Not everything went as planned ... my best friends, Renata and Ken Dunphy, had to cancel at the last moment due to an illness in the family ... my sister Bonnie fell and broke here ankle and shattered her knee cap just days before they were schedule to leave so her and Tom had to cancel ( I cried for a day when I heard this news and indeed just writing this note brings me to tears as well. She so enjoyed our trip to Paris in 2008 and was so looking forward to this trip. I also really enjoy her and Tom's company when travelling. Note to Bonnie: "If I ever go back to Paris Bun it will be to take you so that you can make up for the loss of this trip" ), some tense moments with guests ( it is hard to live with others when you are travelling ), falling hard on the Champs-Elysee and breaking a lens on my camera, a bum left leg the last couple weeks of the trip etc.
But it is too easy to focus on the negative. Ninety five plus percent of my trip was exactly what I was looking for and I got my money's worth. I've always wanted to live in Paris for a couple months and to try to be Parisian. I'm not sure I succeeded since right up until the last moment I'd try to converse in French and whoever I was talking to would immediately speak english to me. Maybe it was the golf shirt and shorts, camera around my neck, heavy set stature ( most french are real skinny ) or my horrendous accent. But I tried to be Parisian and succeeded in my mind and that is what counts the most.
I was gone 59 days including travel days. According to my scale at home I put on 5 pounds since I was 239 pounds the day I left and 244 pounds a few minutes ago when I weighed myself. I hope some of this added weight is from added water retention from flying but I suspect not. ( as an aside, I weighed myself over the weekend and my weight came down to about 235 pounds so maybe the added weight was water retention!) I ate a lot of bread and cheese and fois gras and not as much oatmeal as I should have but why do a trip like this AND NOT ENJOY the food. The very good news is that my BMI index ( body fat ) dropped from 33 percent to 25 percent for a loss of about 25 percent of my body fat. So I didn't lose any weight but I sure did lose a lot of inches. Many sent me a note to say that I looked good in the pictures I posted of myself. Thank you. My goal weight is under 200 pounds so I have at least 40 more to go and if possible I'd like to lose another 50 pounds by Christmas. Not sure this is realistic but it is a worthy goal.
I walked a lot and I mean a lot. My total step count for the 59 days was 1,830,561 steps for an average of 31,026 per day. Now my June average was relatively low at 25,570 steps per day but I kicked it up a knotch in July and averaged 36,671 per day for the month which brought my total average to over 31K per day. On 14 days I walked between 10K and 20K steps, on 11 days I walked between 20K and 30K steps, on 18 days I walked between 30K and 40K steps and on two days I walked over 50,000 steps. A 50k step day is the equivalent of about 25 kilometres of walking ... Ouch.
All this walking equates to a total of 549.53 miles or 884.15 kilometres for the trip. An average of 9.31 miles per day or 14.99 kilometres per day. I walked a total of 275.11 hours at a 1.99 miles per hour average pace. Not too bad for someone who turns 61 in about a months time.
Calorie counters on these devices that track steps are notoriously wrong but if you believe what this device says I burned a total of 130,992 calories with all the walking on this trip averaging 2,213 per day. So having put on weight, or at the very least not losing any weight, I also must have eaten way too much of things that I should have had more restraint on. NOT the bread and cheese or fine dining when I did eat out. But perhaps I could have avoided some of the snacks that came into the house with guests, Maxum ice cream bars ( so good and now available in Canada ) and even some of the French pastries although I have no qualms at all about eating the French pastries ... that is one of the reasons I went to France. But I could have totally avoided the salty snacks and ice cream bars since there is NOTHING French about these and I probably would have lost a few pounds and not just inches. This is also a perfect lesson on why true weight loss has to come from BOTH healthy eating and exercise. It is hard to imagine me getting more exercise so now I have to shift into diet mode.
I took 6 flights in total and 6 long train rides, and about 100 trips on the Paris Metro when I wasn't walking. I stayed in two apartments in Paris, one hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania and one hotel in Stuttgart, Germany. Three times I rented a car with a driver ... once for a half day trip out to Fountainbleau, once for a full day in the Loire Valley and once for a full day visiting the beaches of Normandy. All highly successful and highly recommended for others.
I only ate about 20 meals in restaurants since by having an apartment I was able to cook my own meals and meals for others. And most of the time my visitors didn't want to eat out so there wasn't a lot of exploring fine dining in Paris.
Including this one I posted a total of 161 times ... 83 in July, 76 in June and once in April and May before I left. This number will also grow a little as I am backed-up with my postings and have a number I still need to do especially the photo's others took at the various sights we visited. And remember in one of my very early posts I questioned even doing a blog this trip. And when I did decide to proceed I promised that I would post a lot LESS often than I did with my trip in 2008. In 2008 I posted 68 times ... this time 161 times ... so needless to say I didn't quite follow my own advice.
I also like to post photos from other camera's because everyone has their own perspective of each place they visit so not all the posts were from my camera. It is somewhat repetitive but each set has some unique and very interesting pictures and I learn a lot by looking at the pictures that others take.
One of the problems with posting is that each post takes an average of about an hour to prepare so by doing about 3 posts per day, I ended up spending between two and three hours per day sitting on my computer working on pictures. Add in another two to three hours of walking unrelated to sight seeing and it meant a lot of time away from doing other things.
This isn't a problem when you are alone and I was alone for most of the first 23 days and it isn't a problem when you are sitting on a train or plane and can work away. But when you are with others it comes across as somewhat anti-social. I'm sorry if I offended anyone by spending so much time walking on my own each morning and most evenings and so much time on my computer getting pictures ready for posting. I tried to keep both activities to late at night or early in the morning but I'm sure there were times when some of my guests were thinking that I was ignoring them. I wasn't. I committed to doing this Blog and it is my way of doing a journal of my trip and it ate time and I committed to doing a lot of walking to stay in shape and that ate even more time .... again I'm sorry if I came across as anti-social.
All in all I posted 6,231 pictures and took close to 35,000 photo's in total ... actually that includes the photo's of others as well since every night on returning from a sight seeing tour I downloaded everyone's pictures onto my computer. My totals would have been closer to 25,000 pictures from my various camera's although I don't have an actual count ... AND I shoot manual and also bracket all my photos ( take one at the meter, one below and above the meter so three at a time ) so in reality it represents closer to 8,000 individual photo's by myself. Some of the posted pictures were from others as well.
There were 14 guests welcomed at my apartment and each time someone and/or a group arrived I made sure there was a French lunch/breakfast/dinner ( depending on arrival time) prepared with a table full of French food AND WINE to try to get them into the mood of being in Paris ....
I also decided before I went that I would buy flowers everyday from one of the hundreds of flower markets in Paris and although I wasn't successful every day I did end up buying 31 bouquets of flowers and or plants. I also made sure there were flowers in everyone's room when they arrived just as a way to add a special touch....
The weather also co-operated. Most days it was cool and there was a nice breeze. Only two days of very hot weather (there is little to no air conditioning in Paris) and a few days of rain. It rained a number of times during the stay but most times it came and went or was in the evening or night when it didn't matter much. I think there were only two days where the rain actually forced us into some down time. Not a bad average. And I'll take rain in Paris over heat any day so I didn't mind the odd shower .. it cooled the city down, helped liven up all the trees and flowers and helped clean the city which gets pretty messy with all the tourists.
I also met and made a lot of new friends not only in Paris but also Lithuania and in Stuttgart. When I travel I try to be an ambassador for Canada and give strangers I meet Canadian pins, stickers, badges etc. I went through over 300 of these little trinkets so hopefully there are now over 300 people in this world who think a little more highly of Canada. Just imagine if every Canadian who travelled did the same... we would be the most loved nation in the world. For very special people I bring over Canadian coin sets from our mint. They are very well presented in folders with lots of pictures of Canada and unique in that coins hold value, are shiny and worth keeping and LIGHT weight so easy to bring along. I went through about a dozen coin sets.
I'll not get into the money numbers other than to say it was outrageous ... the Euro's flew out the door as I paid for a lot of the group dinners and provided a lot of the food for the apartment. Not that others didn't contribute or offer to help out but everyone was there on my invitation and I covered most of the cost. The contributions from others were very much appreciated and I thank you.
And a 6 bedroom apartment for almost two months in Paris was a lot and I mean A LOT of money (on a per person night per day it averaged only about 50 Euro's per person per day which I thought was quite reasonable .. the problem is that I didn't want to charge anyone anything for staying with me so the total cost came out of my pocket ... no regrets though).
The trips into the Loire Valley and Normandy were also very expensive but with groups like we had it would have been more expensive to go by train, rent multiple cars and likely hotels, get lost, fight over what we wanted to see and when we were going to see it, nobody to discipline our timing during the day at least without some hard feelings ... etc. Each of these side trips were a full day ( about 12 hours for two of them and 6 hours for the other ). So I think the high cost was worth it.
I don't know how I could have made this trip better for those that came to visit short of giving each person $20K to $30K and letting them do this on their own. If there were moments that were not to anyone's liking or if I did or said something to offend anyone then I apologize and hope that visitors can come to understand that juggling all these activities, varying interests, varying personalities and all the scheduling was quite challenging for me. Especially when everyone is in a different time zone by at least six hours, are eating foods not normal to their diet, not sleeping in their same beds, having language issues and spending their day with at least 5-6 other people and as many as eight. Not your normal day in Canada to say the least and it creates difficult moments for all. I may not have handled all the micro moments as well as I should but I meant well and hope the trip met everyone's expectations.
So that is a summary of my trip or as I prefer to call it "Europe by the numbers" ... oh I almost forgot the most important thing! We had one proposal. Jamieson gave Nadia a ring one night ... what better place than the City of Lights (and Love!)
Would I do it over if I could go back in time and change my mind? ABSOLUTELY! It was something I had to do at least once in my life and the money came from my 'guilt free' money account so I am able to rationalize it in my mind.
Would I do it again? Probably not, at least not this length and not this exotic ... I can't afford it and there is so much else to see in the world.
Would I change what I did? I learned a lot from this trip so of course I would do some things differently. A better viewing spot for the Bastille day parade for instance. Although I enjoyed my guests it would also be nice to just spend a couple months alone in a place like Paris with Lucy. Many other things but I'll not bore you.
As mentioned I will continue to work on pictures over the coming weeks so check in once a week or so for the next month to see the final posts.
Following are some pictures of me for a change ... I tend to prefer to take pictures of other people AND to post pictures of others so I don't have a lot of myself. But we had multiple camera's on the go once guests arrived so I did end up with one or two of myself.
AND THANKS FOR FOLLOWING ME ON MY BLOG. I ENJOYED DOING IT AND HAVING THE COMPANY. AND A VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL THAT LEFT COMMENTS ABOUT VARIOUS POSTS. A BLOG IS A LOT OF WORK AND BY LEAVING A COMMENT IT SHOWED THAT THE TIME I SPENT WAS APPRECIATED.
Life is good ... enjoy .... and remember life is also too short to NOT enjoy fine wines.
Dennis ... the Auto Guru in Europe
