The Gritty Details of Planning, Packing, and Flying (Part 1)

So with a 3 month gap to fill on our calendar between job and school commitments, we had a lot of ideas on how we could fill that time.  We could explore the U.S., but we’ve already lived in most areas of our country.  Monsieur Bacon wanted to learn another language, Madam Salade wanted to eat good food.  As Americans, we were pretty comfortable in Spanish, so our original list included Mexico, Argentina, and Spain.  But everyone we know studies Spanish, where’s the fun in that?  So French it was.  But Paris?  It’s expensive, which is understandable for a modern city with people that “have a job” and can “afford to pay rent”.  But one of our searches for a furnished apartment in France turned up a relatively inexpensive apartment right in the old section of Aix en Provence.  Everything in walking distance, no car required.  Sold.

Planning: 

France has an automatic 90 day tourist visa with the U.S. , no visits to the Consulate or Embassy required.  Our health insurance covered us in Europe (weird, but probably won’t apply to any other Americans).  Monsieur Bacon and Madam Salade updated their passports last summer and decided to get the kids theirs just in case the opportunity to travel came up (passports for children are good for only 5 years).  Our school aged son is homeschooled.  Our furniture was already packed up and in storage for our move.  So we were pretty much set. 

We searched airbnb.com, vrbo.com, and housetrip.com without finding much in our range.  We started looking for sublease websites particular to France and found NYhabitat.com, a website run by a French expat turned real estate agent in New York.  She was very helpful, but paperwork and payment was definitely more difficult than we were used to with say airbnb.com.

We found drastically different prices for airfare on Kayak.com and Skyscanner.net.  We ended up purchasing a ticket on Skyscanner offered by a website, that was a subsidiary of a travel agency, with a British Airways ticket, with most of the flight time on a partnership with American Airways.  Confusing, right?  I think Skyscanner’s prices are so much better because they search these kind of sellers.  After purchasing the ticket, our confirmation page on British Airways showed a receipt for about $200 lower than we paid, but when you try to purchase the ticket directly on BA.com, the price was about $500 more than we paid.  OK, travel agency, you earned your $200 this time.