joy as we roam about.

And so, we begin….the adventure has already started.

“It was exciting to be off on a journey she had looked forward to for months. Oddly, the billowing diesel fumes of the airport did not smell like suffocating effluence, it assumed a peculiar pungent scent that morning, like the beginning of a new adventure, if an adventure could exude a fragrance.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly