We arrived in Paris on January 12th. It was a good flight; even our dog Toby made it without incident.
After we took off, the flight officer sent us a note saying, "We check on Toby's compartment every 20-30 minutes. He is currently warm and comfortable at 70F/21C". Checking in at the airport in San Francisco, there was a lot of concern over Toby's health certificates, but when we arrived in Paris, they just patted him on his head and said, "Welcome to France." No one ever asked us to see his required paperwork. We located a colossal luggage cart, loaded our bags on, and set off to find our leased Peugeot 605 station wagon. Our friends and family who had seen us off at SFO had wondered if all of our luggage would ever fit into our European car. It had taken two large SUVs to get us to the San Francisco airport. It was tight. All of our bags filled up every square inch of the wagon with the seats down, but we got everything in. The only hitch was that Toby had to squeeze upfront with us. We drove out of the Paris airport and headed to a nearby hotel, knowing that we would be too tired to travel.
The following day we were ready to begin our adventure. We are now barge shopping in France, Belgium, and Holland. We will post a photo as soon as we have purchased our barge.