The IT Nerd

With our trip to France over, it was time for our journey home. And it turned out to be almost like the trip to France. I’ll get to the similarities in a moment. But first we had to drive from Gilhoc-sur-Ormèze to Lyon and we decided to do that the day before our flight as the distance was a 2.5 hour drive and we didn’t want to rushed by having to drive that distance and return the car before our flight from Lyon to Paris. If we were thinking, we would have taken a detour to see stage one of the Tour de France Femmes which started and finished at Clermont-Ferrand which is a short “ish” drive from Lyon. But we were too focused on hitting the hotel that we were spending the night in Lyon which was right across from Lyon airport. That hotel was the NH Lyon Airport and it was a great hotel to stay in. A queen sized room cost us $167 Euros which was way less than the hotel that we stayed at when we saw the start of the Tour de France stage. Plus it had this handy feature:

If you look at the right side of this outlet, there’s a USB-C and USB-A port. Neither was a fast charging port, but they charged our Apple Watches and iPhones just fine. The food was great and priced well as well. My wife and I had a great meal at the hotel for 85 Euros plus tip. This is a hotel that I would highly recommend.

Returning the car was a bit interesting. The Lyon airport has a gas station on the property. But oddly it was out of fuel. To be fair, the rental car company warned us that this might happen, and that we’d have to drive to a nearby town to fill up the car before returning it. Which is what we ended up doing. Since the rental car company that we used was on the airport property, we decided to walk back to the hotel as that was a great way to close our rings on our respective Apple Watches. In the process of doing that we saw this:

The Lyon airport has a stop for the TGV which is the high speed rail line that runs throughout France. While we would have loved to have taken this mode of transport, it didn’t work for us on this trip. Perhaps on a future trip we will do so.

The next day we packed up and walked across the street to Lyon airport. After checking in and boarding our flight on Air France to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. From there, we would catch another Air France flight to Toronto Pearson. Now the flight to Charles De Gaulle airport was late, but we tracked our luggage being loaded onto that flight, and unloaded off the flight using the AirTags that were inside them. And that’s when things went off the rails so to speak. The luggage never got loaded onto our flight to Toronto as evidenced by this picture:

The luggage just sat there right up to the time we took off. Now there was the slim possibility that when we landed, the luggage would be there. But when we made our way through customs and got to the luggage carousels at Toronto Pearson airport, our luggage wasn’t there. And checking the FindMy app confirmed that they were still in France. And that was further bolstered by my wife and I being paged by Air France to head to the lost luggage desk. There we filled out paperwork to get our luggage back. That’s when they said it would take three days to get our luggage back as they had to find it first. That’s when I took out my iPhone 14 Pro and showed them the location it was in. That’s when their tune changed and said that they would have it on the next flight out. Which to their credit they did as it arrived in Toronto later that night and was delivered to our home the next day. And for the record, unlike the flight to France where there was 20 Euros of compensation, there was no compensation for this incident.

What I took from this interaction is the same thing that I took from the first time that this happened to us on this trip. Air France and sister airline KLM won’t do anything to get your lost luggage back to you in a rapid manner until you shove a phone in their face showing them that you can live track your luggage using an AirTag. The second that you do that, their tune changes and they will make sure that you get your luggage back quickly. And because of that, I’d strongly recommend that anyone in the Apple ecosystem who travels should use AirTags in all their luggage to hold airlines accountable for their luggage. Not only that, my wife suggests that if your luggage is lost, you need to push them to act quickly and force them to deliver on what they promise. Otherwise she believes (and she’s not wrong in my opinion) that airlines will do whatever they want whenever they want.

Another thing that I’d like to say is the fact that this happened twice on the same trip when flying with KLM/Air France doesn’t put KLM/Air France in the best light. Now it is possible that because we took a route that had connecting flights, maybe there wasn’t enough time to move the bags between flights. Or that perhaps the grounds crews at the airports in question have some issues that played into this such as not enough staff, or the staff simply don’t care. But at the end of the day it’s KLM/Air France that is responsible for making sure that the checked luggage of their passengers makes it from point a to b on time as close to 100% of the time as possible. This experience makes me wonder if the next time we fly to France, if avoiding KLM/Air France and flying on another airline is a good idea. I’m not sure about that at present. But if KLM/Air France happens to read this, they are free to reach out to me and tell me why I should consider them for a future flight to France (or Holland for that matter seeing as KLM is the national airline for Holland).

In closing, I’d like to say that other than our luggage issues, our trip to France was spectacular. It’s left us with a lot of good memories and we’d love to do it again. I would also suggest that you take your own trip to France as we only scratched the surface of what this country has to offer, and create your own memories in the process of doing so.

After our trip to the start of the Tour de France stage, my wife and I relaxed for a couple of days. For starters, we walked the kilometre from where we were staying to Gilhoc-sur-Ormèze to get freshly baked bread every morning. Something that I highly recommend as fresh from the oven bread in France is next level as far as we are concerned.

Here’s some pictures of the walk:

We also had to take our recycling to a designated location as there is no trash and recycling pickup. So we did a couple of walks over the last couple of days to do that as well. Here’s the location that we took it to:

We placed glass, plastics, and paper in the right bins. And we’re told that these bins are emptied once a week.

Gilhoc-sur-Ormèze is pretty rural where the main industry is farming as evidenced by these photos that my wife and I took on one of our walks:

Fun fact: On our first day here, we had a herd of cows walk by our front door. That was interesting to watch as we were not expecting that. But our hosts said it happens “all the time”.

These are sheep that are raised for their wool as well as for food.

These walks were a great way to close our rings on our respective Apple Watches. Speaking of tech, here’s what we brought with us to France:

• Our respective M1 Pro 16″ MacBook Pros
• My Apple Watch Ultra and my wife’s Apple Watch Series 6 along with a few bands each and our respective TimePorters to charge the watches and hold the bands.
• A pair of InCharge XL charge cables
• My iPhone 14 Pro and my wife’s iPhone 13

I also decided to take this along as an experiment to see if it would work for international travel:

This is a power converter that is said to handle up to 2300W. The ideal is that you plug this into the wall using the supplied adapters, and it will step down the voltage from 220V/240V to 110V/120V. You then plug the devices that you have, computers or iPhones for example, into the USB-A or USB-C ports or the three outlets on the top. My thought was that this would create a single place to charge everything. Great plan. But I noticed a bunch of issues. For example, when both 140W power adapters were plugged into this device, one of the MacBooks would charge fine. The other would stop and stop charging every 30 seconds. And near the end of our stay, we were finding that our iPhones would have difficulty charging from the USB ports. Now it is possible that I have a defective unit which explains all of this. Regardless, I will likely not be using this again and I’ll be going back to using adapters for all the tech things when I travel.

As for the car, I drove the Peugeot 2008 that I have pictures of here. My driving impressions go something like this. It handles really well as it was more than capable of dealing the narrow, twisty roads in the area around Gilhoc-sur-Ormèze. While I did feel that it was capable of more, I never pushed it that hard. In terms of room, it fit 5 people (driver, front passenger, three adult rear passengers) in it. Though I suspect that you don’t want to put three people in the rear seats too often. If I had to compare it to a car that I’ve reviewed, it’s around the size of a Mazda CX-30. It also handles just as well.

Here’s a couple of extra things that I noticed:

It has a fully digital display that uses some sort of trickery to make your eyes think it’s 3D. It’s kind of neat. Though my wife thought it was a gimmick.

It had just enough room to fit both suitcases in the cargo area. But our computer bags needed to go on the floor behind the second row feet. There’s storage below the false floor.

The screen was easy to read. But this car didn’t have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in it. Which is odd as a Google search indicates that it is in theory a standard feature in this car. I ended up using my iPhone to navigate when required as I didn’t trust the built in navigation system. The reason being that some of the roads that we were on said “area not mapped” which you can see at the bottom left of the screen in the picture above.

One thing that took some getting used to was this gear shifter. It’s electronic and it took me a couple of days to get used to shifting into revers from drive and vice-versa. Also you have to press the “P” to put it into park. Different for sure. But like I said, I got used to it.

That’s all from France. The final post from this series will cover the trip back to Toronto. Stay tuned for that.

My wife and I started out not doing a whole lot today. But things got busier at the end of the day when we started to notice that our window for seeing a Tour de France stage was closing. Our plan was to go to the start of Stage 18 in Moûtiers in the Savoie department. And we would do that by leaving at dawn on the day of the stage and drive 2.5 hours to Moûtiers. But we started noticing in the early afternoon on Apple Maps that roads were starting to close and traffic was increasing. So we made the snap decision to pack a change of clothes and some of our tech and drive there that night. Not to mention we also needed to find a hotel to stay in.

One challenge that we had was the fact that Apple Maps was showing us times as long as 5.5 hours to make a drive that should take us 2.5 hours. That’s where I flipped over to Waze which is a Tour de France partner. It not only gave us a route that took us just under 3 hours, but it directed us to a parking lot recommended by the Tour de France organizers which was 3 minutes away from the hotel that my wife found en route via her Expedia app. More on the hotel in a bit.

The drive took us along two highways that were toll highways. And the way they did the tolls was kind of cool. When you enter the toll highway, you take a ticket that is barcoded. When you get to the end of the toll highway, you put that ticket into a machine which calculates the toll that you owe and you can pay by cash, or by tapping your credit card. I chose to use Apple Pay and that worked fine. Though I will note that Apple Pay did not work everywhere that I tried it. So make sure that you have your physical credit card on you just in case.

We arrived in Moûtiers just after 10 PM local time and parked in the location that Waze told us to park. Then we walked to the hotel. When we arrived there it seemed closed and we were really confused until we saw a sign that was written in French (of course) and told us to dial a number after 9PM. We did that and we were directed to a door that had a keypad on it, we then punched in the code which was “1234” which is super secure, and then we were directed up to our room which was open with the key inside.

Interesting.

The room itself had a bathroom that was recently renovated, but that was the high point of the room. Other than that, there was really nothing special about it. Or the hotel in general. Other than this view:

Given that the hotel cost us 235 Euros for the night (which dropped to 80 Euros the next day because the Tour de France wasn’t in town), I would expect that we would get a good view for that kind of money.

Moûtiers is in a valley surrounded by mountains. In fact in stage 17 of the Tour de France which happened earlier in the day, the riders went through Moûtiers and went up the climb of the Col de La Loze which tops out at and elevation of 2,304 meters or 7559 feet. The race as cyclists would say “exploded” on that mountain with all sorts of action. If you want to know exactly what happened, this quick video from YouTuber Lanterne Rouge will help you with that as he does a great job of explaining the nuances of bike racing.

After eating breakfast (which was another 32 Euros for both of us) at the hotel, we checked out and headed to the start area for Stage 18 of the Tour de France. If you travel to see the Tour de France, you really want to check out the start areas as they tend to be the most interesting. And you have the best chance to see the riders in a more relaxed environment. Let me walk your though what I saw:

The teams come from their hotels to the start area via buses that are fully “pimped out” as the kids say. You can find out what I mean by that by watching this video by Global Cycling Network which walks you through the Team UAE bus. But in any case, this bus is the one that belongs to the Spanish team Movistar. The riders will get dressed on the bus, be briefed by the team managers about that day’s stage, and prepare to sign in and go to the starting area from there.

The bikes that the riders will use in the stage are also laid out and ready to go. The team mechanics would have worked all night outside the team’s hotel to get them ready for today, and then those mechanics will go to the finish of the stage to do the same thing to get them ready for the next day’s stage. In this case, you’re looking at the bikes belonging to the Belgian Soudal/Quick Step team.

The only thing that needs to be done is that the mechanics make sure that the tires are at the pressure that the rider of the bike wants, and as you can see above the mechanic puts a sticker on the handlebar that tells the rider where the feed zones are, where to eat and drink, and what the course looks like. While that information is often programmed into the bike computer that the riders use, it’s often easier to look down at the sticker in the middle of a race. I’ll also point out what looks like to be pink tape on the fork of the bike you’re looking at. What that actually happens to be is a piece of a latex inner tube that covers the race transponder that keeps track of the transponder that keeps track of where the rider is on the course.

Fun Fact: Latex inner tubes are used by some teams because their light weight leads to lower rolling resistance. Or put another way, you go faster with the same level of effort. But unlike butyl inner tubes, if you puncture them, you cannot patch them easily. Thus teams recycle them to cover up the transponders.

On the seat is another device that sticks out from it that is another transponder that broadcasts anything from speed, to other metrics like cadence, power and heart rate if the teams allow that information to be broadcast so that TV viewers can see it. In most cases, the teams don’t allow anything other than speed as they are afraid that other teams will watch the race on TV (which they do) and see how hard riders from opposing teams are working.

The team cars that follow the riders have spare bikes in case the rider has a mechanical issue. The most important riders on the team have their bikes on the outside so the people in the car can get to it easily. The less important riders have their bikes further towards the middle of the car. And there’s usually a sheet of paper in the car detailing where all the bikes are located on the roof. In this case, you’re looking at the spare bike of cycling superstar Mathieu Van De Poel or “MVDP” as he is also known as. Fun fact: This bike is the Canyon Aeroad, but this specific one is a model that is not currently released for the public to buy and he is the only one on the Dutch Alpecin Cycling Team that gets to ride this version of the bike. His teammates must “make do” with the version of the Aeroad that is available to the public.

Speaking of “MVDP”, here he is riding to the sign in area on a copy of said unrelased bike.

His teammate Jasper Phillipsen gets a green bike because he is the leader of the points classification which is the completion for the sprinters. Because he leads that classification, the Tour de France gives him the green jersey so that fans know he’s the leader of that classification. Canyon who sponsors the team gave him a bike to match the jersey. Bike companies will often do that if one of their sponsored riders leads one of the Tour de France classifications.

Fun fact: The version of this bike that Phillipsen is riding is the one that you that you and I can buy and not the version that “MVDP” gets. Here’s a write up on what is different about “MVDP’s” bike. The differences a very minor. But at this level of the sport, those differences matter. Highlighted by the fact that “MVDP” has won two of the biggest one day races on that bike this year. Specifically Milan San Remo and Paris Roubaix.

Speaking of unreleased bikes, the black bike on the roof of the French AG2R team car is an unreleased bike from BMC that was designed with the help of the Red Bull F1 team and is likely the spare bike of Ben O’Connor who finished fourth overall in the 2021 Tour de France. You can read more about this bike here.

The protocol for Tour de France riders at the start is to ride to the sign in area, sign into the race (you have to sign into any bike race that you participate in), go on stage to be introduced to the crowd, then eventually make their way to the start area before the race starts. This is the sign in area where the is a stage for the riders to be introduced to the fans.

The media is out in force at the start area getting interviews from riders and team managers alike as well as filming bits of video to be broadcast during the race. In this case, former cycling superstar Alberto Contador is filming a bit of video that was used during the race broadcast on sports broadcaster Eurosport.

This is Bryan Couquard of the French Cofidis team being interviewed by the media outside the team bus. He’s one of the top French sprinters and was considered to be a favourite to win stage 18.

This is French cycling superstar Julian Alaphilippe of the Soudal/Quick Step cycling team. He’s a superstar in the sport of cycling having finished fifth in the Tour de France in 2019, won numerous stages at the Tour de France over the years, and having won 2 world championships back to back among other big wins. As a result, fans always want to get autographs and pictures from him.

This is 2019 Tour de France winner Egan Bernal of UK based Team Ineos riding to the sign in area He’s wearing a cool vest to keep his core body temperature down as it was 35 degrees celsius that day. For the riders, keeping cool is a priority to ensure that the perform at their best.

This is 2020 and 2021 Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar of Team UAE riding to the sign in area and also wearing a cool vest. He was the odds on favourite to win the race this year. But he broke a wrist a few months ago which hindered his preparation for this race, and he appears to be sick as he lost six minutes to the race leader on stage 17 when he couldn’t keep pace. He was second overall when this picture was taken. He was also wearing the white jersey as he’s the leader of the best young rider classification (which is for riders under the age of 25) in the Tour de France for the third year in a row.

This is Simon Yates who races for Australian team Jayco. He was fifth overall having finished stage 17 in second place.

And this is his identical twin brother Adam Yates who races for Team UAE. He was third overall when this picture was taken. Fun Fact: Both brothers on stage one got clear of everyone else and battled it out between themselves to win the stage. In the end Adam won the stage and got to wear the race leader’s yellow jersey until stage 5.

Speaking of the yellow jersey which is what the race leader wears, this is Jonas Vingegaard of Dutch team Jumbo Visma who is the current race leader. He grabbed the lead on stage 5 and on stages 16 and 17 all but put the race to bed by putting in incredible performances to widen his lead. He’s the defending champion of the race.

Here’s another picture of Jonas Vingegaard in what is known as the “mix zone” where reporters get to interview the the riders prior to them heading to the start area which is to the left of him.

Once you get the start line, you get to chill out for a bit before the racing gets going. Number 111 in this picture is Biniam Girmay who races for the Belgian InterMarche team. He’s the first person from Africa (he’s Eritrean) to win a big one day race which was Gent–Wevelgem as well as being the first person from Africa to win a stage at the Giro d’Italia which is another “Grand Tour” like the Tour de France.

This picture was taken just before the start of the stage. Now the stage start is ceremonial as the riders will ride behind the official’s car at a slow pace on the way out of town until they reach “kilometre zero” where the actual race starts. In the case of today’s stage, that was 16 kilometres outside of town.

Just after the start, the thousands of people who were in this town to see the start quickly left town. Essentially emptying the place out. We stayed for another 90 minutes to have lunch before returning to Gilhoc Sur Ormeze. And that’s where we checked out our haul of swag. The Tour de France is a massive commercial event and sponsors of the teams as well as the Tour are known to give away a ton of swag. A lot of that is given away via the “publicity caravan” that precedes the riders by approximately 30 to 40 minutes.

And if you’re quick enough to grab the swag that is being thrown out to the fans at roadside, you’ll get a haul like this:

Not pictured here are two polka dot t-shirts and one polka dot hat. The polka dots are on the jersey for the best climber in the race who unfortunately I did not get a picture of.

That was our Tour de France experience. And we’ll likely take it easy tomorrow as a result. But I will be posting about the tech that we used and how it’s worked for us. Stay tuned for that.

Day two of our French vacation had us going to a market in a place called Lamastre which is in the Ardèche department. This market happens every Tuesday and it basically shuts down the town as people come from all over the region to shop there. You basically drive in on the windy, narrow roads to get there. Pay one Euro to park, and then walk into town to do your shopping. Here’s some pictures that illustrate what this market is like:

It was very interesting to walk through this market and see what was on offer. It wasn’t just food that was available for purchase, but you could get clothes, housewares, anything that you would need. Apparently this market runs all year round and is a must go to for those who live here.

Later in the evening, our hosts took us down into a town called Tournon which is also in the Ardèche department to this restaurant:

It specializes in fish and comes highly recommended by a relative of our hosts. I have to admit that it was very good. But since I am not the foodie in this relationship, here’s how my wife described the meal:

Our dinner started with some delightful amuse bouche of gougères and pâté piped onto a puff biscuit and served individual plates of fresh sardines and mousse and some local mini cress.

After we made our selections for the meal we decided to go light on alcohol it was decided a simple local wine from Crozes-Hermitage Blanc, Rhone, France would do the trick.

I had ordered “Saumon d’Ecosse Label Rouge, Sauce Teriyaki Cerise Haricots verts et noix de Pécan” for my entrée and “Velouté froid de petit pois, panna cotta chèvre de Briqu’et Vache served on the side for him. And yes the menu was written only in French which translated to beautiful salmon with teriyaki glaze served with green beans for me and a cold appetizer of locally sourced goat cheese served with pea puree soup for him.

The main or “plat” I had ordered “Le Lapin Bleu Blanc Coeur aux olives kalamon, Tarte pesto et courgette, jus à l’estragon” which the best I can describe as rabbit cooked beautifully with a mini pesto topped with kalamata olives and zucchini tart served with tarragon sauce – for him “Poisson selon arrival, jus de betterava, Caviar d’aubergine fumée, boulgour aux herbes fraîches” which was the fresh white fish (catch of the day) served with beet sauce on top of bulgur cooked with fresh herbs but the smoked eggplant was perfection die for (yes I sampled some of that).

Dessert of the day was a divine mini Paris-Brest with some local wild blueberry cream and wild blueberries.

Driving back to where we were staying in the mountains at night was highly stressful as it was much more difficult to pick out corners and anything that would quite literally send us off the side of a cliff. What didn’t help was the fact that I was initially relying on directions from our hosts. But to take one source of stress off the table, I used Apple Maps to get us back. While Siri’s pronunciation of French words made our hosts laugh, it did direct us to where we needed to be correctly.

Tomorrow is a bit of a down day to start, but a bit a stressful day at the end. Find out why when I post the next part of our trip tomorrow.

Our travel day was a bit of a mess. But once my wife and I arrived at the village that we were staying at, we had a very typical French meal and got some sleep. Now we’re staying in a town called Gilhoc Sur Ormeze which is in the Ardèche department in southern France. The closest city is Valance which is in the Drôme department, and both are located in the Rhone Alps. To get to Gilhoc Sur Ormeze, you have to drive on some windy, narrow roads that take you deeper and deeper into the Rhone Alps. And driving those roads will make you feel like a rally driver because of how narrow they are. They will also stress you out because of how narrow they are. If I could give you one tip, don’t overestimate your own driving ability on roads like these. Drive sensibly and you’ll get to your destination safe and sound. And if you have cars behind you who want to go by you, look for a safe place to pull over and let them by.

The scenery is stunning, and I will show you some pictures of that scenery in a later update. But driving from Lyon led us to this place:

This French manor house dates back to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, which puts it around the late 1700’s and has been owned by the same family that entire time. I was not able to take pictures of the interior which is equally as stunning out of respect that there is a family that lives here full time. And that family who invited us over and gave us this house on the property to stay in while we were in France:

We were staying in the property on the right side with the garage. It has two floors and the interior was rebuilt extensively by the owner’s late husband. On the left is a mill.

This is the mill wheel that no longer works as the supply of water that turned it was cut off about 90 years ago.

Here’s a couple of shots of the interior:

It was very nice place to stay in and we were lucky to have such a nice place to stay in France. A couple of other notes about the property.

It has a pond on it and inside the pond are these fellows:

Speaking of nature, when you get up in the morning, you can hear birds, frogs, roosters, and even dogs barking in the morning. It’s a nice soundtrack to get up to in the morning. Also because there’s no artificial lighting, you can see the stars easily and it gets pretty dark. Another nice thing about the property was this:

The box on the right with the three lights is a fibre modem/WiFi access point from Orange Telecom France. My wife and I were surprised that fibre optic Internet was available in a location that literally had no cell service as evidenced in this picture:

If you look at the top right, my iPhone 14 Pro presented me with the SOS via Satellite functionality. I had never seen that before, and given the nature of the roads in the area, that’s a handy feature to have if you crash.

Now back to the fact that this place in the middle of nowhere in France has fibre optic Internet where there are areas in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area that don’t have fibre optic Internet. I noted that Orange was laying a lot of fibre optic cable everywhere we drive. Seeing as the area is mountainous as well has rural, that was impressive. So were these speeds which I got off of my laptop via WiFi:

These are pretty good speeds and are faster than some people get in Canada with a pretty great ping time. That allowed my wife and I to set up our respective MacBook Pros with ease once we got the WiFi password.

As for our first day on French soil, we did some grocery shopping with the help of our host who was able to bridge the divide between two English speaking people in a French speaking country. Seeing as the place we were staying in had its own kitchen, my wife and I decided to fend for ourselves. We then went into Valance and walked around. Since it was Monday, a lot of things were closed. But I did manage to take a couple of photos to give you an idea of what we saw:

After doing some more shopping for clothes, and food, we then went to a chocolate factory called Valrhona which was located in Tain l’Hermitage which is just outside of Valance. My wife went to town and bought over 100 Euros of chocolate. I’m not a chocolate person so she’s free to do her. But if you’re in the area, they do give tours of the factory for the price of 9 Euros per person before noon and 10.50 Euros after that.

Tomorrow we have a French market that we need to leave early in the morning to get to. That’s all we know so that will be interesting. Stay tuned to find out how that pans out.

This is the first time since 2019 that my wife and I have gone on any sort of trip. And this one was started out big, and then was scaled back because we don’t trust airlines at the moment. Lots more on that in a bit.

So here’s the plan: Rather than flying into Paris and doing the usual Paris things, we instead went into a different direction. We would be staying in the Rhone Alps instead, see the sights that tourists don’t usually see, and catch a Tour de France stage. To us that was far more interesting. So we booked our flights back in April to make this happen.

Let’s start with the flights, we needed to fly from Toronto to Lyon France. And there isn’t a non-stop flight from to Lyon, it meant that we had to make a stop along the way. When I booked our flights, I decided to go from Toronto to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Lyon on KLM. The return flight would be on Air France which is fine as KLM and Air France are owned by the same people. But it would go from Lyon to Paris, and then from Paris to Toronto. That was a great plan, but the problem with this scheme was that there was only 1 hour and 10 minutes between landing in Amsterdam and taking off to Lyon. That was further shortened by the fact that the plane from Toronto to Amsterdam was late getting into Toronto. Which meant it was late leaving Toronto. Which then meant that by the time we landed in Amsterdam, we only had 25 minutes to catch our connecting flight to Lyon. The net result of that was that we made the flight, but our suitcases did not. They were sitting in Amsterdam which we confirmed via a pair of AirTags that we put into the bags prior to our departure.

Here is one of the AirTags that we used along with the Belkin Secure Holder With Cable. It’s secure because to assemble it, you need to use an Allen key (which is included) to do so. That combined with the steel cable that is braided makes them harder to get rid of. We figured that if someone really wanted to steal our luggage, they would have to work harder to get rid of the AirTag if they noticed that it was there if they opened it up. And since the luggage that we use has a TSA lock, it’s locked all the time. Thus if they steal the luggage, we can track it and have a chance of recovering it.

A quick word about AirTags and travel. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, this is a must have as it helps to hold airlines accountable for your luggage. Something that we used to our advantage as when the luggage did not appear on the carousel after the flight. We marched to the KLM luggage lost and found, we were able to show the person at the desk exactly where the bags were at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam when they said it would take days to find our luggage. Because of the fact that we could basically live track our luggage from 800 KM’s away, they were on the next flight to Lyon and arrived three hours after we did. The way I read this interaction is that if we didn’t have AirTags in our luggage, KLM would not have acted immediately to get our luggage back to us. That says something about the power of having AirTags. No wonder why Lufthansa wanted to ban them on their flights. Oh, by the way, KLM compensated us 20 Euros in the form of vouchers for losing our bags. We used them to grab some food at Lyon airport.

Whoop. Whoop. #Sarcasm

I’ll foreshadow something for you at this time. This would not be the last time that KLM and sister airline Air France would lose our luggage. More on that in a few days.

Since we had three hours to kill, the next thing that my wife and I had to do is to find local SIM cards because as frequent readers of this blog know, you’re wasting your money by using the roaming functionality of a Canadian telco. To illustrate this, let me show you the SIM card that my wife and I got:

This is a European wide SIM card from Bouygues Telecom. And for your 39 Euros, you get the following:

• Unlimited calls
• Unlimited texts
• 30 GB of data
• Up to 4G service (I’ve seen 3G pop up on my phone a few times)
• A local French phone number

Now 39 Euros is $58 CDN. Rogers, TELUS, or Bell cannot compete with this. To illustrate this, I checked what TELUS who is my current mobile phone carrier offered for roaming (To be clear, I am not picking on TELUS as if you check Rogers and Bell, their costs for roaming are similar):

So I would be paying $16 CDN a day, plus all of these extras if I don’t have their Easy Roam option on my account. Since I am here for 8 days, that works out to $128 CDN before taxes. Using this European wide SIM is less than half that price. So in effect, using this SIM starts to pay for itself after four days if you look at it from the perspective of the money that you save by buying it versus going with the TELUS option. So unless you really, really, REALLY needed to have people access you by your Canadian number, you’d be insane to use the roaming plans of Rogers, TELUS or Bell for your roaming needs.

By the way, when you purchase this SIM card you get this:

If you look at the top left, the SIM card eject tool is in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Nice touch. In any case, you simply pop the SIM card into your unlocked phone and you’re good to go. And you will get a text message confirming that you’re live with a French number. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Once our luggage arrived in Lyon, our next stop was our car rental. Months in advance I had booked this beauty:

This is the Peugeot 2008 and our copy came out of the box with a 1.2 L “PureTech” Petro engine mated to an eight-speed automatic. I’ll have more driving impressions in a later update about this trip, but during the drive from Lyon Airport to the village that we’re staying in it handled extremely well and had a decent amount of power which surprised me seeing as the displacement was only 1.2L.

Because of the delay related to our luggage, we got to the town that we were staying in late. Thus I will have to wait until tomorrow to give you all those details, along with what we did on our first day in France. Stay tuned for that.

I haven’t done one of these articles in a while as I typically do them when I plan to travel either on business or pleasure. And travelling hasn’t been a thing for the last couple of years during the pandemic. But as it appears that the world is opening up, I decided to put a new “What’s In My Laptop Bag” article for you starting with the laptop:

This is my 2021 16″ MacBook Pro. I did a two part review of it which you can find here and here. But in the months since I have gotten it, I can honestly say that it’s the best computer that I’ve ever owned. And the weight of it is really a non factor for me. Once I get back to travelling again, I’ll be happy to have this laptop with me as it does everything that I need it to do with a lot of headroom left over. By the way, if you’re wondering about the carbon that’s on the trackpad, that’s a vinyl skin from dBrand. They offer skins that allow you to cover as little or as much of the MacBook as you want. In my case, I did the trackpad and the back of the screen.

This is the Tucano Figura Medium. It’s old, as in approaching two decades old. But it’s so durable you could never tell and it’s never failed me. It proves that if you invest in a quality laptop bag, your return on investment will be protection and longevity. Speaking of protection, it provides a good amount of protection as well as easily accessible pockets for things like airline tickets and other documents. Not to mention the ability to hold my MacBook Pro related items. Plus I can slide the case through the handle of my carry on bag so that I have nothing on my shoulder. It’s also easy to pull out the notebook at TSA checkpoints.

For some extra protection, I slide my laptop into this Inateck sleeve. Even though it was designed for 15″ MacBook Pros, my 16″ fits just fine. And I use the included case for my power adapter and cable. Besides acting as a means of protection for the MacBook Pro inside my laptop bag, I sometimes take my MacBook Pro out just using this sleeve if I am only going to be out for a few hours. It’s held up well over the years as I only needed to have the velcro that closes the case replaced recently. Inside the pocket of this sleeve I have this:

I have a resealable bag with one of these cloths that I got from Amazon that I have on hand to clean the screen of my MacBook. While Apple does sell their own polishing cloths, you can get 24 of these cloths for what the Apple polishing cloth costs. As a result, I have these at my desk, in my laptop bag as you see here, with spares left over should I need them. And for the record, the only time you need to get the Apple polishing cloth is if you have a nano-texture display from Apple. But then you’ll get one for free when you buy a display with the nano-texture coating.

The majority of my gear is stored in a ProCase Universal Electronics Accessories Bag that I got from Amazon. It is thin and organizes the gear that’s in it via two dual sided compartments.

This section holds a MagSafe puck, an HDMI cable seeing as Apple brought back the HDMI port on the MacBook Pro, an Ethernet Cable, and a USB-C cable.

This section holds three dongles. Specifically a DVI-D to USB-C dongle, an Ethernet to USB-C dongle, and a USB-A to USB-C dongle. Because even though Apple brought back ports, I have found that you’ll still have to live the dongle life. I also have a variety of USB cables and USB-A to USB-C adapters, and a USB stick, specifically this one that has the macOS Monterey installer on it.

You’re likely wondering why I am showing you a pen. It’s a 4 in 1 pen made by a company called Rotring. It contains a blue pen, a red pen, a mechanical pencil and a stylus that works on touch sensitive screens which means that it does not work on the screens of iPhones or iPads. I’ve had this for close to a decade and I’ve only ever had to change the cartridges for the pens and add lead to the pencil.

Now if I am travelling either domestically or overseas, I will add the following items to the bag:

This is the Olixar Travel Adapter With 4 USB ports. This will help me to keep my iPhone and Apple Watch charged as I plug this into an outlet and plug everything else into it.

Next up is the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit which allows me to plug my MacBook Pro in to power it anywhere in the world.

This Kensington wall adapter doesn’t convert voltage. But I have take it with me in case I need to plug something into the wall in a foreign country as long as that something in question does voltage conversion on its own.

All of these items live in this Herschel Supply Company pouch. That way I have one thing that I need to pick up and drop into my laptop bag.

In terms of my Apple Watch, I bring along this Twelve South Time Porter which holds my collection of Apple Watch bands and has an Apple Watch charger at the top of it. Speaking of Apple Watch bands, it’s likely time for me to do a round up of my Apple Watch band collection as there are new bands that are part of the collection. I’ll add that to my to-do list.

Besides those items, I also pack portable SSD’s for backup purposes. Because you should always backup your computer. Especially when travelling. Top tip: If you do travel with an SSD to back up your computer, pack it into your checked luggage. That way, if your computer gets stolen you have a backup elsewhere. I also tend to travel with a multi-tool that doesn’t have a blade. The reason is that I want to make sure that it doesn’t get confiscated by airport security. And I typically drop one or two USB sticks into the bag as a just in case thing.

So that’s a look at what’s in my laptop bag. Hopefully, I’ve helped someone travel smarter, but if you have a tip or a suggestion, feel free to leave me a comment below.

So we’ve come to the end of our second Great Canadian Road Trip. As we leave Charlottetown, I’d like to tie up some loose ends about the Hotel On Pownal. This is a good hotel that we’d recommend. They accommodated the secure storage of our bikes which aren’t exactly cheap and would not have fit in our room. And the staff were very nice and worked hard to make sure that we were comfortable.  But if I were them, They could look to improve on the breakfast front. They could offer a bit more variety in terms of what is on offer. For example, there were no pancakes or bacon on offer which is typical of most hotels that I’ve stayed at over the years. On top of that on some days seating space is at a premium with the hotel having to pull out TV trays to accommodate guests. That’s a bit lame. But other than that, this is a great place to stay.

Oh yeah, If you see this on top of your TV while staying at the Hotel On Pownal, don’t be alarmed:

When I inquired about this, the staff said it was the IR receiver for the remote control for the TV. I investigated this by looking at the back of the TV and finding the cable box mounted on the back of the TV, and a cable running to this gizmo. Thus making their explanation highly plausible.

In terms of tech, the WiFi worked well and was generally fast enough. Thus enabling my wife and I to use our laptops and smartphones. Speaking of which, here’s how we set everything up. (Note: These pictures going forward are taken with the Nikon Coolpix P1000):

My laptop lived on a desk with a backup drive attached to it so that I could back up the data on the laptop in case anything happened to it.

My wife on the other hand put her laptop along with her Twelve South TimePorter on her bedside table. You’ll also see a Nomad Lightning Cable and a Orico 4 Port USB Charger which enabled her to keep her Apple Watch and iPhone 7 Plus charged. In my case, here’s what I did:

This looks like a rats nest of cables, but let me explain. what’s going on here. I used my nightstand to charge all the lights for the bikes and both cyclocomputers. To facilitate that I used the Anker 60W 6-Port USB charger along with six Anker PowerLine Micro USB 3ft Cables. You’ll also note a clock radio that had two things going for it. First it was a bluetooth compatible and it had no sign of a Apple 30 pin dock connecter, which meant that the hotel bought this recently. Second, it had two USB ports where I plugged in my Twelve South TimePorter to charge my Apple Watch and a Native Union Lightning cable that I got as swag at a press event to charge my iPhone XS. One thing that I should note about the Apple Watch is that I only used the Urban Armor Gear Nato Strap during this trip as it could be used to ride bikes and hike which still looking good enough to go out to dinner. Though it will need a wash when we get back to Toronto. My wife on the other hand between her Nike Band and her Watch Stop Company Mesh Loop.

After packing up and checking out we made the two hour drive back up to the Confederation Bridge where we had to pay a $47.75 toll. To be clear, you don’t pay when you come into Prince Edward Island via the bridge. You only pay when you leave via the bridge.

Top Tip: There are self serve lanes where you can get in and out of the toll area quickly, and they also accept Apple Pay.

Once we were past that we were out of Prince Edward Island and back into New Brunswick. We weren’t going to stay the night in that province. Instead we were going to drive to just outside Quebec City and stay at the Holiday Inn Express Quebec Sainte-Foy which was recently renovated and highly recommended. That meant that our drive was going to be about 8 hours. But to be frank it took 10 hours because we made frequent stops along the way to refuel, take breaks and the like. But we did get to see this sort of scenery:

 

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Once we did arrive at the hotel, we were greeted with a hotel that was modern, clean, and well laid out. We were able to get our stuff along with our bikes inside in short order and relax for about an hour our so after our long drive to get there.

My wife had found a place nearby for dinner called Portofino. And though it was a challenge to get to because of major road construction, it was totally worth it as the food was outstanding. It was a great way to end this trip.

The next day after having breakfast we did the 10 hour drive back to Toronto. Some items to note about breakfast, while the Holiday Inn did serve breakfast on paper plates, they did go out of their way to recycle them. Plus they had a very good selection of food. Both of this made breakfast a very enjoyable experience.

Again, we made a number of stops for gas, breaks and the like along the way which made it 10 hours. But at the end of it it was nice to be in our own beds after being on the road for almost two weeks. Having said that, my wife and I were already talking about our next trip. We’re talking about doing some cycling in Quebec as that province is known for that sort of thing. Or doing this cycling event in Prince Edward Island next year. Or taking a trip to the United Kingdom for some cycling as it will likely be a lot cheaper to do so because of Brexit. Whatever we decide to do, you can be sure that we’ll document it here for you.

Today was our final day to ride in Prince Edward Island. This time we are driving out to the East Point of Prince Edward Island for a 60KM bike ride. The East Point is just over an hour away from Charlottetown. However there was a heat warning that pushed the temperatures to about 30 degrees celsius. As a result we decided to cut the ride to 50KM. The ride took us from the East Point Lighthouse, along some roads with seaside and farms, and back to the lighthouse. Here’s what that looked like.

 

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And here’s the result of our ride:

After a brief break to rehydrate, we then had a look at the East Point Lighthouse. (Note: All photos from this point are taken with the Nikon Coolpix P1000):

You’ll notice that our bikes are parked out front of the lighthouse. And if you look closely, you’ll notice that I have switched from my 55mm deep section aero wheels for lightweight 30mm climbing wheels. The reason I did this was that on our last ride, the cross winds made the bike difficult to control at times. Thus seeing as we were going to be close to the seashore which means that the winds were likely to be high, it would be in my best interest to have wheels that made my bike easy to control.

 

The cost  to go up to the top of the lighthouse is $6.50 and it is well worth doing. Here’s what you’ll see:

 

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With the lighthouse done and dusted, we made our way back to Charlottetown. After visiting happy hour, we went to Merchantman which my wife really wanted to go to after trying their oysters. This restaurant had the best food that we’ve had here in Prince Edward Island. We also got a lot of it. Both my wife and I would recommend this place without hesitation.

Tomorrow we leave for Quebec City which is our first stop of our trip back to Toronto. I’ll also be wrapping up our stay at the Hotel On Pownal with our thoughts on staying here. Stay turned for that.

 

This day’s post is being done by wife because she’s really into the artisans of PEI. Here’s her report of the day’s activities. (Note: All photos are taken with the Nikon Coolpix P1000):

We could not leave PEI a second time without visiting some of the local artists. Today we headed off to explore of some PEI artisans. We started our day visiting Suzanne Scott of Village Pottery in New London, PEI and while the Studio tours will resume in September we were treated to a chance meeting of Suzanne Scott herself. She provided us with a personalized tour of her studio downstairs where we learned that it takes anywhere from 6 – 8 months to develop a new glaze. Knowing that their Etsy store is currently on hold I took the opportunity to purchase some beautiful pieces from their Celtic shore line. The gallery on the 2^nd floor is open to visitors. Visitors can also pop in to Pottery’s Parlour next door for an ice cream. 

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On our next stop was the Bottle Houses in Cap Egmont, PEI. Take your time to take in everything from the moment you enter the property. Edouard Arsenault, an artist who combined his construction skills with his design dream was ahead of his time before recycling of bottles was available. Starting in the 70’s Edouard started the painstaking process of collecting, cleaning and removing the labels of over 12,000 bottles. Then starting the spring of 1980 at the age of 66 he started construction of his first bottle house. As you walk through the beautiful whimsical bottle houses you notice the riot of colours all around you in the gardens. The gift shop offers some unique decorative garden items for you to purchase.

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We were inspired to taking a side trip to the Cape Ergmont Lighthouse after seeing a small replica of it in Bottle Houses and learning that Edouard was the last resident lighthouse keeper. Note that the Cape Ergmont is not listed as a tourist lighthouse but when we did learn that it was approximately 2 km from the Bottle Houses property we couldn’t resist. The beauty of the landscape takes your breath away and was well worth the trek. Note that you have to do some off-roading to get there.

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As soon as we arrived at the PEI Preserve Company we knew that judging by the tour buses in the parking lot that it would be packed with visitors. This popular destination should be a must see on your list. Give yourself time to not only sample the amazingly tasty preserves but stroll through the beautiful Garden of Hope by the river. 

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During our visit to the PEI Preserve Company we once again got an alert from our  Belkin NetCam HD+ units and once again a maintenance person was in our unit doing some emergency plumbing work. Something that we had to again confirm with the management company while I watched them work. Good thing that my wife and I have great data plans with TELUS. And once again they failed to turn off the bathroom lights when they were done.

#EpicFail

Speaking of TELUS, I will note that there were a few areas where there was no cell service in some parts of Prince Edward Island. But we would be in and out of those areas in a few minutes which meant that coverage was generally good.

By the time we got back to Charlottetown, it was happy hour at the hotel. My wife ate a ton of oysters from a place called Merchantman while I had a beer. Based on what she felt about the oysters, I’m pretty sure that we’re going there before we leave. From there, we went to Peaks Quay which had average food at best. But it had a great view of the Charlottetown historic waterfront.

Tomorrow, we’re going on our last bike ride around the East Point which also has a lighthouse in the area. Stay tuned to see how that goes.