Jim143 - I also checked idtgv when they became available and the cost was almost double so I waited it out.

Anyone who stays in one place for one week or more has a thumbs up from me Stu. That is the definition of 'slow travel' and I'm all about that.

The only difference is we don't book ahead, we prefer to find something when we see that a place appeals to us.

We've also reached the point where price for travel (plane, train, car)is no longer the primary factor for us. Comfort and convenience come first. So for example, we won't book a 7am flight or train no matter how much money it would save. We just aren't going to get up in the middle of the night to save a few bucks.

Nor will we lock ourselves in to anything. There have been far too many times when we had 'planned' to go somewhere and ended up going somewhere else on a whim. My wife has come to appreciate that freedom to chose what to do when you get up each morning and I've always been like that. Or nearly always anyway.

I always remember sitting in a bar in Antibes, France many years ago. It was the Jesse James Pub which I found amusing in France. Anyway, a bunch of travellers were sitting around in a group and one guy said he had a space in his VW camper for someone willing to share fuel costs and was heading for Pamplona for the 'running of the bulls'. Another guy responded with something like, 'wow, I would love to do that but I have a flight to Rome on Wednesday and a flight to Istanbul the following Friday, I can't go'.

It is the 'can't' that is the blinders I referred to.

Invariably someone will comment as hetismij2 has here, that you may not find a hotel. Theoretically that is of course possible but in 3 decades of travelling without a reservation, I have yet to have to sleep on a park bench. I have ended up sleeping on a bench in a pub though. That wouldn't work with my wife along but then, if she were along I'd just have to try harder to find a bed and I've no doubt I would find one.

We live in a world that runs to schedules and on appointments. Doing that when travelling is therefore what most people are comfortable with. I just see it as giving up freedom rather than risking growing their comfort zone.

Travel can be as simple or as complicated as someone wants to make it. Here's my simple method. Buy a ticket to A; explore A spending as much time and money as you need to without throwing money away; when you are ready and not before, decide where to go next; go to be and repeat the process; continue until either time available or funds available run out; go home.

It doesn't get any simpler than that. And annw, it works with any amount of time. So that dog won't hunt.

>> Here's my simple method. Buy a ticket to A; explore A spending as much time and money as you need to without throwing money away; when you are ready and not before, decide where to go next<<

That wouldn't work for the Gites we stay in. Every time we've asked a gite proprietor if anyone is moving into the gite after we depart, the answer is pretty much the same "this gite is fully booked all the way through mid-October". We stay in high-end gites that have large kitchen/living room areas to accommodate our favorite way to spend an evening - hanging out in the kitchen/living room, preparing a meal, and talking about the day's events - with 3-4 glasses of wine. Swimming pools & gardens are nice if we just want to stay at the gite for the day, get into a good book, and do nothing else except perhaps go to the local farmer's market to get stuff for dinner or lunch.

Stu Dudley

The time *planning* a trip is, for me, nearly endless; the time *on* the trip, quite limited. Not going to spend it stressing about the night's lodging or catching the right train.

Your method works for you & that's great; I don't see the need to disparage other ways of travel.

Jim, I am not sure what you mean by your daylight savings question. Clocks go forward on Saturday night 29 March /Sunday morning 30 March. So on Monday 31 March the tickets will still go on sale at midnight (daylight savings time). What impact would you expect?

I have a simple rule of thumb that says every euro not spent on a train ride is a euro I can spend eating, so yes, I do what Stu does and obsess a bit about getting the best fares (with the understanding that booking exactly 3 months out isn't in every single situation the best way to go about it).

jamikins....sorry for the confusion...yes you are correct...... Don't know what I was thinking. The June 29 tickets were posted last night so the July 1 should be posted tomorrow (Sunday) night.

:) happy travels!

Thank you so much Stu for this advice. After trying every cc we own on the sncf site and having all rejected, we tried Capitaine. The site worked on the first try. We've never had a problem with sncf in past years So I don't know why its a problem now.

>> I have a simple rule of thumb that says every euro not spent on a train ride is a euro I can spend eating,>>

Yes!

I had a similar experience with first class fares. I think they were a whopping 7 Euros more for Barcelona to Paris, and that's a haul. It was a no-brainer for us. So I guess I actually did give up 7 Euros worth of food for comfort. :-)