Skip to main content

Our first wrinkle!

And no, I'm not talking about facial wrinkles - although between the 6 of us seniors we do have just a few of those! I'm talking about a transportation strike wrinkle!!  The French LOVE a strike so I guess we should be embracing the upcoming strike action as part of the "true" French experience!  Last week it was announced that there would be a one day transit strike on Sept. 10, and a one day nationwide strike on Sept. 18, backed by France's eight major unions...and if anybody loves a strike it is SNCF (the French national train company) so I'm pretty sure they will participate.  This announcement has left us all scrambling a bit.  John and Babette were set to arrive in Paris on Sept. 10, and we have already purchased train tickets for travel between Bordeaux and Dinan on Sept. 18.  One good thing about French strikes, they are required by law to announce exactly who will be striking 24 hours ahead of the called strike.  So far, we have heard talk of air traffic controllers, Metro, SNCF national train company, and others...but none of it is 100% confirmed at this point - we are too far ahead of the 24 hr. rule.  But rather than be left in a jam, scrambling with hundreds of other travelers, we have all pre-emptively adjusted our plans a bit.  John and Babette get to extend their trip a bit...they opted to leave 2 days early and are actually flying right NOW (aren't they lucky...2 extra days in Paris?!), and I cancelled our train tickets for Sept. 18 travel and scrambled to find a rental van that we can pick up in Bordeaux.  We were trying to avoid a long day in the car, but I guess 5 hrs driving through the French countryside isn't all bad, right?!  I'm sure we will have some BON DÉLIRE adventures along the way.  We could have waited and figured it all out in France once the specifics of the strike were announced, but I just felt better getting things squared away before we even leave.  (And don't worry...we will be taking trains on 2 other "non-strike" days. There is no way Gary will go to Europe and not take some trains - he loves European train travel!!). 

In true French style..."c'est la vie"!



Comments

  1. Lori MKSeptember 13, 2025 at 4:07 PM

    I think you were quite smart to prepare in advance for the possible strike. You may have avoided some major future headaches. Hope all goes smoothly!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Here we go again!! (subtitle: If we are traveling to Europe, of course Kathy is writing another blog!)

France... again ?!?  Well, let me explain... Two years ago we explored much of France with Gary's brother John and his wife Babette https://4huntsinfrance.blogspot.com ).  We spent one month and covered a lot of ground; our main stopping points were Amboise, Sarlat, Carcassonne, Collioure, Avignon, Annecy, Colmar, and Paris - spending 3-5 days in each town.  Now, if you were to plot those cities/towns out on a map, you would see that we were only in central, southern, and eastern France. So it only seems fitting that we round out our French explorations with another  trip to France, this time covering more of the western side of the country. And this time we are adding another brother and sister-in-law to the group. We have previously travelled to Europe twice with Ron and Lenore and had great fun traveling with them on a Mediterranean cruise/Barcelona/Istanbul and also Norway/Ireland/Scotland.  So now 3 Hunt brothers and their wives will be exploring Bordeaux, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

September 11-12 Travel day!

 Here we go (or as the French say, "on y va"!  All that planning and the day is finally here!  We were picked up by Ron and Lenore and the chattiest driver you ever saw!  Tons of traffic getting to SFO and I was so glad we had built in "extra time" to get to the airport. We have flown French Bee several times to France.  If you are not familiar with this airline, it is a budget airline, prices can't be beat, but it is NOT fancy.  This time however, we opted to travel in the "Premium" section of the plane.  I wouldn't call it "1st class", but by budget airline criteria, its as close to 1st class as you can get! As soon as we walked into the International Terminal at SFO we headed to the Premier check-in counter and we were the 1st ones there, checked in super quickly and headed toward our gate.  We knew the airplane food would not be gluten-free for Gary so we opted to spend our time eating an early dinner at the Gott's Roadside Diner ...
3 comments
Read more