Travel-Stained Life

After our trip to Paris, we were really excited to have the chance to visit the Champagne region of France.  We spend a long weekend in Reims and enjoyed seeing the wonderful cathedral, which was used for the coronation of kings for 800 years and one of the numerous champagne cellars in town.  Our only problem was [...]

Things we learned: Currency: Euro (1 Euro=$1.5 USD) Cities Visited: Toulouse, Paris, Reims Beware the scams (advice from a Frenchman)- – demanding a tip. A 15% service charge is by law added to the bill and should appear on it. No tip is required. Lose change or a couple euros or nothing are enough. – [...]

We arrived to the “City of Light” via overnight train from Toulouse.  I had hardly slept on the train and was planning on making the most of our 5 a.m. arrival by catching Z’s in whatever cheap hotel we could manage to find.  Nevermind that Paris was the the pinnacle of our spontaneous Western European [...]

After spending a few days in Andorra upon our departure from Barcelona, we had to decide where we wanted to go next.  We knew we wanted to go to France, but the options from Andorra were quite limited.  We could either take a short bus to l’Hospitalet-pres-l’Andorre, the closest French town to Andorra or a [...]

Things we learned: Currency: Euro (1 Euro=$1.5 USD) If you are planning to head to Andorra from Barcelona, go to the Andorra Tourist Office in Barcelona.  The people working there are very friendly and will load you with colorful, descriptive packets/pamphlets along with bus schedules and other useful pieces of information.  You might even be [...]