Hey all you well-traveled Obners, I'm leaving North America for the first time in my life. Will my Garmin GPS work over there? Will my cell phone? Will French people hate me?

your phone will probably work, but it'll be pretty expensive to do anything. i always turn data off and stay in airplane mode except if i need to send a text.

just learn some basic french phrases, especially "do you speak english?" it actually goes a long way toward french people tolerating you.

they won't hate you but some will definitely pretend not to understand you when you try to speak French.

Where are you going? I don't trust myself with a cell phone over there. I have a fear that I'll come back with some weird $1000 roaming charges or something. We're taking our Ipad to Spain though. We don't have internet for it but all our hotels have Wi-fi we can use it with for any research we need to do. No danger of fees.

Not everyone feels this way but Paris is one of my favorite cities on the planet (granted my limited time spent in Europe). I stayed in the Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne and got little attitude. It's a younger crowd (students) and I had way more success speaking English there.

Yep. When I went out of the country earlier this year, I took the battery out of my phone at the airport. The combination of my phone in my pocket with a set of keys or anything else seems capable of doing anything. I've pocket dialed people, set up desktop shortcuts to former work contacts I haven't talked to in ten years, randomly surfed the internet, and changed my desktop background to some random picture from the internet all while walking down the street unaware of all the activity going on in my pocket. Better safe than sorry.

There's a lot going on in billy g's pants.

That's only the half of it. There's dozens of Brazilian children wondering who they white daddy is. Billyg is prolific.

The gps will be fine, it only talks to satellites. And what they said about phones. If your provider is a CDMA carrier (verizon, sprint, and some local jankies) it won't work anywhere in europe anyway. If it's GSM (everyone else), it will work, so beware.

yeah i think we will just get a pre-paid phone/s at the airport. that should be cool, right? also i heard they have weird outlets there. is that true?

as for where we will be, we are flying into paris and staying there for about 2 days. then we are traveling waaaay west to Lannion (like the northwest corner area) and staying there for a week.

went to Paris for a week 2 years ago. loved it there.

I haven't been to Paris in 20 years. Hopefully it's still fun.

I spent 10 days in Paris last year, with day trips to Versailles, Giverny and Rosa Bonheur's home in Thomery. I could have spent another week in Paris and still not had enough time there.

Granted, I haven't traveled to many foreign cities but it's going to be tough to top Paris. I would recommend trying to add a few days there and cutting a few from Lannion.

there's a lot of beautiful women in Paris. don't bring your girlfriend/wife bort.

Don't forget to wear your helmet.

everyone who travels should have a universal adapter plug.

ha ha ha awesome.


Yes, most of the rest of the world operates on 220V electricity minimum, as opposed to the 120V standard in the US. So you'll need a "travel adapter" and you won't want to run anything too big on it. Laptops are fine, hair dryers are not.

Still think about the girl that served me in the McDonalds across the road from Gare Du Nord. She wasn't West African or East African or South African or North African so I can only imagine she was from one of those mysterious and virtually unknown countries on the southern margins of the Sahara like Chad or Niger or Mali. Incredible! What a beautiful woman!

I've been to Paris loads of times but I hardly know the city, usually I'm just passing through on my way to Italy. I really ought to spend a few days walking around the place instead of being whisked around in a badly damaged Mercedes by very angry Algerian taxi drivers.

We are staying in Lannion for a week because that's the place we got for free. We will be in Paris for 3 nights, though, and another day at the end of the trip. How should we do the money stuff?

grab some cash out of an ATM when you need it for taxis, tips, etc. and just use your debit/credit card. at least that's what i always do in europe. not much different than here. maybe there are ways to get a better exchange rate...but I don't like carrying a bunch of cash around.

sheesh. they don't wear sneakers over there? this is gonna be a weird vacation.

so far so good! saw some old chapels, the parthenon, and lux gardens. tomorrow the tower, notre dame, arc de triumph, and the louvre (probably 2 days there - we shall see). also i've already discovered a few spots for cd/vinyl shopping.

quick poll - tipping? oui or non?

at nice restaurants, yes. at smaller places/cafes, you can give a small tip...keep some change in your pocket for that.

just realized i never posted in this thread again.

that 2nd pic is awesome.

where is that?