WillTravel

[Kim]

Just wanted to wish you a wonderful trip on Friday!
Have a great time and don't miss us too much! ;D
Looking forward to a full report upon your return!

Kim

[LHR02]

Is it time already??!! Holy moley, seems like just last week you started planning this....wait, I KNOW that can't be true! ;D

Wishing you a wonderful, safe journey chock full of clean, fluffy, endless towels!

Send along some trip reports if you get a minute here and there.....have a terrific time WT!

[WillTravel]

Thanks dustoffmom and Kim - I leave Friday at 8 PM.

I'm taking a digital camera this time. That means a higher probability that I'll get my pictures up. (I still have to scan all the ones from last year!)

Hee hee about the towels .

[jennifer]

Wow, lucky you, have a great one!

[Eagle]

WT, hope you have a fantastic time on your trip! It's great that you're taking a Digital Camera -- I think you'll have a lot of fun with this. Will be waiting to see your trip reports. Happy travels!!!

[jennifer]

Hi!
Well, poor Willtravel, everything has got to come to an end! Flying back tomorrow!

Welcome back anyhow!
Awaiting for juicy details!

xxoxo

[WillTravel]

We're back. Actually I got back home sometime around 10 PM last night.

All plans more or less worked out to a "T". On the flight out, we both had aisle seats in a bank of 4 seats (so 2 empty in the middle). How lucky is that? . On the BMI flight from London to Paris we got a business-class upgrade because the flight was overbooked. The EasyJet flights (Paris-Berlin and Berlin-London) worked out perfectly.

My main caveat, as usual, is to leave plenty of time for connections. We arrived at Heathrow in good time. However, we weren't allowed off the plane for 85 minutes! The reason was they had to organize shuttle buses to take us to the terminal - they wouldn't let us just walk the mile or so. We did not exit via a jetway, but down a flight of stairs onto the tarmac. On the return trip from Heathrow, the flight was delayed for 2.5 hours due to congestion at Heathrow, and almost everyone on board who had connections lost them, and were going to be rebooked for early morning flights. We had to take a shuttle bus to the plane and again board via the tarmac.

My husband uploaded my several hundred digital photos to a computer upstairs, so in the next day or two I should be able to post them on the web.

Berlin is a very exciting city and quite inexpensive compared to London and Paris. I would so recommend spending some time there. I took Terry Brewer's walking tour of Berlin - a strenuous 10 hours, but so worth it! Then a couple days later, I took his walking tour of Potsdam. Despite the heavy driving rain, we went into 9 places and walked around extensively - this tour was about 9 hours. This man simply has an amazing encyclopedic knowledge of Berlin and the whole region. And his tours cost only 10 Euros per person.

I also took 5 Paris Walks and 3 London Walks - I highly recommend those too.

It is extremely easy to keep track of what we spent in total, because we didn't use credit cards for any expenses. Hotels and airfare were already paid for, but nothing else.

We ended up spending 929 Euros for 2 people for 12 days in Paris and Berlin. That is 38.8 Euros per person per day. This covered ground transportation, food, museums, tours, laundry and any other incidental expenses. Admittedly, I spent by far the most, as my son mostly just walked and walked around the cities and his food tastes are extremely simple. I went to concerts, museums, walking tours, boat rides, etc. and I had some cafe meals. It seemed like the money was going practically twice as fast in Paris as it did in Berlin.

We spent 200 pounds for our total time in London. I posted before I left about how we had more money than budgeted. I just went on walking tours and to a musical and a play and we had a cafe meal, and that solved that problem ;-). Of course the ground transportation cost something too.

The Carte Orange metro pass is a great deal in Paris.

Anyway, I'll post more in good time and please fire away with any questions!

[Kim]

Sounds like you had a great time!

Isn't Terry fascinating? He actually worked for the British Embassy during the time of East and West Berlin - did he show you his ID? Pretty interesting.

The crazy part about our tour is no one else showed up! It was just Terry, soon to be hubby and me. It was cool but it put me on the spot for the questions he kept firing at us!

Kim

[WillTravel]

We had about 18 people on our Berlin tour, but only 6 on the Potsdam tour. Funnily enough, there weren't any young people on the Potsdam tour - Terry said that was the first time that he only had mature people on the tour. I didn't see his ID. Terry said he is so busy giving tours that he doesn't do much advertising. So I guess we'll just have to provide plenty of word of mouth recommendations! It's a bit embarrassing to start feel fatigued when Terry, in his 60s, proceeds at a rapid, non-flagging clip throughout. But I never would have learned 1/10 as much on my own.

He mentioned that a Canadian girl with a pedometer recorded that the walking tour they took of Potsdam was 30,000 steps, but that didn't include the time spent inside the palaces where you have to wear slippers.

[Tracie]

Which Paris walking tours did you take, and which one was your favorite?

[WillTravel]

I took these:

Ile de la Cité (focused a lot on Notre Dame, but also other parts)
Marais I (more the western part of the Marais and the Jewish Marais)
Marais II (more the medieval part of the Marais and the eastern part)
Latin Quarter (wide-ranging, but some academic focus)
Montmartre (artistic focus)

It's really hard to say my favorite. All were nicely done by very knowledgeable, interested guides and all focused on different areas.

[jennifer]

This is really cool, I'm interested in this a whole lot, do you have any idea if there is a website I could put in my future travel documents that I could refer to later when I do go to Paris? How much did these walks approximately cost/last?

You seem to have had a great trip, I'm happy for you!
I'M very JEALOUS too because my next trip is about a year away! oh well! i'll have to thrive of others for the next 12 months!

Jen

[WillTravel]

I sent an email to them and they sent me a Word document listing all their walks.

The walks cost 10 Euros each and last about 2 hours. In addition to covering a lot of ground and learning a lot about the history of various streets, people, and buildings, you are likely to go into a couple churches on each walk, and on the Ile de la Cité walk, we also went into the deportation museum (can't remember the French name) near Notre Dame.

Look here: ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pariswalking/

[WillTravel]

Jennifer, I think you are fluent in French. In that case, also buy Pariscope and also look for the French walks listed in there (the publication is almost all in French, but I'd recommend it for the listing of various events even if you aren't fluent). It only costs 0.40 Euro at a newsstand. I would have loved to have taken some of the French walks, but my grasp of spoken French is so slight it wouldn't have been useful in my case. As far as I know, there isn't any link between Paris Walks and those walks offered in French.

[jennifer]

Ah ! What a delight to speak the language of a country you are visiting!

I'm sorry Willtravel... I'm sure you would have loved to know french, I can teach you if you want!

Indeed it's a great idea to take these walks, thanks for the site!