The Crepey Cube

[cremolafoam]

[lalsy]

I am feeling very crepey this week....

My only trip to the US was to California - San Francisco, bit of Route 1, Yosemite, Death Valley, place with enormous trees and mountains, LA, San Diego. I'd love to go back.

[motherinferior]

I have never been to the US. There, I've said it.

[beachyhead]

I've never been to Scotland . I tried once, but the flight was cancelled because of fog.

[bigTillyMint]

Me neither, MU. Unless you count a 6 hour stopover in Houston on the way back from Belize!

But I have been to Scotland - Borders and Edinburgh, Ireland - Dublin and Gallway, and Wales - loads of places

[Blackduck]

I have been to NY (wasn't that blown away tbh), and San Francisco (loved it...). Dp is refusing to ever go to the States again because the fuss they make over immigration!

I have done the Edinburgh Fringe several times (including as a performer) and stayed in Berwick Upon Tweed and Arran.......

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Blackduck, send your DH to Israel. Immigration at Ben Gurion airport makes the JFK bunch look like pussycats.

[hattymattie]

Lalsy - I've done that US trip- it's definitely once in a lifetime trip for everybody.

Mrs S - could you PM me your secret restaurant - pretty please - have French husband so can book and would be good to impress him with a suggestion of my own.

Rudy - yes should have added - from St Sulphice you can either go back over the artists bridge as I suggested or south to the Jardins de Luxembourg and the Pantheon as Crem said.

My DD spent two weeks in India last year on a school exchange. She stayed with a local family and was not ill - she avoided fresh uncooked fruit and veg, except stuff that she could peel. Many of her classmates were less fortunate - so I don't know if she has a strong stomach or the fruit/veg strategy paid off.

[NUFC69]

Well the nearest I have been to Paris is the Periphique (many times! ). DH used to go a lot on business and does keep threatening to take me, especially as I am now more mobile.
We have a strategy normally for holidays - while we're able we are doing long haul, as we get crepy-er we will stick to Europe. Then it's the UK when we're really doddery.

Most of our holidays when the children were young consisted of camping/caravaning in France. I still haven't completely written off doing it again this May.

[hattymattie]

I won't drive on the peripherique. I am perfectly good in my local area, on the Autoroute's and can do Paris to the North of England including the shuttle or ferry but I will not do the peripherique

[lalsy]

Hatty, absolutely, I'd love it to be a twice in a lifetime trip and take the dc.....

[hattymattie]

Me too Lalsy but with three children it's too expensive. When I did it with DH we were footloose and fancy free, also the DC's hate long car trips.

[Blackduck]

MrsS it wasn't even at JFK - it was at Schiphol and then Minneapolis - Nearly missed his connecting flight..... However, on the way back he managed to lug a litre bottle of water through security and all connections - so clearly you can bomb on the way out of the US ;)

Ds wants me to take him to Paris so I may be coming back for tips on what to do/where to go with a 10 year in a bit......

[lalsy]

I know. Those miles of fields with only a broccoli festival between you and terminal boredom....going to see how university finances pan out though and keep it in mind.

[hattymattie]

BD . Yes Lalsy uni finances - I reckon no more holidays for the next ten years. Until DC's of course are so wildly successful that they'll be paying.

[herbaceous]

At LAX a few years ago we had the whole body scanner, general assumption that you're a bomber until you can prove otherwise, etc, then realised you can walk through from airside to landside (to find a decent shop) by squeezing round a temporary partition. Security might need a rethink.

I've got a very good (now gay, ex-boy)friend who lives in New York. I used to go about twice a year, and stay in his Greenwich Village apartment. He keeps inviting us over, but I fear it might not be suitable with a 4YO. The spare bed is essentially just off the sitting room, DS would be horribly jet-lagged the entire time, etc... I do love NYC though.

[NUFC69]

You think you are prepared for everything until a security woman comes towards you in Phoenix Sky Harbour (love that name), pinging on her rubber gloves - I still go cold thinking about it. Sanity reasserted itself when I realised that she wouldn't be doing anything - dubious, shall we say, in a public area. I was quite convinced that I must share a name with a terrorist as I was pulled over so often. My DSil who does look as if he might be one is never stopped. To be fair since the arrival of Estas I haven't had a problem.

DH now thinks that a Eurocamp caravan somewhere where we can cycle, plus a couple of days in Paris might be a good idea so I might get to see it yet!

[cremolafoam]

Bd y dh is the same about us customs and refuses to go to the states on this basis . He is convinced that the finger printing / facial recognition thingy might steal his soul or something.
The good thing about going to the us from Ireland is that you can clear customs before you go on Irish soil . No waiting at JFK or Newark .
Mrs s I have also experienced the tel aviv security machine and it is horrendous. I have also been strip searched at schipol for no apparent reason ( withy my mum)
Lax is hell on earth. I agree with herbs about you being presumed to be a guilty terrorist unless you can prove otherwise . It sure as hell doesn't help to have Belfast emblazoned on your passport.
Glad to have Irish and British passports sometimes .

[lalsy]

We flew somewhere just after that fluid scare, from an airport staffed by exhausted, tense-looking men with sub machine guns. I said firmly to the dc, "Do exactly what they tell you, no matter what". The guy then didn't beckon dd forward through the body scanner and so she asked if she should walk through it. Straight-faced, he said no, go through on your hands. So she did a handstand and walked through on her hands. It certainly broke the tension.

[motherinferior]

Mr Inferior, being a chap whose Touch of the Tarbrush is, as they say, very evident - and also bearing a surname of distinct Muslim origins - is always searched.

I, being a nice white laydee whose antecedents are thoroughly concealed, am not.

[cremolafoam]

[lalsy]

I have never been stopped at airports either. And despite living in one of the drug capitals of London for 20 years, have never been offered any but people are always asking me directions. I think I must look like an undercover police officer - the woolover effect perhaps?

[NUFC69]

I know where you are coming from, MI, but as I said I invariably used to be searched and am a white middle aged woman, but DSoniL who looks Middle Eastern is never touched. I always think he looks like a terrorist, black haired and bearded as he is (not wishing to stereotype here). The difference I guess with your DH is that son in law has a traditional English name. We should all be treated the same.

[Blackduck]

I am always asked if ds is my son, now I know we don't share the same surname, but if you had seen him and me together it is pretty clear we share the same gene pool......
Last time they asked him who I was and he said 'Blackduck' and she said 'yes, but what relation is she to you' and he said 'my mum' and then proceeded to give them chapter and verse on me, his dad, our living arrangements, marital status - the works!

Dp, in a fit of madness, grew a full set of facial hair, had his passport photo taken and then shaved it all off, and he wonders why he gets stopped!

[CointreauVersial]

I've never had a problem getting through airports, but DS is always threatening to make some sort of puerile joke about "bombs in his backpack" at security. I have explained that immigration officers are not known for their senses of humour, although the one that encountered Lalsy's DD is clearly the exception.

I love the US; I spent four months working there as a student (flying kites on a beach - great job!) and did a few "tours". Unfortunately, taking all five of us there on holiday is more than our budget will stretch to at the moment.