On The Ground

Trip Start Apr 30, 2004
1
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Trip End May 09, 2004


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Flag of United States  , Florida,
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Next is the quest for hotels. We choose not to use Priceline as the selection of hotel is made merely by area and price. As there are so many hotels in Paris, from good to bad to ugly, if your request is accepted and you don't like the choice, you are stuck with it. Here we attempt something more direct and personal. We go straight to the web site of the highly recommended Hotel des Grandes Ecoles. Unfortunately it seems to be so highly recommended there is no space when we need it. We encounter a local hotel reservation web site with 185 hotels in Paris. I am attracted to the Hotel Mont Blanc, in the Latin Quarter near the Seine. Why? I don't know. It's a "gut feeling". I like what I see in their web site. Perhaps the fact the Ernest Hemingway stayed there convinced me. Two rooms are duly confirmed by e-mail at the price we want. We will only know if it is the perfect choice when we arrive. After hours of diligent searching on the Internet, all our hotels are finally confirmed. Miraculously we are just $1.30 each over budget with the hotels.

It is not an easy task to rent a car in Monte Carlo with drop-off in Paris. Most major rental firms would not quote this. We accessed one of Europe's biggest rental firms, Europcar, but found that Kemwel, a UK firm with US offices quoted a lower price and offered more categories of vehicle. When we received our voucher we were surprised to find it was with Europcar! Is this globalization, or what! Good savings here, as we had calculated $400.00 total. The final amount was only $266.11. We are now $20.11 under budget.

Now for the train ticket from Paris to Monte Carlo. Originally having accessed Rail Europe, one of the many companies that sell European Rail Passes in the US, I had calculated a rate of US$155.00 each for the one-way overnight fare, including couchette and booking charge. Then I read in a guide book that most European railways offer senior citizen and junior fares. I search vainly on Rail Europe's site, but am unable to locate any savings in this respect so, on a hunch I enter SNCF, the French Railway company's site. Voila! Here there are junior and senior fares (senior for 62-year old me and junior for my 21-year old son). I book, and the total spent is €373.00, or US$ 458.00 (against US$ 620.00 with Rail Europe). We now have our seat/couchette assignments, and we are to pick up our tickets at the ATM ticket machine in Paris Austerlitz station. Now we are $78.87 under budget.

Last, but not least, we will soon be ordering our museum and bus passes online for delivery at our hotel in Paris.

As of yet we have no physical "tickets", yet have already paid out hundreds of dollars. All we have are reference or booking numbers and some e-mail messages. Have we done the right thing? Please read the diary to find out.
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