Post Mortem

In hindsight, this was an enjoyable and memorable trip, though candidly not the best I have ever taken. There were several areas where it could have been better, some of which I could have foreseen, others not.

For the things I could control, first off and on a positive note, I am glad I chose late spring, as the weather was great, unlike my winter vacations when it is freezing around Christmas time. There was a bit of rain in both Milan and Munich as well as thunder in Munich, but then again in Europe that is to be expected all year around so you just live with it. The Christmas time vacations are better from the work perspective (I dread thinking about how many emails I will have to catch up on, versus only the small number over the Noel time!), but in Winter it is cold and snowy enough that I need to remember to keep that tradeoff in mind when planning my next trips. My frozen days in Berlin from a year and a half back are still vivid in my memory, as well as some cold-broken blood vessels in my face that I swear are still there to this day.

One concern I had when booking this vacation was that I was, perhaps, trying to fit too much travel into a ten night trip, and that seems to have been borne out. I never quite seemed to hit the right pace for optimum enjoyment on this one:
• Flying from Seattle to CDG, then traveling several more hours to get to Beauvais that same night (to be in place for an early morning flight to Milan) was a difficult way to start. Add to that the unexpected hassle of getting from the "airport" hotel to the airport proper the morning of the flight, and it all added up to a tense beginning.
• The Ryan Air trip from Beauvais to Milan was the most efficient of all, leaving at 8:30 AM and getting me into the Hub Hotel by 1:00 PM, well in advance of the 2:00 PM start for the Monaco Grand Prix.
• Five nights in Milan actually was a bit too long for what the city had to offer. I saw the highlights, Duomo and "The Last Supper, within my first 48 hours of arrival. I did not find the Hop-on/Hop-off bus until my last afternoon (that was dense of me as I usually do that at the start), and the HOHO bus led me to the part of Milan I enjoyed the best, namely the downtown area around Lima station. It was crowded and lively, even though many shops were closed the day I was there (Liberation Day, 2 June).
• An early morning flight from Milan to Munich was not only inconvenient, but it literally took the whole day, with more than a six hour layover in Vienna. I woke at 4:00 AM, and did not arrive in my Erding hotel till after 5:00 PM. In short, a totally wasted day.
• Two days in Erding (Munich) to see Therme Erding was about right, as truth be told I was kind of bored with it (naked young German women included) by the end of the second day.
• The trip from Munich to CDG was also a completely lost day. Granted, this flight did not leave until 3:00 in the afternoon so I did not have to wake up early, but due to unforeseen delays by the German Air Berlin, my already tight connection time of 70 minutes got squeezed even tighter, and I did not arrive at my hotel until 7:30 PM…I had but a tad over four hours to squeeze in my last day of Paris Springtime (which, if you remember, was the original theme of this entire trip!).
• In short, about two and a half of my ten days were spent traveling inside of Europe, and that does not include the time at the beginning and end for the Seattle/CDG flight.

The really inconvenient and extraordinarily long travel times between cities struck me as odd for Europe, where my previous experiences have always been the more anticipated model of efficiency. Though these cities were all only a few hundred miles away, flights with layovers took the better part of a day, and trains, believe it or not, were even less convenient given the locations. Perhaps I just selected a bad combination of cities to visit, but I was amazed given the size of all of these hubs how hard it was to get between them.

In general, my hotel selection was disappointing. Though I received good prices, all (except the last night in Paris) were "in the sticks" and away from the action; none of them had the "walk out the door and be there" experience I seem to enjoy so much more. I expected so much in Erding given that my goal there was to visit the Therme resort, but I was a bit disappointed in Milan and in Beauvais (Paris). I guess in some regards this did not feel much like a trip to Europe as I was never really engrossed in the environment as I have been on my previous trips. Aside from a few hours on my last afternoon in Milan and the short evening in the Millennium Hotel near CDG, I just never found that high energy excitement that makes international travel to major cities such an addiction for me.

One benefit of all the hotels is that they provided free Wi-Fi, something we need to start demanding in the US. In America, it is even backwards, with some of the cheaper hotels providing free Wi-Fi but the more expensive, business class hotels charging for access, presumably because most of their travelers are on expense. Also, most European hotels still either provide little shoe shine kits in the room, or the big machine. Kind of a nice, quaint touch. Of the two, I'd lobby the US for the free WiFi first.

The Armani travelled well, scarcely showing a sign of wrinkle. No snags, cuts or damage as best I can tell.

I really, really need to relearn my German and possibly my Russian. As bad as I felt for not being able to say much in French or Italian (save for "Sei molto bella!"), it would not have been that bad if I at least felt conversant in the other two tongues I have actually studied. I think one of the key things I need to remember for my next trip is to prepare for it well in advance by coming up to speed in German; in fact, I need to follow-through on my earlier goal of making this relearning an ongoing effort. To tell the truth, I can read German pretty well, and I can speak it well enough that the Germans think I am Dutch, not American (which is a bit of a relief), but I still regret knowing quite a bit about those languages yet feeling so much like an illiterate. My Russian is perhaps a bit rustier since my Cyrillic is rusty, but that, too, would come back if I were to devote the effort to it on an ongoing basis.

The most positive note of the trip: I will always remember the French cabbie on that first day who went out of his way to help me on my way to Beauvais, declining even a symbolic two Euro token thank you. Stereotypes die hard, but at least in my mind this one gentlemen's act will always and forever go a long ways to causing me to dispute the "French are rude" axiom, in both myself and others. I am kicking myself for not getting the phone number or name of his company so I could send a thank you note.