Travelling in Europe

Because our trip to the Dordogne was in a very restricted area, we rented a house of a week in the town Domme, France for significantly less than a hotel would have cost. This medieval city was the site where the Knights Templar were held prisoner for a good part of the 14th century after their dissolution in 1307. The instructions that came with our 14th century house and its 3 foot thick stone walls noted that while the toilets/sewer system worked, it didn’t work very well, since the system was commissioned in 1290! The house and the views were fantastic.

Typical of the internet world, we accessed a British site to rent a house in France, owned by a couple in Miami, Florida!

The house had all the modern amenities (dishwasher, washer/dryer, etc.). It had a wifi connection to the French internet, so there was no problem in bringing a laptop (feasible since I didn’t have to cart it from place to place). An iPad would not have worked, since without a USB port, it would have been impossible to download pictures from our camera. Since US cell phones typically do not work on European systems (superior to the American GST system), and since I was only planning on making limited phone calls, I got a “loaner” phone from Verizon which worked in Europe. You have to watch out for those per-minute roaming charges, especially for data, though. The loaner was a Blackberry, which is great for phone and email, but lacks some of the productivity-wasting apps that iPhone and Android users get addicted to. Does have some nice features, though – the ability to turn itself off between, say, 11 pm and 7 am to save battery. Also a nice “Bedside” mode that displays the time when you pick it up.

In addition, I used Skype from my laptop (although recipients of calls complained that I sounded “distant”). So when we got back from our daily tourist activities I could check my email, phone messages and respond to the most important.  Several Skype calls a day cost me about $2.00 for the week.