Where we are now (and what’s next)
We are back together again and have just arrived in France. Michael had a truly exhausting week at Colby’s (nothing unusual happened, just trying to get everything that has to happen in person done in a week), and Stephanie used her solo time to plow through a massive amount of work (though she was forced into a slow start as she was tremendously ill for about five days).
Exploring the World
Michael returned to Plymouth on Thursday, Stephanie prepared a wonderful monkfish stew from a monkfish that had been enjoying his swim that morning, and then we relaxed over a final dessert on the Barbican before our last night in such a wonderful town. Living and working somewhere for a full month really is profoundly different from a normal vacation week and we fell in love with Plymouth.
From Plymouth, we spent a day and a half, and two nights, in London. Our original assumption was that we would spend the month there, but then we saw the rent prices and quickly repositioned ourselves to Plymouth. London was great fun as we played the role of complete tourists. On Friday evening, we walked with Colby to the Parliament building and Westminster Abbey, found a good restaurant for a beef & ale pie, walked up to see Buckingham Palace, and then walked home. Saturday morning started with a walk to a small breakfast cafe (though closer to an outside American diner than a English café), then we returned home for a little homework before crating Colby and heading out for most of the day.
We started by walking to Big Ben and then returning to Westminster Abbey. It turns out Big Ben is part of the Parliament building, and both are right across the street from Westminster Abbey. The streets around these tourist highlights were MUCH more crowded at noon on a Saturday than they had been on the previous Friday evening. We had bought tickets to see Westminster Abbey and the British Museum online while enjoying the previous night’s meat pie.
I had thought of the Westminster Abbey primarily being a church. To be clear, it is a very functioning cathedral; but that is not what most folks seem to focus on while walking through it. I would argue that it is the world’s largest sarcophagus. There are more than 3,300 people buried in the abbey, from King Edward I, to Shakespeare, Cromwell’s baby, and the sisters Queens Elizabeth & Mary. Many of the sarcophagi were extraordinary works of art, and I was fascinated by the many way they contemplated a plethora of aspects surrounding death. We paid an extra £5 to see The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. £5 was about the proper price. We were pretty churched-out by the time we got to it, and most of the most impressive items were actually replicas of items I would have liked to have seen in person.
The walk from the abbey to the British Museum was supposed to take just over 30 minutes, but we intersected with a massive Pride parade. Both the sheer crowd size and our desire to enjoy the floats combined to double our travel time.
I had been in the British Museum once before, about three and a half decades earlier, and can not comprehend how much more crowded it has become. Last time, I made multiple visits and spent hours studying the artifacts. This time was a most uncomfortable crush. The museum has the greatest Egyptian art exhibit I know of, and it is absolutely fascinating; that sincerely said and meant, I assume I will never return again. It was just too uncomfortable and not an environment for absorbing some of humankind’s greatest creations. I also wondered what someone from Egypt might think while walking through the exhibit. Would they wonder at what they see, or would they focus on the fact that none of these treasures are still in Egypt?
A couple things about buying tickets for these attractions: First, while the Abbey’s tickets cost a king’s ransom, the British Museum’s tickets primarily seem to be designed to even out the flow in the building. We arrived at the museum about 10 minutes after our scheduled time, but that was not a problem. Second, as earlier noted, we bought the tickets the night before our attendance. When we bought the tickets for each activity, my cell phone said that the tickets would be emailed to me. As it turns out, tickets might not be emailed unless you purchased with a longer lead time. Fortunately, I took screenshots of both confirmation numbers; a decision that came in handy. We STRONGLY recommend taking screenshots of all confirmation numbers.
We returned home on The Tube (London’s metro), fed, watered & walked Colby’s, before the three of us headed to Kazan, a wonderful Turkish restaurant.
Digital Nomad Life & Learning
A digital nomading concept into which we are putting particular thought is traveling with a large dog. Colby is a 60-lb. American Boxer and he comes with two complicating travel factors. The first is moving around a large brachycephalic (meaning “flat-faced”) dog. The second is that he requires a metal crate, and his extraordinary strength means that he really needs a vault.
Brachycephalic pups cannot travel in the belly of an airplane and large pups cannot travel in the plane’s pressurize compartment. This combination means that he could not fly to Europe. After a bit of Googling, we decided to book passage for Stephanie and Colby on a cargo ship, only to find out that this option seems to have ended during Covid and not to have revived. Finally, we concluded that the Queen Mary II (QMII) was the only way to bring Colby to Europe (you can read “Crossing the Atlantic and Plymouth, UK”, posted June 9, 2025).
The QMII claims that they book their kennels two years in advance, but we were able to fill a cancelation with just a month’s notice. We might have gotten lucky, but I suspect that they always have “cancelations”, as long as you are a little flexible on when you will travel; we will see whenever we are ready to bring Colby back to the States.
Speaking with more seasoned passengers, we were told that there are other cruise ships that reposition from the Americas to Europe in the Spring, and back again in the Fall. If this is true, then there might be more options.
I also have to say (as a dog daycare owner), the QMII has an excellent dog care team.
What really surprised us was that bringing Colby from England to France was almost as difficult as bringing him from the US to the UK. First, we needed to get a health certificate within 10 days of leaving the US, and a de-worming within 48 hours. Then, we needed a new health certificate within 10 days of leaving the UK for France. Now that we are in France, we will bring him to a veterinarian to get him a Pet Passport, which is good throughout the European Community for a year (we also need to bring him to a vet in the very near future because the old man seems to have broken a canine tooth).
Dogs are allowed on trains in both the UK and France, so we assumed we would bring Colby on the train under the English Channel. As it turns out, dogs are only allowed on LeShuttle (the train that goes under the channel) if they are in a car. Our first thought was, “no problem, we will take a ferry”. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that pups only are allowed on ferries if they are driven on. Once on the ferry, some ferries have a room where your pup can hang out during the voyage; but no pups are allowed to walk onto the boat. I still have yet to fully believe this fact, but we accepted it as true and looked for a different solution. One great regret I have is that we were surrounded on the QMII by folks who regularly bring pups from England to France, and I did not think to ask their advice.
Finally, we hired a driver who specializes in driving pups (with or without their parents) around Europe. Luxurious Pet Move Abroad met us at 7:00 am, right outside our London apartment, and drove us to Calais (France). From Calais, we easily were able to catch a train to Paris Gare du Nord. Luxurious Pet Move Abroad was not cheap (£700), but they could not have been nicer or more helpful.
A detail with bringing dogs on LeShuttle and French trains is that they – theoretically – need to be muzzled. Zac, our Luxurious Pet Move Abroad, found us a French pet store open on a Sunday to buy the muzzle, but we have yet to be asked to use it.
As noted above, an intrinsic challenge of moving a 60-lb boxer around the world is one of the two large challenges Colby brings. The second is that he breaks out of kennels and is VERY strong. This means that we have brought a very strong (and thus heavy) Impact Collapsible Crate with us. Stephanie bought a light-weight, plastic dolly for pulling it around, that collapses into something very small when not in use. But even that does not help on cobblestones, stairs, or getting on and off of trains.
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Resources & Recommendations
The cancellation of our Brussel’s stay led us to extend our time in Plymouth; causing us to have two different apartments. We first stayed at “Home in Plymouth”, at 3 Barbican Court, and rented by Emma, and loved the place. It was a little loud with drunken revelers at night, but well located, in great shape, with an unusually comfortable bed, and extraordinarily well supplied. Stephanie then moved to “Home in Plymouth”, on White Land and hosted by Simon for her last four nights, where it was MUCH quieter, but also much less beautiful, comfortable or well supplied.
We spent our two London nights in at “Home in Greater London“ at 101 St. George Square, and rented by Olga and Anna. Olga and Anna were both good to work with and the one-bedroom apartment with a small kitchenette was one of the few times an AirBnB apartment turned out to be bigger than it looked in the photographs. To be clear, it was not spacious, but it was the size of a hotel room and easily accommodated Colby’s kennel.
For traveling from London to France, we cannot recommend Luxury Pet Transport highly enough. Zac communicated wonderfully beforehand, advised us on train ticket purchases, arrived right on time, and even found us a pet store in Calais that was open on Sunday morning.
In terms of the train ride from Calais to Paris, I have found that the website “Trainline” is a convenient and moderately flexible way to buy tickets. The reason Zac had to bring us to the pet shop is that large dogs are supposed to be muzzled on the French train (though no one gave Colby a second look). Also, the train station in central Calais (Calais Ville) is not surrounded by amenities. The toilets were broken, so we had to walk about 20 minutes to a not-so-nearby Pizza Hut.
Once in Paris, we took the Metro from Gare du Nord to St. Michel/Notre-Dame. Dogs are welcome on the Paris Metro, but the crate remained a royal pain.