Planning and Implementation

I'm great at planning and can suck at implementation. For travel this isn't as bad as for work. Trust me.

Planning trips is great - where to go, how to get there, how much will it cost, what will we do? We both do the where, I take care of the how and the cost, its a crap shoot.; )TH is the spreadsheet planner, which helps enormously for longer trips and places you are driving to, just to get an idea of what you can do near your destination. This worked great when we went to Wales in September. We were hell bent on getting to a few gardens, but were not sure if we would make it based on distance travelled, traffic and when specific gardens or properties were open. Turns out that we spent about three days in a pretty tight area which was great as well because we could always go back if we wanted to see something again. This doesn't work well with other countries such as Australia, but smallish regions, this is a good approach. A regional map, a bunch of those skinny plastic post it flags and a sense of humour is necessary, especially if one party loves art and the other not.

So, where am I going with this?

We love farmer's markets and so we'll spend this Friday morning in Paris looking for a market to go to, perhaps one we've never been to or maybe one we've seen before. As in Seattle or the Bay Area, they are all very different from each other. The one's in the 18th and 19th are full of North Africans and all sorts of spices, the very elegant one near the Musee de l'art moderne de la ville de Paris is very neat and tidy with great kitchenware. We both like the Batignolle organic market in the 17th and will maybe even venture to the tried and true Boulevard Raspail Market on Sunday morning, even if I can tempt TH with lunch or at least tea at Luteitia. How do I know so much about markets? A couple of sources, including Paris in a basket, one of the best and prettiest books about farmer's markets around. It serves as a comprehensive guide to markets in each arrondisement and nice tables listing market opens by day and they rate them. Not a bad investment of 20 bucks.

Did I mention it was beautiful to look at with lots of recipes?

Other great planning tools for Paris -- Time Out Paris, Patricia Wells' Food Lover Guide to Paris , Egullet message boards, the Paris est a nous series (in french) and travel message boards. Don't get too carried away, sometimes too much planning doesn't allow for the serendepitous discovery of the new patisserie or great little brocantes.

Enjoy more than anything.

nm