Perception Travel:  Website of the Month!
Diana and I are busy preparing for our trip to France for the  World Naginata Championship and Seminar next month.  We scheduled a bit of discretionary time after the seminar for some sightseeing, this being Diana's first time in Europe.  Since my youth I have had an avid interest in the Second World War through classes, movies, reading, and scale model building.  The release of the movie Saving Private Ryan rekindled my interest and I read Stephen Ambrose's excellent books,  D-Day, June 6, 1944  and  Citizen Soldiers plus studied Encyclopedia Brittanica's outstanding site, Normandy.eb.com .  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit Normandy while we were "in the neighborhood"!  I began searching for tours or tour guides that might accomodate our limited schedule.  Most were geared toward five to eleven day group tours of the general area on fixed dates.  Finally I found  Perception Travel , an outfit out of England operated by proprietor  Mr. Michael Phillips and began an e-mail correspondence to discuss the specifications for a custom tour of the D-Day sites in the Normandy area.  Here I digress.  Many wags, wonks, and pundits decry the use of e-mail as a form of communication, citing the impersonal nature of the medium, the lack of human interaction, and the cold brevity of most messages.  What struck me about my communication with Mr. Phillips was the warmth, cordiality, and light humor of his missives.  We were conversing at the speed of light across eight time zones (he responded to my queries quite quickly) and yet his e-mail messages had the gentle formality of a hand written letter.  Perhaps it's a European thing?!   Most Americans seem to fire machine gun-like staccato bursts of acronym packed information at each other, pausing only to reload.  Too often I see messages with terrible spelling, incomplete sentences, poor formatting, and other signs indicative of a lack of thought for or courtesy to the reader.  Not that I am always innocent of these crimes, mind you!  The esoterics of our transaction aside, check out this awesome itinerary that he suggested:
The Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches
The medium gun battery at Longues, complete with guns in situ
Omaha Beach
Colleville Military Cemetery
Pointe du Hoc
Utah Beach
The heavy gun battery at Crisbecq
Ste Mere Eglise
The German Military Cemetery at La Cambe
Bayeux Military Museum
and possibly the Bayeux Tapestry depending upon their opening hours.
If you don't know the names of these places, you owe it to the people who fought there to find out more...  That's my Navy voice talking.  I called the travel agent that Mr. Phillips suggested,  Anne Heintz at Executive Travel Associates, to arrange the necessary rail tickets between Paris and Bayeux and told her of my schedule.  "Oh," she said, "you're taking the American Tour".  "What's that?" I queried.  "Packing as much as one can see into one or two days.  Europeans really know how to vacation, how to take their time but not Americans".  In this respect, I am guilty as charged for the crime of being a typical American.  She was tickled by the fact that I was calling her in Washington, D.C. from California on the recommendation of someone in England for tickets in France.  "Ah, a true global economy," I said.
All in all I've had such a wonderful experience dealing with Perception Travel (and I haven't even taken the tour yet!) that I award it my first Website of the Month honor!

 Return to my main page.
 Visit my Impressions of Normandy page for post-trip info.

Post Script, 05APR01.  To date I have corresponded with four parties regarding recommendations for Mr. Phillips services based on a testimonial link to my site from his.  I've enjoyed the e-mail relationships formed in the discussions and feedback from people (all so far have travelled with Perception Travel) has been universally positive which further validates my praise for his service.