Which one was best: the phone booth or the McDonald's Bathroom?

              Making friends in a TGV train vestibule!

Sometimes the highlights of a foreign country can remain just a little bit elusive as the headline above will reveal. In a few of my prior travel articles I have advocated that if a few things don't go wrong it must have been a pretty boring trip. It is the mistakes and problems that really create discussion when safely back in the comfort of your living room. In this age of internet travel scheduling I have always prided myself on meticulous planning and scheduling, and many of our travel companions have likewise appreciated these efforts. We have laughingly referred to this as Tom's No Fees-No Commission Travel Agency. After our last grand trip it is now referred to as the No Fees-No Commission-No Sleep-No Seats Travel Agency. Read on for the exciting details!

Our recent trip to Europe was a wonderful three week experience, but was a bit complicated with different travel segments involving planes, ferries, trains, metros, boats, cars and ultimately just a few little (in my opinion) glitches. On various parts of the trip our companions included Les and Carol Cooper of Chelan and Tom and Mall Boyd of Leavenworth. Each had an opportunity to experience a "glitch" or two.

So Les and Carol arrive in London ahead of us and check into the hotel I have arranged. Can I account for the fact that they were put in the basement with a view of a concrete wall and a shower made for midgets? When we arrived we of course had a beautiful room on the second floor with real windows, a view and perfectly acceptable shower. I just do not know how this happens! Now I am aware that the Cooper's do have some bad luck with room assignments. The classic was when we went on an African Safari together. This was their plan and had bought us the same deal at a charity auction. How could I account for management assigning us the lodge suite with surround windows viewing the savannah, walk-in closets, hot tub, animals walking outside our windows, while they received a room about the size of our closet. Go figure!

I think Les really has a perspective problem. As he travels around the world for his employer he of course only travels business or first class and stays in the five star famous hotels. He just does not get out and mingle with the people enough, or find out how the rest of world, and frugal world travelers, really live. On this trip it just was not my fault that I planned ahead, way ahead, for Mary Ann and I, and we were able to make our first visit to Europe with all of our flights being first class or business class. When you use frequent flyer miles you really do have to work at it months ahead. Is it my fault that Les seems to procrastinate! By the time they booked their tickets, unfortunately Les could not find any upgrades even though he has a jillion frequent flyer miles and is a preferred super duper mvp whatever on numerous airlines. So they have to fly in steerage. It is just not my fault!

On occasion I do arrange some really early bookings! The difference on a European train leaving at 5:30 a.m. and one leaving at 8:00 a.m. can be as much as $100 a ticket or more. I am just looking out for their ultimate retirement and I am sure Carol appreciates this, even thought Les might be just a bit spoiled. I am not cheap, just frugal. So maybe we did have a little problem with the ticket machines in the train stations. My travel planning does not have guarantees. You pay for what you get. Travel crises are what makes a trip memorable. Who can account for different machines for different types of trains. Wow, only the French could think up that one. So we miss a train or two. This just gives us a chance to help the French trainmaster and his assistant speak English. How did I know many trains were going to be cancelled because of this little wildcat strike problem over the French pension issue. Besides, quit whining, we did get on the TGV train, albeit in the vestibule between cars, and we did sit down…on our luggage. And really, it was only a three hour train trip and it gave us a chance to meet a lot of very nice French citizens, shoulder to shoulder, who found themselves in the same predicament.

After another wonderful self drive yacht cruise on the canals in France, this time in the Aquitaine region of Southwest France, we were off on a road trip to the Pyrenees' and Northern Spain with Tom and Mall. I do have a little (?) quirk about adding countries to my world travel list, so this journey was going to add at least the small remote mountain country of Andorra to the list. Following a beautiful mountain drive from Luchon, France to enter Andorra, we came upon an immigration and customs center. Mary Ann says to me, do you have the passports? Huh? This trip I was in charge of those little gems, ostensibly in my handy dandy neck pack. I said no, I thought you had them. Tom Boyd, with his laid back travel attitude, without a hesitation pulls the car to road edge. Mary Ann goes to the trunk and looks through all the luggage. Nothing. There was no actual check at the Andorra border, so as we enter the first town we pull over at the next phone booth we find. We of course can't make the phone work when trying to call our previous hotel in Luchon, but with the help of some great office people nearby, we connect. Cheers break out all around when the delightful owner says has found a lot of things left by his guests, but this was the first time he has found passports, which had slid down the edge of an extra bed. Thus my experience in Andorra was the use of a phone booth, then using the bathroom at the McDonald's across the street. This country experience obviously beat just buying gas in Luxembourg. I now believe our passports hate each other. You might remember when Mary Ann was carrying them in Johannesburg and had her purse stolen. We are now each carrying our own passports!

Boats, Bicycles, Friends & Fast Cars

A trip for your 40th wedding anniversary has to be really something special, and ours turned out to be one heck of a great travel adventure! With the encouragement of friends, I put together a self-drive yacht cruise on the Rhine canal in the Alsace region of France with four couples. It was not easy to get 8 busy people to coordinate a trip to Europe, and commit to putting up their money for the yacht while the Iraq war was starting. However, we are talking about experienced and intrepid travelers, who probably would not let predictions of the end of the World deter them from an interesting trip. The group consisted of a Judge (me) and spouse of 40 years who is a social service program manager, a lawyer (also a graduate of West Point) and his wife a retired legal assistant, a world traveler consultant production engineer (breweries) and his wife, and a CPA/business chief executive with his wife, a medical center marketing manager. Now to get this organized we had to divide up responsibilities as you will see as the story unfolds. I became the tour director and put together the boat arrangements, meeting places etc. We also had to have a yacht captain and it was obvious the one guy who was in the Navy in the Viet Nam war was most qualified, even if he was only responsible for firing the guns from a destroyer. Thus the CPA was elected captain. He sure had fun giving orders. A frustrated officer?

Now this voyage was not your average canal barging, with crew and French chef. We had to do everything, with the limitation that our very independent wives said no cooking, except maybe continental breakfast and possibly picnic lunches. And then only if the guys behaved themselves and consumed only moderate quantities of the Alsace wines and beers. This meant dinner out, hopefully at fantastic restaurants and brasseries in the villages along the canal. Boy, this put a lot of pressure on the tour director! We traveled on an elegant 42 foot yacht (no mere barge for us!) with four staterooms, galley, two heads with showers, dining area and captain’s controls both from inside and from the top deck. Calling the sleeping areas staterooms may be a bit of an exaggeration. Mary Ann and I took the smallest stateroom because we were the smallest people. My bunk crossed over her bunk crosswise and only one of us could dress in the “stateroom” at a time. All of the arrangements for the boat and cruise were made on the internet. For information about this kind of travel take a look at www.crownblueline.com. A good website to learn about the French Alsace region is www.visit-alsace.com. The major city in the region is Strasbourg which can be found at www.strasbourg.com. The boat lease was $3200 for seven days so the cost for each couple was $800. Each couple put $100 into a common fund for purchases when boating and we all got about a $10 refund. Out of the common fund we bought all the drinks and food for on the boat, which included breakfast and lunch, mooring fees when we parked in a marina, and incidentals like shower tokens when available, when we parked for the night. I can tell you that the fund always bought daily fresh bread, cheeses, fruit and juice and all the wine, beer, and soft drinks we could drink.

So what did we know about running the boat and going through the 43 locks on the canal? Crown Blue Line told us we would get a half hour orientation on the boat and if we had ever driven a boat before we were “good-to-go.” It took about 45 minutes because it was provided by a fellow who really did not speak English. But at the end of the training we were sent on our way.

The initial problem was we got caught in the first lock at 5 p.m. which is the time canal locks were shut down for the night. This gave us an opportunity to meet the mobile lock master, who we saw often the next couple of days. Because of our timing, we just moored on the side of the canal and sent the scout (the West Point guy of course) out to check on the restaurants, on one of the two bikes we had on the boat. Naturally it was one of the numerous French holidays, so we had little hope of anything being open. We were enjoying wine and hors‘d oeuvres, laughing about calling Domino’s, when our scout Bill shows up with three pizzas on the back of the bike. So miracles do happen!

This canal cruising was not a speedy business. In the 7 days we only traveled about 125 miles from the South of Strasbourg near Colmar, through Strasbourg and into the Vosges Mountains via Saverne to the West. We only had to motor 5 hours a day to keep the batteries charged, and even with the many locks we made enough time to have a layover day in Saverne, keeping everyone happy with shopping and visiting the nearby castle. One of the challenging things about the boat was that it did not respond real well to the helm. Backing was particularly interesting. However, our captain really did know what he was doing and never ended up crosswise in the canal like other obvious rookies we saw. By spending some of the evenings in marinas we were able to regularly replenish the water supplies and use shore power for nighttime electricity. Everyone had a job on the boat. Our job assignments were: captain; navigator; tour director and ladder monkey (me); linesmen and lineswomen; bike scout; deck crew; galley slaves; and beautiful woman on the stern of the boat reading a book.

Undoubtedly, the most fun was the evening dinners. We had scouts out every afternoon looking for the best village to be in with the most interesting restaurants. We never had a bad one. In one remote village we ended up at a converted farmhouse barn restaurant where we were required to raise our hands as to whether we wanted a hot or cold dinner. Certainly a modest menu! The dinner was terrific and one which none of us will ever forget.

The four couples each did different parts of Europe before and after the cruise. As for Mary Ann and I, we flew into and out of Frankfurt. This was our first experience driving in Europe. Those silver BMW’s, Audi’s, and Mercedes sure do blow by an Opel Astra station wagon. I thought I was really moving on the autobahn at 80 to 90 mph, but little did I know the standard in the fast lane was 120 to 150 mph. You do get an appreciation that Europeans drive a lot better than folks do in the United States. Stay in the slow lane if not passing! Our before and after travels included Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland, but all that fun will have to wait for the next article. Foreign travel really is fun. Driving is easy and the food is wonderful. Give it a try.

(Published in the Winter 2003 ABA Judicial Record)