kerouac

Keep adding links, Pal -- they're great.

I will continue to be looking for this chaos I keep reading about. I think it might behoove journalists to check the meaning of the word in a dictionary.

fuzzbucket

I hear the trains always run on time in Germany...

PalenQ

ridicule her as you want but the French mother of my son is flying out next week from CDG and she just wrote:

<No more pilot strike. But what about trains and RER, and
demonstrations with houligans, we don't know yet !>

At least some French have worries - go ahead and denigrate her again but she is perhaps more typically French than you - French tend to worry a lot IME!

Cheers!

kerouac

Link?

PhillyFan

<Yes I do sort of expect things to go on schedule...late maybe no big deal but the situation in France these days not good.

I agree. And I am perplexed that it is somehow considered unreasonable to expect a first world country to run their transportation on a reliable schedule.

Whathello

What a whining thread. Anybody here who complains that things must go as planned ever traveled ?

PalenQ

Link?>

to what?

Belinda

I find it ironic that Stu's United flight was cancelled.

Also, I heard on the radio yesterday that California passed France as the 6th largest economy in the world.

Whathello

Good for California. Better to hear that than the mass shootings in Orlando.

StCirq

We can't seriously be comparing Amtrak to the SNCF, can we?

kerouac

Excellent! Keep this thread going and the number of North American tourists will fall to tolerable levels. I don't have a solution yet for all of the Chinese tourists that are going to replace them, though.

However, I urge you to start thinking about them so you can complain. "Why are all of those Chinese pushing us out when we don't even like France anymore anyway?"

Keep in mind that the Chinese have already bought the second hotel chain in France (Campanile, Kyriad, Tulip, Première Classe) and they are now in the process of buying the first chain Accor (Sofitel, Pullman, Adagio, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis, F1, etc.) So you will be left in the Saudi and Qatari hotels (basically all of the 5-star hotels) or else those delightful "family owned" hotels with the peeling wallpaper and the leaking toilets.

I can't wait.

PalenQ

So you will be left in the Saudi and Qatari hotels (basically all of the 5-star hotels) or else those delightful "family owned" hotels with the peeling wallpaper and the leaking toilets.>

don't forget your loved airbnb!

kawh

"the number of North American tourists will fall to tolerable levels"

i am a frequent visitor to europe and really hate to read this. i hope it's tongue-in-cheek.

i spend a lot of time in San Francisco and don't really get tired of the tourists. i find them entertaining and interesting and sometimes super irritating. but there's no part of me that wants to post something so hostile toward them.

are "tourists" the last easily identifiable (let's face it, we are...) group that people are allowed to openly hate and demean???

Lois2

often comments here ridiculing tourists....lots of very superior Ex Pats....sort of sad.

PalenQ

i hope it's tongue-in-cheek.>

Nope -at least he is not afraid to say what many Parisians no doubt think but would not say.

maitaitom

"I find it ironic that Stu's United flight was cancelled."

Yep, no guarantees when you're flying these days...on any airline. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that maybe Air France will forget to strike this autumn.

IMDonehere

kerouac will be happy to know, that unless plans change, this will be the first decade since 1970's we have not visited France.

kerouac

Things are looking up.

Whathello

Should I dare say I'm living like a local in Lisbon, in a very beautiful apartment, recently refurbished, complete with AC and all ?
Smack in the center of the old town. And I don't care if locals don't like me, and I don't care if I am supporting their economy, I am not egocentric enough to think I am to be considered as their God because I am a tourist visiting THEIR city.
They don't need me to survive, I hope, I'll be glad to spend my money in what seems a beautiful city and if some things don't please me, I won't return.
Why can't US fodorites do the same about Paris ?
You like it you come, you don't like for whatever reasons, you don't come.
You shouldn't care and the French don't.
But don't go complaining like a pucelle effarouchée that you are mistreated. FGS.

PalenQ

Now Air France pilots are striking June 24 - right?

My friend flies out the 23rd and she said the AF pilots were going on strike the 24th - no she is at peace.