France Travel Guide

Posts Tagged ‘Phone’

In my teens, I traveled to France with my mother, father and grandmother for a month of sightseeing with a rental car. Michael Schumacher and Formula 1 have nothing on my father and our Opel rental car.

American fathers have an interesting if somewhat aggravating habit on trips. Yes, I am talking about the desire to see everything there is to see. This was particularly problematic in France, which has a gazillion things to see. For some reason, my memory is a blur! I’ll have to refer back to my Nomad Travel Journal, but here we go…

Churches. Big churches. Small churches. Church ruins. New churches. For three days, my grandmother had insisted we stop at every church we passed. She is just about the greatest grandmother a kid could hope for, but she had been a grade school teacher for forty years and there is just no disobeying. Did I mention we looked at churches?

We pulled into Lyon as the third day turned to evening. It was raining. We were tired and grumpy. After a minor argument, we pulled up in front of an older hotel with vacancies and checked in. Family arrangements being what they were, my parents had one room while my grandmother and I shared a second. We all agreed to take a nap and meet a little later.

As I lay on my bed, I watched the rain come down hard on the windows. I also admired the old, intricate wood structure that was our hotel. I dozed off and was awaken a few hours later by my grandmother.  

“The door is stuck!” she told me.

Grumbling, I walked over to the door and gave it a yank. Then I gave it another yank. Like a bad comedy, I put one leg up on the wall and yanked again. Alas, the wood seemed to have swollen and jammed the door shut. I couldn’t budge it.

At this point, my grandmother made a passing comment about the two years of French I was taking in high school and pointed to the phone. Dutifully, I called down to the lobby and chaos ensued. Somehow, we had lost the key, so I couldn’t tell them what room we were in. It just got worse.

What is the French word for “door?” Don’t know? Neither did I nor do I now. All I could say to the person at the front desk is, “We are stuck!”

To top matters off, I also started yelling my last name, Chapo, thinking they would at least come investigate. After being hung up on twice, it occurred to me that the pronunciation of my last name means “hat” in French. Yes, I was yelling,

“We are stuck! Hat!”

“We are stuck! Hat!”

Intensely cussing up a storm, I walked over to the door and banged it with my fist. It bounced open. My grandmother and I stared at each other and burst out laughing.

I hoofed it to my parent’s room to tell them the story. Half way through the tale, my mother plugged in her hair dryer, flipped it on and blew out the electricity for the entire floor.

We left very early the next morning.

In terms of Canadian Permanent Resident Cards it is a requirement for those who are who are in the planning processes of becoming a Permanent Resident of the country of Canada to pick up their new “PR” cards in order that the official Canadian counsel staff can verify and assure the person’s identity. You can never be too sure today in 2009 / 2010 when it comes to identity theft and identity theft practices .Hence this is more step and procedure to assure the Canadian governmental authorities entrusted with these special and important vital tasks that the individual or groups of applicants that come to pick up their documents are the boni-fide applicant and registrant for actual permanent resident status in the Dominion of Canada.

Canadian residents who have PR cards expiring in the near future and who plan on traveling before they have a chance to renew their Permanent Residence (PR) documentation brochures should contact their local CIC office. Why so? It seems that permanent residents who are returning to Canada by commercial carrier (be it airplane, train, boat or Greyhound bus), will now require this PR card, as an official document, even to board the transit carrier itself. Thus in a flash, you may have your travel and trip plans thoroughly inconvenienced. This can occur either for a family trip, a vacation or even for medical treatment abroad or even across the line in US – say for a simple CAT scan or N.M.R. medical diagnostic scan at Pembina North Dakota.

On the other hand you might find yourself in the quandary of suddenly discovering that you will be traveling abroad or even to the USA shortly and you do not have a sufficient time period or interval to renew your permanent resident status documents, or if you are in the bureaucratic category or categories of already having submitted your application yet not received or taken physical possession of the certificate with its official credential and official stamps and registration , don’t panic , you still have a number of options available to yourself and your traveling companions. Firstly, if you have not yet mailed in your application or applications, the procedure is to submit a copy of your plane ticket or other fare documents along with your application. In addition label your application with the notation “Urgent Proof of Travel Included” clearly both on the outside and along with the documents submitted themselves. Of course it is always wise and prudent procedure to photocopy, or scan into your computer – be it desktop or laptop, for later verification or proof if needed. This labeled and identified you can be assured that the highly efficient staff at the local or main Ottawa Ontario main office will place and examine your submission on a higher praetor basis for the quick turnaround of the necessary package to you by registered mail or courier.

However if you have already submitted your application before the processing time posted on the official website online , then it might be best to follow up with a simple enquiry by email , phone or fax.

Pleasant travels.