Thread: Great trip to Europe

Just a quick recap on my recent trip...

Bought rev tickets on Icelandair BOS-KEF-CDG and paid the upgrade fee to Saga Class. It was cheaper to do this than purchase Saga from the beginning. Obviously not lie flat seats, but newer seats none-the-less and still far more comfortable than sitting in economy for the trip. Service was very good.

Landed in Paris, took the metro/RER to Gare St Lazare, then train to Rouen. Rented a car from Hertz at the train station and made the relatively quick (1 hour) drive from Rouen to Honfleur, where we had a room at a B&B. Spent the next several days touring the Normandy area's WW2 beaches, monuments, memorials and the American Cemetery. Absolutely amazing area. Spent one day driving down to Mont St Michel, climbing 900 steps, then back to Honfleur. Fun but tiring day.

Left Honfleur and drove north through Le Havre to Etretat to check out the natural arches, which were pretty cool. That whole area (everything we saw) is so beautiful. Then on to Rouen for the night before catching our train back to Paris the next morning.

Intercities train Rouen-St Lazare, RER to Gare du Nord, then Eurostar to London. Everything went fine until about 10 minutes north of the Channel Tunnel when the train stopped due to some electrical issue. We were stopped for about an hour while they fixed the issue. If you've never sat in a stopped train when it's completely quiet and had a train fly past you at 180 mph without any warning, it's quite startling. Once we were moving again, the remainder of the trip was flawless.

Our main reason for this London visit was to attend Wimbledon. A longtime bucket list item for me was going to get crossed off. We opted to queue as that was about our only (financially viable) way of getting tickets. We arrived at the queue on the first Monday at about 3pm and got our queue card (our place in line) which would guarantee us at least Court 1 seats for Tuesday's matches. Camping was rather fun and an experience that we enjoyed telling the kids about when we got home. Saw some good tennis the next day from the 4th row, and had a time that I'll never forget.

Next day we had afternoon tea at the Savoy, and saw a production at Shakespeare's Globe Theater (one of my wife's bucket list places).

Finally flew home, non-rev, via UA to EWR (spent the night), then on to DFW the following day.

Wonderful time. We'd actually love to find a way to spend a month or so in the summers in Normandy. Just fell in love with the area.