I just got back from a two week vacation in Europe. I went to:
London, England
Barcelona, Spain
Marseille, France
Aix-en-Provence, France
Cannes, France
Naples, Italy
Rome, Italy
Florence, Italy
It was amazing. Brexit really helped stretch our dollars in London. The exchange rate at the time was 1.21 USD to 1 GBP, well down from what it was pre-Brexit.
My favorite part of the trip was visiting the island of Capri near Naples. Just unbelievable.
My least favorite parts of the trip were the city of Marseille, the sheer amount of Europeans that smoke, British food, and the experience returning to the U.S. from CDG in Paris*.
Visiting some of the Asian countries would be amazing, but the travel would be a real problem for me. The 8 - 9 hour flight between Fort Lauderdale to London and Paris was awful. I can't imagine what it would be like for significantly longer flights. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if I lived in California or somewhere else on the West coast.
* We experienced European customs four times: at LGW in London, at MRS in Marseille, at LHR in London, and CDG in Paris. Each time, it was a pleasant, smooth, and simple experience.
When we returned from CDG to FLL in Fort Lauderdale, our plane sat on the tarmac parked for 40 minutes. After a 9 hour flight! Then, 300 passengers deplaned down stairs, were loaded onto buses, and taken to the crappiest terminal at FLL, which is also under heavy construction. We were treated to entering the terminal up some narrow, makeshift walkway ramp that seems to mostly be used by construction workers and walking down a really dirty, shitty hallway with all the ceiling tiles missing. Next, we did that stupid U.S. customs procedure where you scan your passport at kiosks, get a printout, and then just hand that to the customs agent instead of your passport. I'm not sure what that accomplishes, but whatever. Then we got to the baggage claim. The bags were not already out and it took us 35 more minutes to get our bags. Then we went outside the terminal and were treated to a bunch of morons that, instead of waiting on the sidewalk for their ride pickup, were waiting and standing in the area where cars are supposed to pull over to pick people up; therefore, cars were just stopping in the terminal roadway causing a huge traffic jam. Even though our ride pickup was waiting in the cell phone waiting area, it took them 25 minutes to reach us due to the traffic while we were standing outside, and we called them while we were still in the baggage claim! I asked people to move on to the sidewalk so cars could pull over and that helped for a little bit, but then they just went back. I asked a cop to get them to move so the traffic could free up and he said he was tired of doing it and to just let the cars hit them.
Welcome to the U.S.A.
