We flew into Orly Airport (ORY) instead of the Paris usual of Charles de Gaulle (CDG). We thought about taking the Orlybus into Paris, but with our luggage, and since there were four of us, decided on a taxi instead. That turned out to be a good decision as we ended up in our apartment a mere 20 minutes after our plane was supposed to land. (Our plane landed a bit early, our luggage came right out, and there was no traffic.) The cab fare was “only” 29 Euros (almost US$50) which would have been about the same for four of us on the Orlybus with a transfer to the Metro.

Our apartment looked great on the inside, just like the pictures on vrbo.com. The outside needed a serious renovation, but we didn’t care about that. We didn’t plan on spending much time there anyway since we only had five nights.

We were staying in what is called the Marais area so we decided to take Rick Steves‘ “Marais Walk” to get a feel for our neighborhood. 

The walk took us through the Hotel de Sully which is a very nice, Renaissance residence dating back almost 400 years. Although the above picture makes it look as if no one was there the hotel was actually pretty crowded with tourists.

A park just a couple of blocks from our apartment was the above Place des Vosges. This place was also about 400 years old, the oldest square in the city. The kids enjoyed chasing pigeons while we dodged rain drops.

Across the street we saw some Smart Cars outside a cafe. I first saw the Smart Car in Italy several years ago. They are beginning to make their appearance in the U.S. They are all over Europe. The gas mileage isn’t that incredible, but you can park them just about anywhere which is very important in a city as crowded as Paris.

While the architecture in Paris is nice, what you don’t see are all of the people which I have cropped out of the above photograph. I was surprised by the masses. I suppose I was imagining Paris to be something like a large Quebec City in Canada, which I have visited, with an Eiffel Tower. It turned out to be very densely populated and much dirtier than Quebec. More on that in a future blog entry…

Paris is actually about as crowded as Tokyo, yet it felt worse. The density is more than twice that of Copenhagen, and about twice that of New York City. People don’t tell you that when they say Paris is so wonderful. Paris is crawling with tourists, like Rome, but the number of people per square kilometer in Paris is quite a bit higher.

Since it was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, the Marais Walk through the Jewish Quarter wasn’t all that interesting. So we drifted towards the Seine River near the above Hotel de Ville (which is not a hotel). The rain had now ceased, and the clouds were getting pretty.

Posted on August 12th, 2008 under Paris. Tags: clouds, Paris, pictures, Travel. Comments: None

We are actually back from Paris already. I pre-scheduled the past 8 or so blog entries so that I wouldn’t have to spend any time blogging in Paris. Now that our European adventures are over I can turn to Paris for the next little while. I’ll have some more entries on Denmark in a few weeks. 

On our journey from Copenhagen to Paris we learned three things. First, never trust that your pre-arranged taxi will actually show up. Two, always have a backup plan. And, three, leave yourself more time than you will really need to get to the airport.

We had someone else call in Danish to reserve an early morning taxi for us. They said we were all set, but no taxi was there when scheduled. We waited 15 minutes and then I headed for a pay phone. When I finally got through the person on the other end either couldn’t hear me or they were the only person in Denmark who doesn’t speak English. (I take that back; neither of our Copenhagen taxi drivers spoke English.) We were now sweating it, but we had left plenty of cushion time. We walked to the Forum Metro station with the intent of taking the train to the airport, but along the way we hailed a cab and made it in plenty of time.

We couldn’t leave Copenhagen without some more cloud displays so Mother Nature cooperated by given us multi-layers at take off.

You can see from the above image (after enlarging it by clicking on it) that we flew on Air Berlin. Everything was great on Air Berlin but the food. The sandwiches were horrible.

South of Copenhagen the clouds broke for some nice views of the countryside. We didn’t fly direct to Paris. Hence, the plane never got that high in the sky.

These islands off of the main Denmark masses all seemed to be populated. I’m not sure which islands these are, but they may have been part of the Rago Sund near Southern Zealand.

The plane wasn’t full so Ellie’s stuffed animal, Maja, even got a seat.

This is Dusseldorf, Germany where we made our connection to Paris.

Posted on August 11th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: clouds, copenhagen, pictures, Travel. Comments: 1

We were so looking forward to our trip to Oslo, Norway. But as the time for departure approached I almost wished we hadn’t booked it. First, the weather forecast was horrible. We were only going to be in Oslo for one day and the prediction was for a high of only 62 degrees. Worse was that it was supposed to be raining all day long.

Then my daughter got a migraine headache the morning of the day we were going to leave. This was her first of the trip. She has had migraines in the past but not in the last few months. They tend to come in bunches for her which meant that she’d probably be getting them on the ship and in Norway. The thought of these potential migraines meant that she wouldn’t have any fun and we probably wouldn’t either. Plus, she tends to vomit with her migraines and we were going to be packed like sardines in a little cruise ship cabin.

My daughter took a nap as we weren’t going to be leaving until afternoon. After she woke up we road our bikes to the dock on the north end of Copenhagen; by the time we got to the ship her migraine was gone. Luckily, for all of us, she didn’t have any more.

The views from the top of the cruise ship were spectacular. We had some interesting vantage points of Sweden, Denmark and everything in between including the wind turbines. The cruise begins in the late afternoon from Copenhagen. It arrives in Oslo, Norway at about 9:30 the following morning. The first and last couple hours are the most interesting in terms of views as you can see Denmark and Sweden at the outset. You can see Norway and the fjords for the last few hours.

The passengers were an interesting mix. There were about 140 students from all over the world from Copenhagen Business School. I’m guessing that the rest of the 1,000+ people on board were about 55% Danish, 30% Japanese tourists, 10% Norwegian, and 5% from other places.

We had a nice dinner and then the kids went to the cinema to see Indiana Jones (in between checking out all of the other activities like foosball, Legos, disco dancing, etc.). My wife and I socialized with the two other faculty members who were on board. One is from Maine and his wife is Danish. The other is from Australia.

As far as I could tell the sky never completely darkened, although I suppose it did for a few hours after midnight. When I turned in at 11:30 there was a beautiful reddish, orange glow (not really a sunset) in the north. I didn’t have my camera with me at the time.

I woke up early, after not having slept much with all of the college students “sleeping” in nearby cabins, and went up top to see the Norwegian Fjords. It wasn’t raining, like the forecast said it would be, but there were only occasional breaks in the total cloud cover. The views were amazing.

You could spot scenes like the above of fishermen in the fjords. There were loads of little islands, some with cute houses or other buildings on them. In the distance you could also see a couple of cruise ships trailing us.

The next two days I’ll post some pictures and discussion of Oslo; the fourth entry on Oslo will be our journey back to Copenhagen.

Posted on July 25th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: clouds, norway, pictures, Travel. Comments: None

At long last we arrived in Denmark on Thursday morning. We arrived but some of our luggage wasn’t so lucky. I believe this is the fourth time in my life that some, or all, of my luggage has been lost or delayed. Losing luggage seems like something that shouldn’t happen to a person more than once in their life.

The letter I received from the university said that someone would meet us outside of customs. No one was there. When I called my contact person they said the person was inside the baggage claim area, and I had missed them. Great! How does one go backwards through customs?? It turns out in Copenhagen you can.

Customs in Copenhagen, I should mention, are the easiest customs I’ve ever been through. You just follow the sign that says you have nothing to declare and walk out the door. There wasn’t a single person there to look through your luggage, and the passport stamp didn’t involve a single question. I’ve been interrogated in our friendly neighbor Canada more than once. In Mexico you push a button and about one in three people who get a light when they push have their luggage gone through. Copenhagen was a welcome change.

At our apartment we learned another lesson. The 2^nd floor in Denmark is what we would normally call the 3^rd floor. So when our apartment key envelope said “2^nd floor” we went up one flight of stairs and tried the doors. Our key didn’t work. Luckily the occupants weren’t in or we would have looked like robbers. After much stress (we were jet lagged and very tired which didn’t help), we tried more doors in the building, eventually finding ours on the 3^rd floor.

I feel asleep immediately as did the rest of the family. Somehow my wife woke up after a few hours at about noon (3 a.m. by my body’s clock) and woke the rest of us up so we would sleep that night. I felt like the walking dead for a half hour or so.

I snapped a few pictures from the inside of our apartment, as well as a couple of what we can see outside our windows like the local church–Sankt Markus, before we went out exploring for the first time.

Posted on June 29th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: frederiksberg, living in copenhagen, pictures, Travel. Comments: None

One of the more popular questions in Japanese travel forums on the internet relates to finding the best rates for changing U.S. dollars into Japanese Yen. That being the case, I did a comparison last year and posted my results here.

Subsequent to creating that web page, others have emailed me their experiences. In the future, people can compare stories by responding to this blog entry.

Here is one that I just received yesterday:

I found your study to be very thorough and just what I was looking for. Some new info as of June 2008:

Bank of America skims off 3%, so you get approx. 104 yen (exchange rate is 107) but no “additional” service fees if you change $1000+. Narita airport website now lists exchange rate. If you bring cash, it is 104 yen (I’m guessing there is a fee attached as well, but can’t confirm). If you bring Traveler’s Checks, the exchange is 106. So that seems to be the best option, if you can get your TC for free at your bank, then wait until you are in Japan to do the exchange.

(Lonely Planet (newest version) says you will pay fees at Japanese banks and airports to exchange, so I’m undecided at this point about what to do.)

There were no fees at Japanese post offices if you had international postal money orders in hand, and I don’t believe that has changed.

I’ve noticed in preparation for my trip to Europe next week that my credit card companies are charging more than they previously did. My MasterCard is taking 3% off the top for currencies other than U.S. dollars, and my American Express is taking 2%. Since my American Express gives 3% cash back on restaurants, and 2% back for travel-related purchases that won’t be bad. Hopefully people will take American Express, and I won’t be forced to use my MasterCard (which only gives 1% back).

Leave a reply if you have additional, first-hand experiences that can help people save money on currency exchanges.

Posted on June 20th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: budget, cheap, compare reserve trip, Japan, Travel. Comments: 4

So far we have purchased Top 10 Copenhagen, Lonely Planet’s Copenhagen Encounter, and Rick Steves’ Paris 2008. After our disappointing guidebook results with Japan last year, I don’t want our much longer stays in Europe beginning next month to encounter the same frustrations.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Or any that you would suggest we avoid or not follow?

We will probably be in Copenhagen for about 30-35 days, other parts of Denmark and Sweden for 5+ days, and Paris for about 6 or 7 days. So we probably still need something to help us figure out what to do and see in Denmark (outside of Copenhagen) and Sweden.

Posted on May 18th, 2008 under Denmark, Paris. Tags: copenhagen, Denmark, france, guidebooks, guides, Paris, recommendations, reviews, Travel. Comments: 1