Monthly Archives: March 2006

Paris

Posted on by

Here are some news.

My flights went well… uneventful we could say except for some delays after landing in London and on the flight to France.

I arrived Thursday night and spent a lot of time with my parents. We went to their new country house they bought last year in Normandy. It is very nice and it is located in a busy town… I was afraid it would be lost somewhere amongst farm fields!

I am now in Paris since yesterday to visit some friends and complete the trip preparation. I went to the Syrian embassy this morning and should get my visa on the 31st. Next step is to book a ticket to Cairo :).

As one of you has asked me, I will not talk about all the great food I have been having since I arrived… well, except that it would not be nice for my parents that fed me exquisite Blanquette de veau, Rillettes, Patés, Rosette, Faux-Filet, époisse au lait cru, tarte aux pommes, a killer Tiramisu and the best of all: home made boudin noir (blood sausage). And I almost forgot about the yummy bread and croissants or Bugnes Lyonnaises.

Ok, ok. Just two more things.

First, it is amazing what you can buy in a Supermarket in France nowadays: 600 kinds of yogurt, at least the same number of cheese types and all kinds of great traditional meat products.

Second, if you want to eat a great Tiramisu, come to my parents’ place… or if you live around San Francisco and it would be too far, go to Emporio Rulli located in the departure level of the international terminal at SFO. They have a good tiramisu and other great pastries including a strawberry tart with custard!

As a bonus, I thought I would share a picture of one of my favorite places in Paris. It is an older picture I took some years back but it is raining in Paris today… As I was coming back from the Syrian embassy this morning, I stopped at Cluny-Sorbonne and took a wrong turn to end up in front of Notre Dame, house of Quasimodo and a wonderful building.

IMG_1295.JPG

Enjoy!

SFO-LHR-CDG

Posted on by

Alright, I cannot believe it. I started this site 2 months ago, I quit my job exactly 1 month ago… time has gone so fast because I have been so busy tidding up things here and there. And now, I am leaving tonight for Paris, France.

Surprisingly to me, people have been very supportive of my decision to take some time-off and go on a trip. So far, only my parents have been questioning it, they were a bit worried about the future… well, I guess that is what parents do! 🙂

I have not been to France for almost 2 years so it will be great to see everybody, my family and my friends. It will also give me a chance to explain what I am doing to my parents.

I heard there were large scale student manifestations right now in Paris. I guess moving around might be a bit slower than it could be but hey, it will give me a chance to practice patience and understanding and anybody that has travelled to a foreign country knows that they are two great virtues to exercise.
Well, I have 2 more weeks to complete my preparation. Moving from here to France is actually a good thing because it gives me a chance to see how things are fitting in the backpack I am planning to take for the trip. I do not have everything yet. Maybe 80-90% of my list. The bag is not too heavy so it should work out well once I have everything.

Anyway, I will arrive in Paris tomorrow 6:30PM local time (9:30AM PDT).

Hopefully, it is not too cold and dark in Paris right now. If it is, I will try to bring some sun. Seems like I already packed it in my luggage, sorry for the Californians! 😉

D-1

Posted on by

We came back from a weekend in New York with Ledi yesterday night so I did not do anything during the weekend. We had a very good time and it was nice to get out of the preparation mode and escape for the weekend :).

Tomorrow is the big day. I still have a long list of small things to do but I should be able to take care of them by tomorrow evening.

So today, I called AT&T wireless to suspend my line for the following 5 months. The guy is like “Sorry, we do not offer that option”! He offered me to lower my rate to the lowest rate possible: $20/month but it does not make sense to me.

I have been an AT&T wireless customer since 2000 when I got my first cell phone. I have been through a lot of crap from them including a big snafu with long distance overcharging while I thought I had a national plan…

But I sticked with the service because I had a TDMA phone and that was the best for my house. I actually refused several times to transfer to Cingular because they were not offering that service and wanted to transfer me to GPRS.

And now, suspending a line is not possible! Come on, what is the big deal with that, it does not seem like rocket science…

Well, thanks but no thanks so bye-bye AT&T Wireless/Cingular. I guess I will have to look for a new phone and phone number when I come back in August and you guys will have to update your phone book then ;).

Anyway, back to the to-do list :).

Insurance

Posted on by

One important thing to do before traveling is to buy an insurance (#11 in the list of things to do to prepare a trip). First, since I resigned, I do not have health insurance anymore and second, even if I had, it would not really cover my needs while traveling.

The first names that come to mind when I think about travel insurance are Europe Assistance and World Assistance but with Internet, it is now easy to find information on many insurance companies specialized in long term travels. The most important I think is to find an insurance compatible with the kind of activities you plan on doing.

I bought mine a couple of days ago with the same company I used last year to go to Peru: World Nomads. it is recommended by many people and it covers for most of the physical activities you could want to try included some “extreme” sports like surfing, scuba diving, motorcycle riding… And finally, it is not too expensive, I paid $206 for 5 months!

In case you want to bring expensive items like high end SLR cameras, it is advised to buy an additional insurance for them since the default coverage for your bag under the policy would not cover these items. I am not taking anything very expensive so I do not need it.

So, now , I have an insurance for everywhere except the USA… one more reason to leave soon ;).

What has been going on?

Posted on by

All right, I have not been updating this website much in the last month except for some technical additions.

The truth is that I have been quite busy preparing and taking care of many things. I wanted to update and write more regularly but it did not work out and every time I would think about it, I realized how much stuff I wanted to write about and ended up not writing at all :(.

So, I think I should just sum-up the last month events in one fell swoop here.

I first tried to get a leave of absence from my company but it did not work out due to many factors so I ended up resigning. My last day at work was Feb 15th.

I immediately started setting the dates for my trip. I decided to end my trip early August in Paris so as to be able to attend the wedding of a couple good friends. So, I had to leave as soon as reasonable to have enough time to travel where I want to go. I ended up buying a round-trip ticket to Paris from March 15th to August 17th. I will spend some time in France at the beginning and at the end and maybe some time in England at the very end.

I have been looking for a way to get from Paris to Egypt but I did not decide yet. Many very interesting options and I do not feel pressed to buy the ticket yet.

I decided to vacate my room and told my housemates as early as possible to give them time to find someone to replace me. It just did not make sense financially to keep renting the place for 5 months.

I started looking for options to store my belongings. Self-storage seemed like the way to go but again, it did not make sense to store the motorcycle (and continue paying insurance and registration on it) so I sold it two weeks ago. The good news is that it took me only 2 days to do it 🙂 and I got a fair price for it.

I also sold the old car that had been sitting in the driveway for a couple months then. It was a harder task than the bike since it was not in very good shape. I could not find the number of the guy that offered to buy it from me several years ago (While cleaning up my drawers later on, I of course found the number of the guy! Well, sorry man.) so I had to find some enthusiast that would want to restore it. And it is exactly what I found (Thanks Craigslist). I did not get much for it but I know it will be well taken care of and the buyer, Ed, is happy to own this model again. I kept his email address and phone number. Maybe I can see it sometime in the future.
I moved out last weekend with the help of Sophie, Damien, Karim and Nicolas (Thanks guys). We managed to fit everything Ledi could not take in a 5”x10” storage room that gladly had a high ceiling ;).

I also bought a boatload… well, actually, a backpack-load of small things to complete my list of things to take with me. I will publish it later so that thefts know what to look for (or not) in my backpack down the road.

I also completed a lot of administrative and financial tasks like filling my taxes (due by April 15th guys!), changing addresses, calling credit-card companies to notify them of my plans… boring and time consuming stuff that needed to be done.

Anyway, it is coming soon. I will be in France at the end of next week and in Egypt by the end of the month. I cannot wait :).