FRANCE 2006

FRANCE 2006

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

Digitizing and automating the preboarding process at USAirlines is underway at Logan Airport as we begin our journey to Paris, via Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the screens which have to be touched through each stage of the process are not as user friendly as they could be - and people not used to taking cues from a computer are likely to be unhappy. And there still has to be an agent to check in the bags.
But we got off on time on a simply gorgeous Thursday afternoon, on a flight completely full with overhead bins jammed - but that has become normal. There were lots of business types, heading home for the weekend. With my jeans and leather sandals, I add a little diversity to the crowd.
CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING DEPARTMENT - We arrive in Philly 25 minutes early - and then sit on an active runway because no gate is available.

FLIGHT 26 TO PARIS

With 15 minutes to departure, there are lots of empty seats. We had cleaned out our refrigerators, and have been snaking on crackers and cheese, grape tomatoes, and hard-boiled eggs. The dreaded airline dinner tray doesn’t scare us now.
(When I was gainfully employed and calling on Kimberley-Clark (read: Kleenex and Huggies) I regularly flew from Boston to Milwaukee and on to Neenah, Wisconsin, on Midwest Airlines. Midwest had begun life as the Kimberley-Clark corporate fleet, and still operated in a mode quite apart from most airlines. The food was superb and the flight attendants baked cookies en route. And all the seats were two abreast and leather covered. I wonder what is left of that wonderful institution.)
Surely, it is ironic that we are on our way to the gastronomic capital of the world - and the dinner we have just we served can only be termed “anti-gourmet”. It came enclosed in a cardboard box, 8” by 10” by 2”. Inside, in a plastic tray the size of a postcard, was the main course - green beans, a few kernels of corn, two tablespoons of mashed potatoes, and perhaps half a cup of stewed beef.
A plastic cup of cole slaw, the most edible item, accompanied the tray. There were two crackers to be eaten with a 1” and 1 1/2” piece of gouda cheese, two tiny bread slices and a pat of butter.
For dessert, three small apples slices were presented to be dipped into a coffee creamer size cup of caramel.
The packaging appeared to be worth more than the food. Quelle dommage!

HOTEL VICTORIA CHATELET

But our first meal in Paris restored my body and soul. We landed on time, got our luggage, and called for the shuttle we had reserved. Two hours later, we were at our hotel, which had morphed from a two-stars to three-stars since we had made reservations. The recommendation for the hotel came from a friend of Mara’s who spends a good deal of time in Paris.
As expected, our rooms were not available until noon - it was now about ten in the morning. We left our luggage and went to a nearby bakery (boulangerie) for breakfast, where Carol had the “best omelet I ever ate”, with orange juice squeezed while we watched. Great French bread and superb coffee - a wonderful start for the weekend.
As we discovered at dinner that first night, at a bistro near the hotel, prices are higher than in the U.S. - but so is the quality, in many cases. Carol ate scallops (another “best”) and I had a veal stew that was superb. A glass of wine and a world-class creme brulee completed the meal. The airline food is now a distant memory.
The hotel is one street away from the Seine, across from the eastern end of the Ile de Cite, the island that holds Notre Dame and dozen of government buildings. The location puts it within walking distance of the Lourve, the Tuileries Gardens, the Pompidou and Notre Dame.
After breakfast and a nap, we set off for the Pompidou Center, the focus of contemporary art in Paris, through a maze of side streets with small shops and dozens of eating and drinking places.
The building itself outshines whatever is put inside, in a sense. It is skinless with the steel members holding it together completely visible from the huge space outside the entrance. A series of escalators enclosed in tubes climb one side of the building to the top - six levels but perhaps a height of twice that many stories. The view over Paris from the top is dramatic, even on the hazy day that was Friday.
The art is contemporary - not only the 20th century masters but “beat”, performance artists, collage makers, avant garde film makers - an extraordinary range from the grotesque to the merely vulgar to the sublime. The building gripped me as much as it did when I saw it first in the early ‘90s on a trip with Gladys.
The plaza outside the building is a gathering place for performers of all kinds, - think Harvard Square ten times the size. The striking thing about the Pompidou for me was the youth of the people we saw - the average age was much younger than the people I am used to seeing at museums at home.
Perhaps, it is the “modern” art that attracts them - will the demographics change when we get to the more classic museums?

TAMI ARRIVES

Carol’s eldest daughter, Tami, flew in from San Francisco on Saturday morning, Walking towards the Seine after her arrival, we found ourselves in the midst of a gardening market on the street that parallels the river - hundreds of flowering plants, trees, and bushes all set out in pots on the sidewalks, leaving a narrow aisle for the crowds out for a airing on a warm pleasant weekend morning.
On the same street on the river side, overlooking the Seine, the traditional open air used book stalls line the sidewalk. Somewhere, I have a pen and ink drawing of the same scene, probably done in the 1920’s, that hung in the house in Glastonbury when I was growing up. Only the books have changed - and not even some of those.
Below the roadway and the sidewalk, there is a continuous quay accessible from the upper road. Tonight, as we walked back from dinner in Place Dauphine, there were couples sitting on the quay, eating, drinking and embracing as Parisians have done for two centuries.
Place Dauphine is a tear-drop shaped oasis at one end of Ile de Cite. We chose one of the five restaurants in the small square,
Seated at the rear of the room, we looked out on the Seine and across to the Left Bank. The tourist river boats aimed their flood lights towards the bank of the river, which created a moving light show on the trees across the street from the restaurant - a lovely sight, on a night cool enough for a sweater or jacket.

SUNDAY

Adjoining the hotel is the Chatelet Musical Theatre - another recommendation from Mara’s friend. This morning, Carol and Tami went off to the Louvre - they managed to walk in the wrong direction along the river until it dawned on them that perhaps the Louvre wasn’t that far.
While that was happening, I waited in a short line at 9:45 for tickets to see an 11:00 performance. No tickets were sold in advance, and we had been warned to get in line early. I got my ticket, and pushed through the crowd when the doors opened.
No seats were reserved, but I managed a seat in the left side of row 6 in the orchestra. Since the program was a piano recital, the view was perfect. Two very lovely Mozart sonatas and a Beethoven sonata were played by Lars Vogt, unknown own to me but a European favorite.
Late on Sunday afternoon, it was off to the Musee D’Orsay, to see the Impressionists in a wonderful building along the Seine that had been a railroad station. There were long lines to get in, but for the only time on the trip, my cane attracted the right kind of attention. An attendant motioned us out of line and to a open ticket window reserved for VIPs.
Two hours later, we walked out into a sudden afternoon shower, and splurged on a taxi back to the hotel. The dinner we planned at a highly touted restaurant tanked when I got us lost, and we settled for an adequate bistro.
On the way, we walked through the Rue des Rosieres, the heart of the Jewish section of Paris, in an area called the Marais.
A year in Paris would not be enough to explore dozens of neighborhoods , each with its own flavor.
Monday morning, we packed and checked out, leaving our bags at the hotel. Our destination was the church called Sacre Coeur, high on a hill in Montmartre, overlooking all of Paris. Here, we were far from the high priced tourist streets along the Seine. Montmartre, in the streets below the church, is a warren of discount clothing and fabric stores with pushcarts on the unswept streets, frequented by an amazingly diverse range of people.
A funicular runs up the hill to the church with a spectacular view of the city, the major landmarks visible despite the haze in the atmosphere.
As a finale to our Paris visit, Carol and Tami went shopping at Galleries Lafayette, a famous department store, while I had a leisurely coffee in the 6th floor cafe, watching the crowds.
Finally, in late afternoon, a cab to the hotel to pick up our luggage, and then on to the Montparnasse railroad station for the trip by VTG - the fast train - to LeMans. hopefully to be greeted by a friend of our exchange partner.

THE FIRST 36 HOURS IN LEMANS - Monday and Tuesday

As promised, after less than an hour on the “fast train” from Paris, we were met at the railroad station by Nadine Mazet, a close friend of the Delingny’s. Nadine is of our children’s generation, along with her husband, Michel Mas. They live near our new home with their 13 year old daughter, Chlotilde. An older daughter is at university.
Our new home was in a quiet neighborhood at the southern end of the city, in a mix of small houses and institutional buildings, row houses with doorways directly on the sidewalk. The exterior promised little, but the house inside is warm and comfortable. A small entry way opens into a large living/dining room with kitchen at the rear on the right. On the left, a patio room with a full glass wall/door opens on a postage stamp sized lawn and garden with a small storage shed behind that.
On the first floor (our second floor), is a large bedroom, a study and a bathroom with a separate toilet room. Stairs in the study led to the second floor where Tami slept.
The kitchen and bath are both modern - lots of built-ins - but with a few idiosyncrasies. The refrigerator is opposite the stairs, a dozen steps from the kitchen, while the dishwasher and the clothes washer (no dryer) are in the space under the stairs. Drying occurs on lines strung in the shed, or (as we did) draping the clothes on the lawn furniture in good weather.
In the living room, bookshelves lined two walls, framing the large tv/vcr/dvd player, two leather chairs and matching sofa, and a large globe of the world.
Michel took us shopping at a nearby supermarket, so that we could get some basics to start off, and then insisted that we have dinner with them. We became family almost instantly, embraced by Nadine, Michel and their delightful daughter - a thirteen year old who plays piano at an advanced level, dances, and cooks wonderful desserts. Chlotilde, the daughter, arrived on our doorstep on her bicycle the next morning to show Carol (walking) and Tami (running) ar around the neighborhood.
After a leisurely morning, we drove south towards the Loire and the city of Tours, with one of the valley’s chateaux, Villandry, as our destination. With several dozen chateaux to choose from, we had implicitly decided to pick a relative few and explore those in depth.
Villandry is famous for its extensive gardens, laid out in geometric designs, covering dozens of acres. Looking out over the gardens toward the small village beyond, the level of sophistication in the design and the exquisite execution was breathtaking.
The chateau dates from the 16th century, but the tower is from the 13th. The gardens now in place date from the early 19th century, and are modeled on English gardens. 1800 lime trees line the walks and border the pathways.
The interior is less interesting than the gardens, and by climbing to the top of the keep (the square 13th century tower in one corner of the building) there is a 360 degree view of the countryside.
Coming as we did in a relatively quiet period, places like Villandry are not completely overrun with tourists like ourselves. Even so, driving, once we leave the main highways, can be a challenge, particularly through the old towns which were laid out and built up long before the advent of motor cars.

OLD TOWN, LeMans

It is 2:35 Wednesday afternoon, and I am sitting in Square Jacque Dubois in the old town of LeMans, looking out over the city. On one side of the square, there is a precipitous drop over the original city walls, built at the time of the Later Roman Empire, in 280 A.D., and now acclaimed as one of the best preserved in Europe.
The area is tiny - the walls enclosed a space four hundred meters long by two hundred meters wide, filled with buildings dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries. Typically, they are of stone covered with stucco - or not -with the supporting timber ends showing at each floor. Three stories plus some dormer windows is typical, with a few higher and some lower. The narrow winding twisting streets are all paved with cobblestones - great for lasting for centuries but not the best walking for me.
On one of the streets is The Seven Plats, a much touted restaurant, which gave us a less than perfect lunch. With LeMans not a tourist attraction except during the auto races, all the other diners appeared to be French.
We are slowly learning our way around town. Last night, Nadine took Tami and Carol to show them the street on which the food market opens each morning - and we found our way back there this morning.
Getting around is not helped by LeMans’ own “Big Dig”, a project in which a tramline is being built to bisect the city north and south. We are staying just a block off the route, at its southern end. As construction moves along, the detours change almost daily.
French schools are on a two week holiday, and there are teenagers everywhere, particularly groups of girls, as well as families with small children out for an outing.

CAUTIONARY NOTE ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Michel tells us to not only lock our front door when we leave - but to lock it when we are at home! Yet, the streets surrounding the house and in town do not appear as hazardous as did the streets in parts of Paris. Particularly in the Montparnasse neighborhood, I felt the need to hang on to my cane and backpack - there were lots of dicey looking characters, particularly at the entrances to tourist attractions like the funicular to Sacre Coeur Church.

FRIDAY MORNING

Carol and Tami are out walking/running with Nadine’s daughter. Rachelle. The sun has come out full strength finally after several overcast days.
Yesterday was a highlight of the trip. We drove northwest to Mont St. Michel, the legendary island just off the coast at the junction of Brittany and Normandy. On a tiny spit of land, just a few hundred yards from the mainland, a shrine was first erected in 708, following a vision from the Archangel Michel. Since then, a series of religious buildings have risen on the site; and today, an abbey crowns the top of the island, part of which dates from the 11th century.
The English conquered what is now Brittany in the 100 Years’ War, but impregnable Mont St. Michel was never captured.
The abbey is reached by a winding road around the rock - or by stairs, hundreds of them. We went up by the stairs (it turns out we didn’t know any better) along with hordes of other visitors.
With schools on holiday,there were teenagers in packs, families with babies on front, backs, and in strollers, tour groups with guides holding aloft a flower or a broom or some other symbol to distinguish themselves.
A village surrounds the abbey; rising in tiers, presumably to shelter the people who work on Mont St. Michel. Dozens of souvenir shops, all carrying the same gimcrack reproductions of the island and useless keychains and flags, line the only street, along with restaurants by the score. We managed to avoid most of them.
Once the abbey level is reached, the view is unforgettable. At low tide, the sands stretch in every direction, and groups of people walk out from the island over the acres of sand flats looming in all directions.
Before the present causeway was built, the island was accessible only at low tide. Even today, parking for visitors in primarily on the sand below the causeway. The tide - as much as fourteen feet in height - rolls in twice a day, and warning signs showing the time of the next high tide, to alert visitors to leave the parking lots before getting swamped.
Watching the tide roll in was something we missed - it was due about 6 that afternoon but by 4, we were ready to start back.

A LITTLE DIVERSION IN WORLD ECONOMICS

As we drove back, along secondary roads, the hold that French farmers have on their government is clear - there are thousands of small farms, mostly dedicated to cattle in Normandy, and to other uses in other parts of France.
Clearly, they cannot be competitive in world markets, and exist at all only through subsidies from the government. Those subsidies are what has sparked the trade disputes throughout Europe in recent years.

On our way back, we bought a bottle of cider - which we would call sparkling wine. It went down well with the chicken salad, green salad and fruit we had for supper.
We have had only two really great meals so far - the first at a bistro near our Parisian hotel, recommended by Mara’s friends. The other was the first night at Nadine’s.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

I am sitting in the car, parked in the main square of LeMans, just below the cathedral, while Carol, Tami and Nadine shop for gifts for Tami’s children.
This morning, with Nadine as our guide, we have been to see two of the many fabulous private gardens which are opened to the public for charity purposes one weekend a year. Both were attached to manor houses, smaller than chateaux but imposing nonetheless.
One had a French garden - very orderly and geometrically laid out. The other was English, deliberately casual and uncurbed.
We got back quite late, and I collapsed while the ladies went grocery shopping. They were back about 8 - at which point they made dinner, which was served at 9:30> Nadine and family finally said goodnight about 11 - at which point we all fell into bed exhausted.

Essentially, the family of Nadine and Michel has adopted us. Yesterday, Michel took us on a tour of small towns and villages in the valleys of the Sarthe and the Vigre Rivers, within forty kilometers, in an area southwest of LeMans.
Walking through an entire village in which the newest house is 500 years old put a little perspective on the rush of downtown LeMans. Michel was indefatigable - so much so that when we arrived back home at 8 in the evening, having left at 1:30, he insisted we come for supper, again.
An incredible meal: for an appetizer, fois gras and a quince-like jam on a variety of thin brown bread, followed by a cream of vegetable soup, followed by a salad of greens, smoked duck strips and goose gizzards.
Then the cheese course arrived: six varieties, some hard, some soft, to be eaten with bread. Finally, chocolate cake appeared, baked for us by Rachelle.
Two wines accompanied dinner - first a sweet wine to complement the fois gras, and then a red wine from a vineyard a few miles south of LeMans.
We are acquiring a debt we cannot easily repay.

The Internet on the computer at our house has been unavailable, because access had been blocked. Michel brought a friend of Marc’s (our exchange partner) to try to unblock it, but without success. (I have sent a few messages assuring everyone of our continued existence via Michel’s computer.)
The friend was about to call Marc on his cell phone when I reminded him that it was five in the morning in Massachusetts, and Marc might not appreciate a call at that hour.

I had been keeping up with the program pretty well until today - but the respiratory infection I have been fighting has not been touched by the medications a druggist suggested. What I really need at this point is a “down” day, but that won’t happen until at least Monday.

Tami leaves tom tomorrow (Sunday) evening by train for Charles de Gaulle Airport. Her flight, unfortunately, leaves at 9:45 Monday morning, but no train leaves early that morning enough to accommodate her.
We shall miss her humor, her even temperament and her acceptance of our idiosyncrasies. She has done the bulk of the driving, and is by far the best French speaker of the three of us.

DRIVING IN FRANCE

Once one leaves the main roads between cities, French roads tend to be narrow with minimal shoulders or none at all. I heavily loaded truck coming at you from the opposite direction can spike the adrenaline.
On the plus side, sign posts are everywhere and it isn’t hard to find your way. At this time of year, fields of rape (a grain) are in bloom - acres of bright yellow flowers, reminiscent of Van Gogh. Rape seed oil is the final product, used as an industrial lubricant.
The car we are driving is a Daewoo, notable principally because it runs interchangeably on petrol(gasoline) and gas (liquefied natural gas), and has tanks for both fuels. When both are empty, or nearly empty as they were this morning, filling them will run about 50 euros or nearly 68 dollars, based on the current rate of exchange.
The house does not have a garage or a driveway, so parking is on the street. In our neighborhood , the streets are two lanes wide, with a narrow sidewalk on each side. On of the two lanes is devoted to parking. Typically, there will be eight or ten spaces striped on the street, then a driveway or garage door - and then spaces start on the other side of the street.
Since the streets are generally two-way, when a car approaches from the opposite direction, there is a the need for one or the other vehicle to pull into a open space to let the other pass.
Fortunately, there has always been space on the street to park when we have needed it.

SUNDAY MORNING

I am sitting on a bench in a park with the River Huisine flowing by 10 meters away. Michel, Carol and Tami are off walking. My sinusitis flared up again last week, and by last night, I was not in very good shape.
My attempt to get an antibiotic without going to a doctor failed - and the OTC medicines suggested by a pharmacist have done little. Nevertheless, this morning, there has been some improvement. My curmudgeonly instincts, barely below the surface, come out when I feel ill, and Carol bears the brunt of it - with very good grace.
The sunshine is bright in a near cloudless sky, but the temperature is in the low 50’s, so a jacket is quite comfortable. Yesterday and today have been the first really cool days since we arrived in France.
Back to Nadine and Michel’s we all went for lunch at two, with a woman friend of Nadine’s. Nadine and Rachelle served an incredible meal - appetizer of a tapenaude of olives and anchovies on small toast squares, then asparagus, both white and green. The main course was chicken and duck, with both a hot mixed vegetable dish and a cold mixed vegetable dish.
Then came salad, followed by the now familiar cheese tray, with several new varieties. Finally, we were presented with another chocolate cake from Rachelle and coffee. It was five when we finally rose from the table.
Nadine is a superb cook and a superb hostess.

Sadly, at 7:30, we drove Tami to the train station for the train to Charles de Gaulle Airport, from whence she flew home the next morning.

REFLECTIONS ON LANGUAGE

So far, we have experienced very little of the supposed dislike of Americans in France - people have generally been friendly and helpful, perhaps because we have made an effort to speak French as often as possible, to the extent that we can.
Tami’s French was very adequate for virtually every situation. Carol tries and succeeds a good part of the time. I have flashes of comprehension, and some idioms that I learned in school long ago have somehow survived and rise to the surface spontaneously.
Life became more difficult with Tami’s departure, but we are managing.
Nadine and Michel switch back and forth between the two languages - their English is better than our French, but it is a struggle for them at times. Rachelle speaks very good English - when she summons up the courage to do so with us.
My skills only failed completely once. Tuesday, driving back from Normandy, we stopped at the ubiquitous toll booth to pay our toll. The woman collector pointed to the screen which showed i owed 3.40 euros.
I gave her 3.50 and she gave me back .10, all the while talking to someone on the other side of the booth. I waited for her to release the barrier in front of the car. When it didn’t happen, I looked back at her - she was still talking to a young man
Finally, she realized I was still in the lane, and demanded “3.40 euros). Clearly, she had lost track of us while in the conversation.
My French deserted me completely, and I kept telling her in English that I had paid and been given change. She kept demanding the toll and kept responding in English because I was angry enough to have lost any French that might have helped.
Finally, she raised the barrier, having decided it was a battle she couldn’t win.
I can imagine the story she will tell her friends about the stupid American who gypped the French government out of its rightful toll.
Just my small contribution to the betterment of Franco-American relations.

NORMANDY

I remember the Allied invasion of Europe extremely well, for I had just been called up for service in the summer of 1944, and was on my way to basic training at Camp Croft, South Carolina, just outside of Spartanburg.
My service ended in Japan rather than Europe because the Army mistakenly thought I would make a superb Japanese linguist. Some of the soldiers I started through training with did end up in Europe, as replacements for casualties - and became casualties themselves.
We drove to the coast Monday morning, starting on a main highway and ending in a series of narrow country roads as we neared the tiny towns and beaches that saw the landings of the British, Canadian and American troops.
Along the shore were the landing sites - Omaha Beach, Gold, Sword, June Beaches.
Particularly impressive was a museum in one of the tiny towns, dedicated to the artificial harbor the British designed and built for the invasion, towing huge caissons and floating roadways across the Channel to provide means of getting troops and supplies ashore.
The streets were alive with tourists, primarily French, as far as we could tell, and the usual fast food places and souvenir shops were is abundance.
Later, at Coleville-sur-mer, we walked through the American Cemetery and Memorial, an a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel. More than 9300 American soldiers are buried there, their names inscribed on the white crosses, interspersed with Jewish stars, stretching for hundreds of yards.
A memorial wall lists the names of another 1500 men missing, whose remains have never been found.
The warm sunshine did little to dispel the somberness we felt walking the paths and roadways of the small piece of America on French soil.

L’ENVOI

As we head across the Atlantic on Thursday morning (American time), Carol and I agree that the experience would have been a lot different without Nadine and her family.
LeMans is not really suitable city for an exchange at this time. With the major upheaval caused by the construction of a major tramway at street level - extending for several miles - getting around d the city would have been much more difficult without the family’s advice and guidance.
The detours changed daily - sometimes, hourly. It made spending time in the city on our own an unattractive alternative. When we did things in LeMans, it was in company with N Nadine or Michel or both.

On our last night, we finally were able to take them out for a meal. We had said we wanted a “typically French meal”, and that is what we got, in a small restaurant in a 16th century building in the Vie Ville.
It was only the third meal we had had in a restaurant (as opposed to a “creperie” or “boulangeries” or some other lesser establishment. Based on this small sampling, the three ranked from memorable (Paris bistro), LeMans good, and the second Paris bistro routine.
Traditional French cooking with lots of sauces is definitely not my first choice, and Carol agrees. Nadine’s cooking, based on fresh ingredients and little sauce, was different and thoroughly enjoyable.

The house where we spent ten days was quite adequate but quirky. An entry directly off the narrow street opened into a tiny vestibule, with a closet door directly ahead and the door to the living room on the right.
In the living room was a three piece leather lounge suite, focused on a large TV cum DVD an d video, with b built in bookshelves on two walls.
The came a dining area, banked by cabinets for linens and dishes. To the left a stair rose to the upper floors, making a u-turn half way up.
Behind the dining area was an open kitchen, with a gas stove, but no oven, a microwave and cabinets. The refrigerator was across the dining room, in an alcove opposite the stairs. Under the stairs was a washing machine (no dryer) and a dishwasher.
At the top of the stairs on the second floor was a toilet in a room separate from the bathroom, in European fashion. The toilet had a shower, tub, sink and counter are - quite large with fixtures of recent date.
The bedroom was to the left of the bathroom with a dormer window on the street. A study to the rear of the bedroom held the computer, and a stairway which led to the loft where Tami slept - reportedly quite comfortable.
The stairs were too steep and narrow for a personal inspection.
At the rear of the house was what, in the US, would be called a Florida room - casual furniture and a glass wall looking out on a small garden and lawn, with a storage shed at the rear of the lot. Laundry drying takes places on lines strung under a shed overhand.

LeMans is bypassed by most travel books but it has a very old portion in the center of the city with one of the best preserved Roman walls in France. In addition to its extensive automobile factories, it also has several wonderfully large green spaces, with ponds, walking paths, playgrounds and working gardens/farms.
We did not get to its numerous museums - but this was not a museum trip. LeMans acted as a central hub for us to travel out from - and we did extensive exploration of the small towns and villages to the south and west, as well as on our two journeys to Normandy and Brittany.

What we cam away with is a better understanding of the current French way of life - what has been retained in the small farming communities and what has been globalized and Americanized in the cities.
Nadine was born in the 1950’s of parents (now both gone) who lived through World War II. Relatives were interned by the Germans. The family were farmers, in a village near LeMans. On Sunday, during our long lunch, we had a taste from one of the last bottles of calvados made by her father. Calvados ia the famed Normandy apple brandy long celebrated for its potency. It lived up to its legend.
The farm where she grew up still exists, now the home of her grandmother. It will be hers when the grandmother is gone. In the meantime, she and Michel drive an old car, travel little, and save to afford music and dance lessons for 13 year old Rachelle; and to keep 22 year old Chlotilde in university.
Both work for the government, both would be called liberal, and both were the best things we found in France.

On our last morning, the family picked us up at 8 a.m. Rachelle had an eye appointment at a Paris hospital at 11, and we were due at Charles de Gaulle at 11:30. Claude, Marc’s wife and the hostess we never met, was due from a holiday in Morocco at 1:30 at Orly Airport.
The long ride went without incident, we were deposited at our airport at 11:15, found our gate, checked through after at least four presentations of our tickets and passports, and boarded the flight - which took off on time.
We will be arriving early in Philadelphia for our connection to Boston.

FINAL NOTES

France is expensive, with the exchange rate, after commissions and other manipulations resulting in a rate of 1.30 dollars to 1.00 euro.

Distances are deceiving if you go by the map. Traveling the “motorways” (our throughways), you make make wonderful time, since the speed limit is 78 miles an hour, often exceeded by the traffic. The downside is the tolls - from LeMans to Paris, about 80 miles of motorway, cost nearly $20.
However, if you leave the motorways, expect much slower travel. Any route through villages, small towns and even cities, will take you down roads that can be navigated at 35-40 miles per hour, at best.

It finally dawned on me that most cities and towns were established before automobiles existed - as opposed to the US where so much of the country was built up after the proliferation of the automobile - and where there was lots more room to begin with.



















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