WHAT A WEEK!

We arrived in Europe buzzed with excitement for the competition.  Our adrenalin levels were so high, we never felt tired.   Each night, we couldn’t wait to read the handouts and find out what country we would be going to the next day.  At breakfast, we would trade funny stories.  At the bar late in the day, we would howl at each other’s videos.  And we were surprised how much fun we had interacting with so many people as we accomplished our challenges. 

The challenges were….challenging, the locations interesting (Bruges was a highlight for us ) and our fearless leader Steve was friendly, helpful, always available and always unruffled in the face of his own challenges.  But our favorite part of the trip were our fellow Competitourers. It’s interesting what happens when you travel for a week with a bunch of people who start out as strangers. Verrrrrry interesting – and very rewarding as wonderful new friendships form.

This is not a trip for the faint of heart or anyone looking to chill out, eat regularly or turn in early. But for adventurous travelers looking for something different, this be the trip. 

Would we recommend Competitours? Already have.  

It only took an extra week, but my last post covering the final day of the inaugural Competitours has been posted.

Competitours Race Day 5 – Paris “We won!” (with video)

Read how, for three hours we celebrated our first place finish for the Monday to Wednesday portion of the competition, only to find out that a scoring error was the culprit. Or how La Goutte d’Or in Paris was the most dangerous place for a challenge so far.

Linda and I finished with a win for the Thursday/Friday portion, which was great, but it wasn’t the real “win” in this game. It was the opportunity to participate in something entirely new, meeting people who are rather like-minded and ‘touring’ places we never would have seen before, all while documenting everything with video and photos like this, for example. That’s where we won.

Here’s the final “Day 5 Video” for Team Gadling. Thanks Steve for such a great experience!

We appreciate everyone’s patience in waiting for the scores to be tallied.
 
What happened?
 
Well, we learned a valuable lesson this first trip.  Eleven teams vying for internet connectivity and loads of bandwidth at the same time from a small hotel’s even smaller wi-fi capacity, is not gonna work!  So, after the second night of teams being frustrated and blurry-eyed deep into the evening, we made an executive decision to delay video uploading until teams got back to the States on Monday.  
 
Some teams were a little slower than others uploading their remaining videos, and our judges were only expecting to be available through end of last week.  So, those two issues resulted in Thursday night, not Monday night to announce our final audited judging results.
 
For upcoming trips, teams will have NO uploading responsibility, they will simply load their videos onto portable memory devices (like an SD card or thumbdrive), hand them to our tour escort, who will deal with any technical snafus with uploading, while teams can enjoy their evenings blissfully unaware or uncaring of the uploading process….as it should be!!
  

Withour further ado, here are the standings:

Scores for the first three days of challenges:

Scores for the last two days of challenges

We’re still recovering from the trip. As David from Team Goldtroni said, it’s not a vacation, it’s a trip. But what a trip it’s been!

I posted a ‘day 4′ video and post on Gadling. I doubt if my wife and I had found ourselves in Brussels on a vacation we would have ventured into the town of Gent, but that’s one of the things that makes Competitours so exciting. You never know where you’ll be going next.

And Gent was well worth the visit!

Here are a few scenes of some of the competitourists on Thursday:

Friday’s post is coming soon. We should have some final scores for both the Monday to Wednesday and the Thursday and Friday competition by then.

A special thanks to Flyertalk for sponsoring some of the nicest people around to participate in this competition. We really enjoyed them all!

Kent and Linda

Elizabeth here. 

Kevin of Team Extreme and I teamed up for the second part of Competitours.  In Paris our last night, were asked by fellow Competitourists – what was the most memorable adventure we had.  Kevin and I had some fantastic adventures, but this one is a keeper for both of us – and we got it on video.  

Savvy travelers Kevin and Elizabeth end up beyond the end-of-the-line, when so engrossed in our plotting on how to get to Antwerp for the XYZ challenge (yes, the XYZ challenge was actually in Namur, doh,) we missed the last stop for the transfer to the Atomium and ended up stuck in a train yard tunnel.  The Atomium was a challenge we were doing just for fun because we wanted to see it since it had recently been restored.  Despite missed transfers,  Atomuum was worth the views, but then quickly back to the midi station in Brussels to catch the train to Antwerp – good thing we ran in to Hugos in the Atomium station, who told us XYZ was in Namur, not outside Antwerp.  LOL; yep, we be savvy travelers.  Listen until the end…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jZYz-QjGL8

Kent here.

After days 1 and 2 and the uploading issues we had, I decided I couldn’t keep up the effort required to blog each days activities. It became too much to post the video, read the next day’s challenges and to check in with Gadling. So I’ll have reports from each day coming soon.

I just finished the day three write up.

Personalities are definitely coming out, and we’re getting to know everyone better. I’m amazed at how interesting and friendly this group is. There’s only some friendly competition going on right now. I wonder if that will change when the grand prize is upped to $6500 in the future with 40 nights at a Starwood.

Even though we’re exhausted from the first three days, we’re feeling a bit of a rush, really. A typical, relaxing vacation just couldn’t compare to this.

I’ve had some ask if we’re able to really ’see’ the sights. If you’re the kind of person that likes whitewater rafting, this is for you. If you’d rather walk down the riverbank, taking in various flat rocks getting a little fishing in along the way, then you might be better off staying in a hotel and exploring one area for a week at a time. But most Americans don’t have the luxury of so much time off, so this has been a great way to enjoy a race with some really interesting people and to see some sights along the way.

Linda and I laughed far more than we’ve argued on the trip and I think I could convince her to come back and do it again.

More in the next few days…

Team Gadling.

Need we say more. The sauna challenge was right up the Swizzle’s alley. Nothing is better after a long day of banging out challenges than hanging with the French sopranos/gangstas in the super sweet, no chicks allowed mens steam palace. High on the Paris to-do list. Awesome to competitour across Europe with you all.

Sincerely

The Swizzles

  Fortunately for us,  Judie’s cousin Marina lives in Paris and decided to accompany us on the day’s adventure.  We had decided to go to Reims to the Pommery Champagne headquarters – between the train ticket and the lunch, not an inexpensive choice but as it turned out, definitely worth it.  Dashing for the train, we breathlessly jumped on just as the doors were closing. 

   Arriving in Reims, we walked over to the tourist center to find out about the tour at Pommery and were informed you couldn’t get onto any tours  without a prior reservation.  Marina, who writes for several magazines in France, pulled her journalist strings and we found ourselves at Pommery face to face with the marketing director.  

  Our challenge involved asking about the name Champagne, and it’s use outside of France.  It seems that France and the U.S.are involved in verrrry delicate negotiations over the name and it’s use and we were told in no uncertain terms that no one there would answer our question at this time.  Mumm was the word.  But that’s another Champagne….

  Although our question went unanswered, the buildings were lovely, the history of the company fascinating and the champagne they served us delicious.  

   When it was time to head back, a taxi was called for us, which arrived with 6 Euros already on the meter.  No, no, no said Marina.  Yes, yes, yes said the Taxi Driver.  Since we refused to take his taxi, he told Marina he would call all the other taxis in town and tell them not to pick up the three women at Pommery.  He then proceeded to do so.  

  So there we were.  In true Marina fashion, she stepped into the street and stuck her thumb out.  A  young woman took pity on us and deposited us at the train station, even though it was completely out of her way.  

  Back in Paris, we started planning for our challenge that night, which involved a Laotian restaurant . Surely there would be one on every corner.  As it turned out, not exactly the case.  But our persistence paid off and not only did we complete our challenge but had the best dinner of the trip. 

Alex and I wrapped up the competitive part of our the trip yesterday with a leisurely breakfast with Team Stimulus Package.  Then a visit to the Arc de Triomphe and about 700 steps round trip to the top.  CTN’s Skip HairGel did a traffic report from the top of Paris’ busiest intersection.

Continuing our Frite theme we grabbed lunch on the way to our next stop at a great little Boulangerie.  We also had a chance to watch the crazy way Parisians drive through intersections.  It was also great to see so many Smart Cars as there haven’t been many in the other cities.  We even saw a Smart For Four which is no longer in production.

Then a visit to the museum of Counterfeiting.   An amazing array of things that have been copied.  Most surprising, water pumps and pasta!  Most disturbing, condoms and pregnancy tests!  And we thought counterfitting was just for luxury goods and money!

Next stop was the Paris Science Museum.  It is housed in an amazing area and thought the Science Museum is well done with lots of interactive exhibits, our favorite part were all the parks and architecture behind the museum.  There are some incredible playgrounds here, which we hope Alex’s cousins Matthew and Ali enjoyed when they were in France two years ago.  There is a giant bicycle buried underground with just the top parts sticking out.

We also enjoyed touring the Argonaut which is a 40 person submarine that is now on permanent display.  While I like to read about submarines, this is the first one of any consequence that I have been inside.

We then headed to a cheese restaurant my brother John recommended called Les Montagnards.  Family run place with the proprietor greeting all the patrons warmly.  We felt welcome and while we were the first there at 7:45, the place quickly filled up.  They have the machinery from a gondola station in the cieling which makes for a unique restaurant.  They specialize in foods from Savoie.  We had some terrific cheeses including a great Comte and a delicious creamy Reblochon.  We had a small sample of Raclette and then a Savoie Cheese Fondue.  Very tasty and a different mix of cheeses, including Abondance which is now being distributed in the US by Trader Joe’s.   Since Chocolate Fondue was available, we didn’t see any reason to say no!  We enjoyed some terrific inexpensive wine that paired well with the Fondue and also sampled some liquer from Savoie!

Team Goldtroni really savored our day in Paris and we are looking forward to winding down on our Trip on Saturday with more cheese, chocolate and sights.  We’ll finish with a final drink tonight with the other Competitouristas at 11 tonight!

Hello all! Thank you for your support, W & T, S & P, Frank and whoever else checked in on us. We (Ally and Bob) had a lot of fun, made new friends and got SMOKED in the competition! The first three days were grueling hitting Frankford, Kolblenz, and Amsterdam. We really enjoyed the last three days (in Brussels, Brugge and Paris) after the “game moderator”, Steve, ended the original competition early to start a new game with different rules which made it a lot more fun!

Would we do it again? Yes … with the revised format the chances are more likely that we would do this trip rather than something else. The motivation for us is not to win the first place prize (although that would be just fine!); rather, the reward is the whole experience of the trip (its the journey not the destination). We have really enjoyed meeting our fellow competitours with whom we share a trait in common: a craving to experience new adventure. In particular, we have made new friends with one team with whom we have a whole lot in common and hope to have a lasting friendship. In the very least we have made new friends with all of the competitours who are an exceptional group of people and with whom we hope to intersect again in our travels.

To our friends in Dallas: we return late Sunday night. We will be at the lake house in the hot tub!