Free Trip to Paris + 3 Weeks = Winter Tour of Europe

In 15 years together and eleventy-hundred journeys to 20 states and 18 countries, our biggest travel coup (so far) has been:

Winning a trip to Paris.

A few years back, I signed up for a worthy local charity’s $100 travel raffle. Hoping to boost my luck, I doodled cartoons of Parisian monuments all over my fax entry form; after all, who likes to look at stacks of boring white paper all day?  Certainly not charity volunteers.

Well, my doodle gamble paid off, and we won:

Free direct-to-Paris airfare on Air France and a stay at the ultra-swank Four Seasons George V…for two nights.

Exciting?  Well, sure.  Practical to travel 12 hours from Southern California for two nights?  Not so much.

So, we expanded our trip to a winter tour of Europe:

Brussels/Bruges→Amsterdam→London→Paris

For three weeks between mid-December 2003-early January 2004, we turned a free trip into the longest, coldest, most educational, and most expensive vacation we’ve ever taken.  By the time it was over, we were mildly in debt, ready to come home, convinced two weeks is plenty of time for a city-based trip…and nonetheless thrilled with our adventure.

It was Adam’s idea to extend our trip to three weeks, and I almost fell out of a chair when I heard him suggest it.  He was then a movie poster designer employed by an established company; negotiations were just starting for him and his partner to head an entertainment print marketing department at another company, and he felt he wouldn’t be able to take such a long break at one time for, quite possibly, years. (He was right.)

I got to planning as fast as humanly possible.  Grabbed a few Frommer’s and Eyewitness Guides from the library, hit the web, and booked everything via email in five days.

In an age before the iPhone, I made copies of anything that interested me, cut them into purse-sized packets, clipped them together by location, and headed each packet with a page or two detailing loose daily itineraries.  Wherever we were, I had lists and descriptions of all the things I wanted to do.  If we stumbled across something unexpected, I’d make a note of it.  If we didn’t get to something, no big deal.  I just liked feeling we had the bones of a plan each day.

Here’s how it all went down:

BRUSSELS/BRUGES – 3 DAYS

Flew (for free) into Paris just after nightfall.

Took an RER train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the Gare du Nord.

Took a train directly from Paris to Brussels (about 1 1/2 hours).

Cabbed it from the train station.

Stayed at the Hotel Welcome, where each room has a different loopy/fantastic theme.

The hotel is conveniently located next to the city’s spectacular Christmas market.

We ate Belgian chocolate as though it might vanish…and drew a tie between Leonidas and Neuhaus.

Other Brussels highlights over the next two days included:

• La Grand Place
• The city’s incredible collection of Art Nouveau buildings
• Musée Horta, home of one of Art Nouveau’s greatest architects
• Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts, which houses one of Earth’s finest collections of Flemish art
• Christmas lights in
• Belgian Comic Strip Center, set in a former (and fabulous) 1904 department store
• Musée Hergé, which honors Belgium’s (and Adam’s) great comic book hero, Tintin

On our third day we:

• took a train to Bruges
• another to seaside Ostend for lunch along the Albert I Promenade
• and another back to Brussels for the night.

For more on our adventures that day: Missing Bruges

Sadly, we somehow managed to not consume:

• Belgian fries
• Mayonnaise
• Brussels sprouts
• Belgian waffles
• Beer

Yes, I agree.  We should go back.

AMSTERDAM – 2 1/2 DAYS

Cabbed it to the Brussels train station.

Took a morning train directly from Brussels to Amsterdam (about 2 1/2/ hours).

We fell in love with:

• canal-side strolling
• the season’s glittering 9 Alleys
• Indonesian rijstaffel
• the Amsterdam Historical Museum
• the Bloemenmarkt
• Dutch cheese, administered every few hours

For our complete adventures here: Christmas in Amsterdam

LONDON – 6 DAYS

Cabbed it to the Schipol Airport.

We took a 20-minute, roughly $60 flight from Amsterdam to London.

Took the Piccadilly Line of the Tube directly from Heathrow to South Kensington.

Since 2005, many lovely and (relatively) affordable hotels have gone up in London.
Sadly, we were there in 2003-4, the coldest winter Europe had seen since 1903.

The heat in our since-closed lodgings?  Broken.
Every other non-exorbitant hotel room in town?  Booked for the holidays.

So, we went and saw almost everything London has to offer.

Some of our London highlights were:

• The architecture rooms at the Victoria & Albert Museum
• Blackfriars, the best-preserved Art Nouveau pub in the city (174 Queen Victoria Street, Blackfriars tube station)
• Listening to choir practice from the back pew at St. Martin-in-the-Fields
• Checking out the super-cool Design Museum, underneath London Bridge
• A warm, 3-hour lunch at the Tate Britian’s elegant Rex Whistler Restaurant

For our complete adventures, see my article for Galavanting: Freezing Your New Year’s Off, London Style

PARIS – 8 DAYS

Trust me on this…it’s better if I do this in its own post.  It’ll be a doozy.

Continued in
Paris in 8 Days: The Ultimate Itinerary

See also
The Best Little Hoax in Brussels
Missing Bruges
Christmas in Amsterdam
Freezing Your New Year’s Off, London Style
All Creeped Out in the Catacombs of Paris

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