Tuesday - Huelva

Contents:
Introduction
Day 1: Flight to Spain and first evening in Seville
Day 2: Sunday in Seville
Day 3: Monday at the Alcazar
Day 4: Huelva

Our friends Ken and Martha, and their kids Alex, Abi, Andre, and Athena, are living in Huelva for the year.  Huelva is an hour west of Seville on the Atlantic coast, about 30 minutes drive from the border with Portugal.

Start Spreading the News: Part 2 - Connecticut to New York

Introduction
Part 1:  Heading East
Part 2:  This page

With a 3-hour jetlag effect, we didn't get to bed until well after midnight.  And that night happened to be the switch to daylight savings time, so we didn't get out of the hotel until around 10:30.

We spent a few terrific hours with some family we hadn't seen in years, and then hit the road.  We made the mistake of relying on our GPS and not the map we had bought the day before but left somewhere in the luggage.  Anyways, I think it took us at least an extra half hour more to get to New York City than it needed to.  

Once in New York, we made good time on the Henry Hudson Parkway until we got to the light at around 57th (?) street, where we stopped and spent about a half hour trying to get through a traffic light.  We drove on streets to get from there to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Soho, and it took at least another half hour.  But we found the hotel and it is pretty unassuming from the street.  Knowing that we would be returning a car soon,  we had kept our eyes open for a gas station but never found one.   I dropped off the wife and kids, we had a porter handle the luggage, and I went to return the car.  

Last Tango in Paris: Hyatt Regency at CDG Airport

Last Chance for Shopping

After Versailles, we pretty much decided were were done sightseeing and if we were going to do anything today, it would be shopping.  We stopped at a nearby shopping area we had passed when we were lost 2 days before.  It is called Parly 2.  Once we got there, we realized it was a mall very similar to one you would see in the U.S., although not quite as big.  We rarely shop at malls at home, and weren't about to pay Euro premiums on top of retail, but we did stop at Toys-R-Us to pick up some gifts for the kids.  We looked for the food court.  We found a McDonalds and kept looking.  We did find an area with restaurants but they all looked pretty expensive and were actual restaurants with service, whereas we wanted something quick and informal.  So we left.

The mall also had a grocery store so we bought some things for lunch there.  We bought a lot of things that we had purchased the day before, although this time I upgraded to bona fide pate au foie gras du canard: duck liver pate, a splurge at 12 euros/kg.  I asked for 50 grams but she said she could not cut a slice that thin.  (That appeared to be what she said.) She gave me about 140 grams (about 1/3 lb.) which cost about 1.75 euros.

Wednesday 3/14/12: Renting a Car in France

I had arranged for the car rental using Budget.com a few months back, and added a new reservation when I saw the price drop.  I had two reservations, one for 85 euros for Wed-Sat and one for 77 euros for the same period.  I thought I canceled the high priced reservation but apparently I later found that I didn't but it didn't matter anyway.   The great thing about car rentals (provided you don't use Hotwire/etc which I never do - there is no way to avoid lots of waiting in very slow lines when using Hotwire) is that  you can make a reservation without a credit card, never show up to pick up the car, and nothing bad happens to you.  I always make an extra just in case the first one has problems, which car rentals often do.

I picked up the car at a rental office in the 10th Arrondissement at 184 Rue du Faubourg Saint Martin because it was one of the cheapest locations to pick up and was within a mile of my hotel. I also had scheduled to return it to an office just a block from our hotel near the CDG airport in Roissy (although we ended up returning it to the Avis at CDG because the branch was closed), which removed the need to figure out a way to get to the airport. Other locations were quite a bit more expensive.  If it is an option for you, picking up away from an airport can often save a lot in extra taxes, which sometimes amount to more than the cost of the car itself.

It turns out the rental office is an Avis office, not Budget, but they seemed to be aware of my reservation.  I had to spend about 1/2 hour figuring out what the extra insurance they were trying to sell me covered, because it would have been an extra 100 euros for 3 days. I'm not an expert at insurance, but I believe the only insurance I needed was liability insurance, because the standard Visa Signature cards include collision insurance and we have our own health insurance. I finally realized their very expensive upsell covered the collision portion, which I didn't need , so I declined it.  They gave me a contract to sign with a copy written in English, and I saw that the liability insurance was included standard.  This jives with what I had read on Rick Steve's web page on rental cars.  The Frenchman sitting next to me was friendly and helpful, but quite surprised that my credit card gave me the collision insurance, which apparently French credit cards don't.

Had the car, which was a nearly new white Peugeot 5-door hatchback (small upgrade from the mini car I ordered).  Likc most cars in Europe, it had a manual transmission, which I enjoy driving.  I drove off and found myself on the open road in Paris.

Some things about Paris had never occurred to me until I started driving.  For one thing, there are no stop signs.  However, if you are turning right onto a street, apparently the drivers on the destination street have to allow your merge and yield to you as you turn in front of them. I only approximately knew how to get to the hotel but finally did, and used the loding zone to get Nancy and the luggage.