I can’t help it. I very much wanted to be laid back and blasé about this trip, but somehow, I’m having trouble with that. 8 more sleeps!

In the meantime, since I have had nothing else on my mind (and therefore not much to post), I present to you the joys of planning a trip in the Internet Age. The last time I left the country was in 1998. The internet was around, yes, but hadn’t exploded into the insanely interactive phenomenon that we take for granted most of the time.

From buying our airline tickets and train tickets to discovering that our Paris hotel has two resident cats (hint- take a look at the candid traveler photos), from checking out Jeff’s uncle’s neighbourhood in North London to making sure we know which Tube lines to take once we de-plane…amazing.

I’ve been able to peruse the menu of a highly recommended Parisian restaurant, which just happens to be on the same street as our hotel. And while browsing the Paris archives of Ask Metafilter, I found several suggestions for a hotel reservation site; Venere.com. This site is great – I didn’t want to pay in advance for a hotel, I just wanted to make a reservation with my credit card. Other travel sites wanted me to pay in full, and I wasn’t comfortable with that. Nor did I want to bumble my way through making a reservation over the telephone. Fabulous site – got to comparison shop, read reviews, map it, confirm that they can take care of our luggage before check in and after check out, and book it.

LondonTown.com and The Paris Pages have also been very useful.

Update: I forgot xe.com The Universal Currency Converter. It was nice to have it running whenever I was checking train prices, hotel rates and menu prices.