Planes, Trains and Buses

Our tour director, Eric, was a cute young Frenchman who had been with the company for nine years. He is an artist/stone carver in his spare time and you could tell he enjoyed history. He was very brave taking on 23 Southern women along with 25 other kids and parents from Denver. Of course we all ended up being his favorite group of the two.

Eric told us that his great grandmother had thrown the artist Paul Gauguin out of her house, because as a boarder, he was always late with his rent. She therefore, alas, threw his paitings to the curb for trash when he left. He explained that this was why he was a tour director now.

Our bus driver Phillipe was also a kind, careful and attentive driver. Last year we had a doozy who would fly right up to the car in front and slam on the breaks and sling us all forward. He would curse at the drivers around him too. Thanks Phillipe!

All our hotels had hair dryers in the rooms except for the smallest one. I always think that is a good sign when the hotel has a hair dryer. Our one mistake was finding out that we needed to call down to the main desk to have them turn on our air conditioning. It's off unless you request it. We did not know this until we were checking out. So there were some stuffy noses from having the window open and it being so hot. But all the hotels were nice, clean and good locations.

Eric taught us all how to read the metro (train) maps so we would be able to get around Paris on our own when our free day came around. And of course we all did perfectly! We didn't get lost once!