Fraaance!
On the heels of my last post... I am either terrible at international travel, or awesome at it.
I have booked:
Day 1 - One hotel room in Paris. One hotel room in Nice.
Days 2-4 - One hotel room in Nice.
Days 5-9 - One hotel room in Paris. One apartment in Paris.
I pretty much have back-ups for my back-ups. I really need to cancel the extras before I end up having to pay for them! But I sent my security deposit for the apartment in Paris last night, and I am just going to trust that it will be fine, and that I am not being scammed for $438US by someone who may or may not be a sweet-seeming young French woman named Sabrina. *g*
I ended up changing my train ticket from leaving three hours after our plane lands in Paris to one leaving the next morning. (Thus, the two hotel rooms that night.) It probably would have been fine... But what if our plane is late leaving Chicago? What if it's late after our layover in Dublin? What if we get tied up in customs, or miss our RER/Metro transfer getting between the airport and train station? I would rather not WORRY about it.
This gives us an afternoon/evening to (fight jet lag and) explore the 12th Arrondissement before heading to Nice. We will also have the entire train trip in daylight, which is nice both for seeing the French countryside and for finding our hotel once we arrive in Nice. It cuts out half a day in Nice, but I'm okay with that. We're going to be pretty low-key during that part of our trip, anyway.
I am SO EXCITED. Can I be in France now?