L&T Spring 2025 Strasbourg, Blanes, Clermont-Ferrand

May 21, 2025

 

We’re off.  Thanks to our reliable Julie’s Taxi Service we arrived at Sea-Tac 3 hours ahead of departure time,

 

I usually start these blogs with horror stories about no space-available, cancelled flights that result in vacation days lost, lost luggage, et al.  Well, this time, Teresa bought us guaranteed employee discount seats.  Still not free, but way less than full fare.  It takes the pressure off of trying to get to our first destination on time.  We will be coming home on a pass.  Haha.  Scroll down for that story.

 

We consider ourselves pretty experienced travelers, but we were pleasantly surprised with online check-in.  Usually this works OK on a domestic flight, but not so on an international flight.  Well, during on-line check-in I was enabled to scan our passports.  So, when we got to the airport, we only had to go to an automated bag-tag kiosk to get bag tags and then deposited the bags at the counter (again with no lines).

 

She also upgraded us to something below Business Class.  Apparently, the meals did not get upgraded.  We had ecologically-friendly meals – no plant or animal gave up its life for the meal.  I’d describe it to you, but it was unrecognizable.  Even more interesting, both looked the same even though Teresa ordered different meals.  I’ll explain it to you later.

 

May 22, 2025

 

We’re in Paris after a looooong 10 hour flight.  Now we are waiting for our train to Strasbourg.  Slight panic: Teresa left her trip binder with all our reservation numbers at home.  We’ll have to wing it until Julie can scan the whole book and send it to us.

 

Jet lag gets harder as I get older.  That’s why I retired early!

 

We arrived at the Strasbourg station at about 10pm and walked a half a mile to our apartment-hotel.  One of the nice things about revisiting our favorite towns is we know where to go for food, supplies and fun. So we went to a favorite little Doner Kabob place and split a Doner Kabob meal and a glass of wine.  Let me be clear right from the start of this blog, some people have commented that it seems that all we do on these trips is eat and drink.  That is correct.

 

Quick “nap” and we will rent a car and go visit Teresa’s Aunt Marie in Folkling for lunch.  No time to rest; rest when we get home.