R and J European Adventures 2025

 These are totally my opinions and only my opinions.   1) Socialization is way better than ours 2) A highly developed infrastructure 3) Accommodations tend to be a bit smaller 4) Tourism; tons of it 5) In the bigger cities, there are “low emission zones”, and you don’t see old cars on the road at all  6) Google maps blows me away! They have instructions for the tiniest allies 7) EVERY toilet, public or private has a brush and we now know why 8) Mistletoe grows as a parasite plant on many trees. I have never seen real live mistletoe before. 9) eSIMs are the BEST 10) Italy has more historic buildings preserved than France 11) I am now determined to learn new languages and history (Although I always say that when I get back from any foreign country and I don’t learn anything) 12) I am totally amazed, how religion dominated all of Europe, especially by the Roman Catholic Church 13) I must research St. Etienne. I felt like it was calling me for the longest time. 14) Euro to Ca...

 We’re up bright and early even though our flight has been delayed till around 2 o’clock this afternoon. We have enough time to go for a nice long walk in a park right beside the hotel. I even got to take a stroll through one last graveyard. I guess I keep hoping to see my last name in one of them, but alas, I have not. One of the wheel struts from a Concorde which began its career in 1985 and officially retired in November 2003 Charles de Gaulle airport is still referred to as Roissy by Parisians.  The hotel provides a shuttle to the airport and I’m glad we have given ourselves lots of time because this airport is huge. In fact, I understand it is the largest airport in Europe. I swear we must’ve got our 10,000 steps just walking in the airport from check-in then security and then to our boarding terminal. (we actually had to take a shuttle bus from one area to another.) Despite the fact that our first flight was eight hours long, we did pretty good as much as I hate those lo...

 Today we will return our little Betsy to Sixt at Charles de Gaulle airport. She hasn’t let us down yet. This reminded me of how many McDonald’s we saw all over Europe. This is a smog shot as we were arriving in Paris Let me tell you flying into CDG is ominous but I think leaving is gonna even be worse. I literally have never been to an airport this big although I know there are bigger ones. CDG is the largest in Europe. We finally find the car return and drop her off just as good as the day we picked her up. Concorde We’ve rented a hotel room close to the airport so we call for a ride to go spend our last night. I’m sad; Richard’s happy. Although I must say, it’ll probably be nice to hear our own language spoken.

 I wish I had more to tell you about this day but I don’t….. Like I said yesterday, we are about an hour drive from Versailles so we take off just before lunch and drive there. It’s beautiful countryside is filled with fields of durum wheat. I looked it up and found that France is the second highest exporter of durum wheat next to Canada who is number one. Interesting? I’ve learned a lot on this little trip of ours. We arrive in Versailles to find all those people that we have not seen for the last couple of days. I wondered where they all went. 😝 .Again, there are hordes of them. Since we were just at a magnificent palace yesterday we decide that it’s just not worth the hustle and bustle and wait to go see another one. Not to justify our decision, but when I had researched it, I found that people had asked if they had to choose one palace to view between Fontainebleau and Versailles it would be Fontainebleau so there you go.I have already been in Versailles back in 2012 so I’m ce...

 Today, we will visit the Château at Fontainebleau. It’s a much quieter day here today, which will be nice for our tour of the Palace. We get an audio guide to take us through the tour. We will spend the next four hours going through this magnificent home of French Monarchs. The opulence of those times were absolutely unimaginable. This is a map showing Napoleon’s placement of relatives throughout Europe in order to gain power. He was a smart little bugger.  Napoleon’s battle garb.  His personal manicure kit while travelling.  Napoleon’s first wife Josephine de Beauharnais. She could not bear him an heir so he moved on to a new wife. His second wife’s name was Mary Louise, Duchess of Parma Portrait of Napoleon Death mask of Napoleon’s son Napoleon from Mary Louise. He was only 21 when he died A baby picture of young Napoleon II dressed as though he would become the next emperor. These are some baby toys from the young Napoleon II Napoleon I Napoleon‘s son’s cradle. T...