Tom - thanks for posting this wonderful slideshow! And you certainly have covered a good amount of territory - I counted 11 different countries. Now I want to go rent a motorhome and start travelling.
Judy
Posts: 3899 | Location: Berkeley, CA | Registered: 22 March 2005
Tom, I really enjoyed this slide show too. This summer I stayed with a French couple who owned an RV ("camping car") and shared many stories of their travels. This is yet another expression of "slow travel," and the photos of you relaxing by the water with Papillion really show what a great way this is to travel in Europe.
I enjoyed your slideshow. It's so great to see all the beautiful places that you’ve visited. Travel is as much about the journey as it is the destination and I have enjoyed reading about yours with Papillon.
I’m also partial to those beautiful evening sunsets by the water...
Thank you for the wonderful slideshow.
Posts: 790 | Location: California | Registered: 19 September 2004
Thank you all for your very generous comments. I hope that all of you can share in this form of travel.
There is something about leaving a venue and then sitting in your favorite chair and enjoying your favorite beverage and snack (in just the right quantity) and then taking a nap if you so desire.
But more importantly is the opportunity to meet new people and share experiences with the natives. Especially in the small villages. What truly comes to mind are the events in Sainte Marie Eglise, Kas, Nurnburg, Bourdeilles, Ashila, Veliko Turnovo, and a dozen other towns.
As an old gentlemen of Roscoff said to us one night on the beach. "Americans are always welcome in Brittany".
Tom Loved your slideshow. Great places with a lot of relaxing went on, I'll guess. I agree that a good portion of the fun is being able to meet locals and fellow travelers of like mind. Like Kelly, my family traveled almost exclusively by tent camping, trailer, and motor home which gave me my wanderlust. Ruth
Posts: 135 | Location: Menlo Park, CA | Registered: 30 March 2004
Tom, I remember reading your post as you planned your first journey. It's fun to see where Papillon has taken you. Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful photojournal - you do indeed have many more days stored up! Joana
Posts: 116 | Location: Baltimore, MD USA | Registered: 02 June 2003
We live in Vero Beach, Fl and are here until April 22 when we depart once again For Europe. Stay tuned for the next adventure of the Flight of the Butterfly.
Waving to you from our little 15th century village that you visited in Papillion!
Great pictures! Ah, I know those pleasures well as we enter our 3rd year of traveling Europe via RV! ( Well for 7 months and then we come "home" to our tiny village in Spain for 5 months of winter and stretch out in a home with Med sea view and sunshine).
Did you stop blogging last summer? I couldn't find out where you were after a while.
Maybe we can meet up this year. What is your basic plan?
We haven't decided but know we want Poland, Romania and Hungry and probably Corsica, Sardina, Majorca & maybe Paris again.Still considering all.
We were so ambitious last year, that we are trying to not pack too much in. Have you tried a freighter ship yet? We took one from UK to Sweden and loved it!
Last year we got rear ended while sitting in endless Friday traffic on the biggest holiday in France on a rainy day. Yikes! We barely felt it, but the car that ran into us was totaled.
When we went to look we were shocked to see our whole muffler and bumper on the ground! We thought it was hopeless and we were on our way to catch the ferry from France to Ireland!
That happened in June and we are just now getting it all settled! Having a Dutch RV, with accident in France, then temporarily fixed in Ireland, then dealt with in Spain, by an American....complicates things. LOL!
Life is an adventure and we are still having a ball! It happened that the people who ran into us were very sweet and he was a mechanic so patched it up enough for us to get to the ferry on time.
Life is beautiful! Waving to all the slow travelers here too!
we have been without computer for 10 days as the guys from Geek Squad went over it. Seems our Google pages were being redirected to some anti virus scam. They did not even qualify it as a virus no it was just a "punk". But a devilish little thing it was.
Hey WT glad to hear from you. Sorry that we just did not connect in Spain.
Goofy wise we had a tree in Barcelona "eat" a portion of our roof to the tune of 1200 Euro (my bad), and a gang of thieves smash the drivers window and run off with the GPS which I foolishly left in view. That was in Gouda, Netherlands. They followed him home with their camera network but the unit was gone by then.
Did not blog as much last year as I was enjoying myself too much and it does take up some time. Average is 8 to 10 hours per page.
This year we arrive April 23 and slowly go east via Prague and southern Poland (grandparents old home place when it was Slovakia) and see if we can locate cousins. In late May we rendezvous with 11 French camping cars, one Italian and our American friends Bob and Maureen in eastern Latvia for an 18 day swing through Moscow, the Golden Ring and on to Saint Petersburg. Then across Scandinavia into Norway and the last 3 months or so in the UK and Ireland. (We depart tomorrow for DC to get our Russian visas for us and the Butterfly.
In terms of the memories and stories. Oh my yes, and it seems the better ones are centered in the small towns and villages. Beaulieu sur Dordogne, Conques, St Maire Eglise, Kas, Merida, Bourdeilles and on and on and on.
Sorry to hear about your problems, Tom. We are lucky and have had no theft, but we are also very careful and our 1998 RV is not nearly as inviting as your brand new beauty!
We have 3 laptops, a digital piano and such, so wanted to stay low key and undercover as we roam, but you know when we see pretty ones like yours, sometimes we wish we could travel in more luxury.
We still have not gotten into Russia, so that caravan trip sounds great. I have been all over Russia in 1988, but I want to share some of it with my family. Getting the Russia visa from Europe is a little trickier for an American, so I'm not sure if we will get there.
We really looooved Sweden last year and the fjords in Norway are spectacular. We went to some great places in Denmark too and loved Germany ( Romantic road) more than we expected.
We had a few thrills ourselves besides the car wreck, we had to get our tires changed in Ireland. We lost a bathroom vent in low hanging gas station after a long drive in Portugal. We manage to completely lose our bathroom window in Norway as we left it open by accident.
That was a bummer, but some sweet people helped us patch it together with a baggie, cardboard and duct tape. We had it like that for a month until we finally reached Munich where we got the very last one in all of Europe to replace it! ( replacing for 98' can be a challenge) Ha!
Do you ever end up getting lost in rain and darkness? We seem to do that much more than we would like and this year managed to land smack in the middle of an old square near a fountain! GPS can be such fun!Our sometimes likes to lead us on the scariest routes possible!
We also got stopped by German police because our RV can only go 80 uphill and they wanted us to go faster!
Police dogs in Ireland checked our RV for drugs when we arrived at customs from France which was something new for us! ( Netherland plates and all, you see!). So do you have French plates now? Do you find it easier?
Ireland is kind of a pain for RV's but we loved parts of it. There is no public transportation except in Dublin ( great campsite in Dublin!) and wifi is hard to find. We did love Dingle and the Burren. Dress warm, it is like winter in UK often, even in July and August and lots of very gray days.
We did not get back to our village in Spain here until almost December this year, so we don't leave until the end of May.
I thorougly enjoyed following your journey this morning with my tea! Thank you for sharing your wonderful life experience with us! <----- [pretend that's your Papillon travel home)
Being married to the right person is essential. We are in a vehicle whose living space is 18 feet long and 7 feet wide (expandable to 9,5 feet) for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for normally 180 days at a time in a foreign land.
Since we bought a GPS we have not had an argument while traveling.
And with our normal mode of operation, 99 mornings out of 100 we do not know where we will rest that evening. But hopefully by the water.
<----- [pretend that's your Papillon travel home) 
