TUSCANY - October 2004
Sunday, October 2, 2004 - Terminal 2, Charles de Gaulle Airport, 9:20 a.m. Standing near me are two uniformed soldiers with sub-machine guns. Carol is off at the other end of the terminal, shopping without European money - we haven’t changed any yet.
Suddenly, more soldiers materialize as well as police - and we are herded out of the middle section of the terminal - an unclaimed package equals a bomb scare.
We go outside and eventually make our way to the other end of the terminal, where all is quiet.
Welcome to Paris!
There is no panic, everyone obeys the orders of the authorities, and we go on to our gate to await the flight to Paris. (The layover in Paris is too short for us to go into the city - an hour each way - but long enough for both of us to resent the scheduling.
Sunday night - All went smoothly all the way into Montecantini Terme, a very pleasant city an hour by train west of Florence with a large park right in its center. The hotel is 3 star - which seems to mean it has all the usual amenities but no extras. Soap is dispensed from a large bottle - no more of the little bottles of soap and shampoo and mouthwash I have collected over the years.
The town is famed as a spa, with hot springs public baths in the central park.
The hotel and town will be our base for this Elderhostel trip. We arrived in late afternoon by bus from the Florence airport, had a light meal, and rested until dinner.
Poor Carol - the first meal was thin sliced English style roast beef with a roast potato. She filled up on salad. Roast chicken for the evening meal suited her much better.
Monday - We had thought we would awake this morning without a call - but at nine, an hour after breakfast, we were still abed. At ten after nine, we had hurriedly dressed, and sitting at our first meeting, and then strolling out on our orientation walk.
My back vigorously protested the walk, and I took medication which helped a great deal. After lunch, a rest and then three hours of lectures, followed by a moderately good dinner. (I bought a bottle of wine which stays on a near by table until I finish it.) Wine, coffee and tea are extras, not included in the trip price.
There are 38 in the group. The most interesting so far are two Jewish couples, the Sokols from Cleveland and the Kalkenbergs from (I never jotted it down).
Lecture this afternoon on Renaissance sculpture by Kevin Murphy, a Ph.D. Englishman resident in Florence for 12 years. Brilliant, funny, engaging. He brought Donatello and Michaelangelo to life. We hear him twice more, and he will be doing some museum guiding as well. Good choice.
Our trip leader is a gorgeous American married to an Italian - totally bilingual and quite pleasant.
The hotel is on a short street, a couple of blocks from the main square. It has a large courtyard in front of the building and chairs and tables and a small pool, currently overfull from recent rains. Only one member has tried it so far.
Tuesday, 1 p.m. - Nearly two-thirds of the group has been laid low temporarily by a stomach virus, lasting 8-12 hours. It happened during the night, and only 13 of the 38 members of the group showed up to go to Pisa this morning.
Carol was not terribly sick or terribly well - and she simply stayed in bed for the day. I was untouched.
Pisa is a 45 minute bus ride from Montecantini Terme, and tour buses now park on the outskirts of town. People then either walk into the center or take a “tram” - Toonerville trolley type - as we did.
The reason to come to Pisa is the “Field of Miracles” - a grassy rectangle inside the old city walls containing the largest baptistry in Italy. (Baptistry, a circular building, sometimes detached from a church, in which the rite of baptism is administered; the most remarkable, that of Pisa (Wikipedia). The open plain also has the Pisa cathedral, and the focus of all eyes, the round bell tower.
The famous Leaning Tower of Pisa is usually photographed as though it was a free standing structure in an open area. Actually, it sits very close to the cathedral, and along the longer side of the rectangular field, not far from the tower, is a passageway for pedestrians and bicyclists that is lined with street vendors, selling uniform junk to tourists.
The buildings in the area are magnificent combinations of Byzantine, Gothic and Romanesque architecture. We never got to see the city of Pisa itself, but after the previous day in Florence, I was perfectly happy to get on the bus and return to Montecantini for lunch.
Monday was our first excursion into Florence for a walking tour of some of the major attractions we will be seeing in detail ail over the next ten days. We had a great guide and used “whisperers” - a hearing device each of us wore over one ear, tuned to a wireless broadcast by the guide, making communication much easier on both sides.
We walked about three hours and were relatively beat by the time we got back to our hotel. The weather has been warm - high 70s, low 80s - and Florence seemed jammed with tourists, despite the lateness of the season .
Tomorrow, the group goes back to Florence, but we go to visit Carol’s friends in Arezzo, two hours southeast by train, via Florence - a definite test of our traveling skills.
So far, we have made no particular friends in the group. I had forgotten that most Elderhostelers I had met previously are relatively unsophisticated (although many have traveled widely) and generally conservative in their social and political views.
At this point, it does not appear that we will be exchanging addresses with many couples. There are several second marriages in the group, but no other unmarried couples, like us, that I have detected.
I am not sure I will do this again. Home exchanges appear to be a more attractive option if we can find people in places we want to go who also want to come to Boston.
(As things have turned out, this was our first and last Elderhostel trip together - we have found Overseas Adventure Travel, also aimed at seniors, to work better for us, with smaller groups and a clientele we seem to better adapt to.)
Wednesday, 7 p.m., on the train from Arezzo back to Montecantini Terme. - We started early this morning to visit Carol’s friends, Barbara and Paul Zinn, who live in New York City, and Barbara’s son Arthur and his wife and two very young children, who live currently in a penthouse in the small city of Arezzo, while rebuilding t wo 16th-17th farm houses on six acres in the mountains of Tuscany.
The project has been underway for four years, and they expect to finish one house by June. It will operate as a country guest house for large groups - it will have eight bedrooms, several kitchens, half a dozen baths. The site is high on a hill, with magnificent views to the west
The houses had been lived in and the surrounding land farmed until 1969, when the deteriorating economics of farming in Tuscany caused the abandonment and deterioration of the buildings.
Arthur is a lawyer with no previous construction experience, but he has been a laborer, a contractor, a general contractor, doing everything with the help of his brother-in-law and other locals. Only the plumbing and electricity have been farmed out.
This will eventually be an upscale resort aimed at weddings, family birthday parties and corporate events. Even with Arthur’s “free” labor, the investment will be close to one million dollars, I would guess. The furnishings have been accumulated from local second hand stores and from English auctions. Martha, Arthur’s wife, is doing in the interiors. Along other things, she has employed a local seamstress, setting up a workroom in their Arezzo apartment to make draperies, slipcovers and covers of all kinds.
For a family planning a major birthday celebration - that is, a family with plenty of money - this will be as beautiful and private place as one could imagine.
Arthur and Martha are delightful, and Barbara and Paul are very pleasant to be with. We left with reluctance, after eating fresh ripe figs from a tree on the estate.
(When we left the hotel this morning, there were new casualties from the virus which attacked the group and lots of absentees from the trip planned to Florence. We seemed to have been among the fortunate few who escaped.)
Friday morning - We roamed the Thursday market in Monte during the morning before a lecture on Leonardo by the least interesting speaker so far - a near monotone and a rush to get through the material in the allotted time.
Lunch yesterday was at a hotel in Montecantini Alto, the “old town” high above the spa city, reached by funicular. Another lecture in the late afternoon on the bloody history of Florence in the Renaissance period, then dinner and finally, a movie I hadn’t seen - “Tea With Mussolini”, set in 1935 in Florence.
This morning, we are off to Florence to imbibe more culture.
Tuesday - Today is a free day until 3 - and I’ve just finished lunch (1:35). Carol is off having a massage, and I am sitting in the front courtyard of the hotel under a cloudy sky with the temperature in the 50s.
We had inclement weather over the weekend, particularly on Sunday in Lucca. I had been carrying a jacket and umbrella in anticipation of continuing storms, but S Sunday seemed better. I left both at the hotel and wound up soaked before I bought a “brolly” from a street vendor.
More churches - I have finally realized that my early anti-church bias, inculcated in most middle class Jews in my generation, means I have no Christian frame of reference which to put what we are seeing and hearing. The speakers all assume a much greater knowledge of Catholicism - in particular - than I can provide.
We have established closer relationships with several couples. On man, now retired, worked for an Oregon company I once called on . We must have met, since he had been to the Velcro headquarters in Manchester several times.
His wife is a born-again Christian, but he doesn’t seem to have been impacted.
My back and hips and calves are not very comfortable, and I have been popping pain pills. I need to get to the bottom of whatever in behind these pains as quickly as possible when I get back.
I am trying hard not to complain but the act of walking itself has become difficult at times - not a position I want to be in.
(I had surgery to repair a herniated disc that December.)
Yesterday, Monday, was easily the best day of the trip. We bussed to Vinci, the original home of Leonardo. An American architect, married to an Italian woman and living in the area, was our guide.
There is a wonderful museum filled with models built from the many drawings he created. It turns out he built almost nothing himself, and many of his drawings and ideas were conceived using the ideas of others. But the broad range of his work is totally astounding, encompassing land, sea and air travel, construction machinery, lifting hoists and dozens of other facets.
Lunch was in a villa in Vinci, followed in the drawing room of the villa by a lecture and concert by a British musician who has devoted his life to the the music of Liszt. The room was a circular vaulted chamber in which the piano sounded absolutely wonderful.
Thursday, 1:30 p.m. Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. - I haven't finished recording a single day’s activities- at least that is what it feels like - and now we are on our way home. Two weeks away and i suspect the world hasn’t changed much in our absence. Did we have a “good” time? One question - another: would we do it again?
The pluses: (1) Elderhostel provided truly excellent lecturers, all of whom were more than adequate and some who were outstanding. They brought insights which only an enormous amount of reading beforehand would have provided. (2) All the logistics were taken care of with virtually no glitches - the busses showed up on time, the tickets to museums materialized at the right times, the choices of venues was good, overall. (3) We probably got to see some places and things we wouldn’t have found on our own.
The minuses: (1) Of the 38 people in our group, we connected with two or three couples we really liked and would enjoy seeing again. In my usual intolerant way, I found some of the group truly objectionable.
I realized, too late, that what I was missing was some discussion of what we were seeing. The lecturers did just that - lectured. What I could have tried to do was start discussions about what we were seeing and hearing.
No one took the initiative, perhaps because no one was interested in doing so. From that point of view, I can’t say much of the experience will stay with me - too much surface and not enough depth.
Minus #2: I realize that that is typical of Elderhostel programs - they don’t seem to attract people who want to know anything very deeply or thoroughly. I think it is doubtful that I would try another.
Having said all that, there were several days that stood out as experiences I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. One was the visit to the Zinns in Arezzo, another the day at Vinci, and the third the trip to Lucca.
(A fourth which I find not mentioned in my journal occurred when we skipped one of the Florence visits to takea city bus from the Florence train station to a hill town north of the city whose name I did not record.
The bus ride was less than 30 minutes, depositing us in the town square in this elevated community. The square had several restaurants with tables set out under umbrellas or canopies, one of which we chose for lunch.
The main attraction, other than the views over the countryside, dazzling in themselves, was the Roman amphitheater which opened just off the main square. In amazing good condition, and virtually unvisited while we were there, I got a photo from the top tier of seats of Carol singing on the stage below.
We spent most of the day in the town, visiting a number of sites, including a school (?) at the very top of the hill, reached on a cobblestone road which appeared to be as ancient as the amphitheater. We walked on stones laid more than 2000 years ago.)
Florence itself I found exhausting - there were crowds everywhere we went, and although Elderhostel made sure we didn’t stand in lines as long as many others did, seeing orginals of which we had only seem copies before doesn’t do much when most are behind glass, and you are standing crowded in a room with hundreds of others.
It was in the small towns that I felt most comfortable, and had the time to absorb what was around us, at a lesiurely pace.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
A NEW ZEALAND JOURNEY
A NEW ZEALAND JOURNEY
by
Arthur Katz
This journey actually began in 1969, when my son Jamie went off to New Zealand at the age of 16 as an exchange student for a year. He left in the middle of his junior year at Lexington High School, in what now seems like a much more innocent time. I've since wondered what inspired our confidence in his ability to handle the move away from the cocoon that was 1969 Lexington to the unknown, half a world away.
But he did handle well his sometimes difficult situation, in a culture which at that time was at least a full generation behind the one in which he had grown up. He wore the school uniform required by the private school he attended, although keeping his socks up - the uniform included short pants - proved a continuing source of irritation to both Jamie and his headmaster.
His New Zealand family were South African Jews, who had emigrated in the early 1960s to escape the oppressive political and social climate then prevalent under the apartheid regime. As an orthopedic surgeon, his father, Dr. Leo Mirkin, was able to set up a practice and eventually joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Otago in Dunedin. There were two children, a boy Jamie's age and an older daughter.
Although orthopedics surgeons in the United States rank close to the top of the medical professions in income, in the New Zealand of 1969, professionals like Dr. Mirkin were comfortable rather than wealthy. The upper and lower edges of income distribution were much closer together than in America at the time or since.
The family had a contemporary home, most unusual at that time in Dunedin, the second largest city of the South Island. Both children were in private school, and that was where Jamie was enrolled.
McGlaushan College was modeled on the English public (actually private) high school model, and Jamie had his first experience with cricket and rugby (almost a religious exercise in New Zealand, where the national team, the Blacks, was world renowned). He managed to make the basketball team, an eventuality that would have been most unlikely at Lexington High.
He returned in January 1970, much more than a year older, leaving behind a family and friends whose relationships he has continued to cherish and nourish.
Within months of his return, we had the first of what would be, for twenty years or more, a fairly regular parade of visitors from New Zealand.
Thirty-three years ago, New Zealand seemed to be further from the rest of the world than it does now. When New Zealanders left to see the rest of the world, it was not uncommon for the . walkabout" to last for several years. So, a visit to our home in Lexington might last as long as six months, and was rarely less than a week.
Over the years, we came to know and thoroughly enjoyed his father, his mother, his sister, his brother, his friends, and his friends' families. And always, there were invitations for us to come to visit.
As the years went on, and the trip became financially possible, there was the problem of timing. With the seasons reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, December through February were right times to visit the South Island, which experiences temperatures in the 30's in our summer months.
That meant being away during the December holidays or taking work time in January, both of which proved too disruptive. So, we talked about it, but never went.
In the meantime, Jamie and his wife - who had been an exchange student in Indonesia, - went back twice: once in 1992 and again in 1996. And though the visitors from New Zealand to Lexington had become increasingly rare as students became working adults with families and responsibilities, they still came on occasion.
Early in 2002, Jamie began to talk about another visit, motivated by the declining health of his NZ mother, and the desire to show his now five-year-old adopted Chinese daughter to his friends. My wife's death and my own retirement had erased the time constraints, and when he asked me and agreed that I could bring a friend along, it was an easy decision.
We would leave before Christmas, returning in late January. Our first touchdown would be in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city and its major air terminus, after a 12-hour flight from Los Angeles. driving south, our first destination would be the center of Maori (native New Zealander) culture at Rotarua, and then we would move into a remote area in the southeast of the North Island. before stopping in Wellington, the country's capital.
From there, leaving our rental car and taking the ferry across the strait separating the two major islands, we would pick up another car for the drive southeastward to Christchurch, jumping off port for Antarctic voyages. From there, we would head west across the mountainous spine of the country to the lush west coast, with its dense forests, fjords, glaciers and played-out gold mining sites. This would include a side trip to storied Milford Sound, one of the largest fjords in the world, a visit to the summer vacation areas around Queenstown, and finally, arrival at Dunedin for our last week, to be spent with friends and family.
Jamie had done all the planning - air line tickets, reservations for hotels, b and Us, form stays, jet boat trips, a helicopter to the glaciers, a small plane to Milford Sound instead of a six hour bus trip. Out came the guide books, and the recent novels about New Zealand and what histories I could find in local libraries.
As I began to read, I quickly realized that over the years, I had acquired some sense of the current New Zealand but none at all of its history. Yes, I knew Robert Burns' brother and a group of Scottish emigrants had founded Dunedin, and there had been savage battles with the native Maori. But this had been 1840 or later, and I had no sense of the history of the country before that time, nor any understanding of the forces that produced the New Zealand of our time.
Over the years, reading about places before I visited them has been part of the travel experience for me. With guide books all sounding roughly the same, finding reliable histories and essays on an area's culture has been key to my own understanding. How does one know that a particular historian is unbiased and accurate? Vetting the writer can be a formidable task, lacking access to an expert in the region.
So, one makes as intelligent a choice as one can, and hopes the public libraries will disgorge the volumes when a decision is made on which to read.
As the reading went on, I began to confront the other issues that present themselves.
Should the gifts for the people we will be staying with in New Zealand say something about New England specifically -like maple syrup - or should it relate to the recipient, who I may not have seen in twenty years?
I can remember packing bath soap for business trips to Europe in the 1960's, when the tiny slivers provided in the hotels were inadequate for my rather large frame. Since then, we appear to have instructed the world on that score, and free toilet soap, is now ubiquitous.
I've never kept a journal, but this seems an appropriate time to start one, and I carried two blank books, recent gifts designed to get me going. They went into the carryon which held my reading and writing materials and other essentials I might need for the initial flights.
For me, this would be the longest journey I've ever taken, both in distance and time, since returning from service in Japan after World War II. In the years before my wife became ill, we traveled in the American East, West and South, to Mexico, to Canada, and to Europe, but never for as long a period as this journey will take.
What do I have to do to prepare to be away for 26 days? Turn off the hot water heater, and turn down to heat. Stop the newspaper delivery. Notify the Postal Service to hold my mail until I return. My driveway will be plowed if it snows while I'm away - a distinct possibility - but should I have the steps to the front door shoveled? Without a garage for my car, will it start when I return, after the car has sat unheeded for a month? Hire someone to start it once a week? Clean out the refrigerator, so I am not confronted with green mossy globs when I return?
Who do I need to tell of my plans? And what do I take? Aside from a week's change of clothing - on the assumption that we will be doing laundry from time to time - I'll need reading matter for the 18 hours of flight time going. The vexing problem of gifts for the friends with whom we will be staying has not been solved. It ought to be something, I think, that is peculiarly Lexington or Boston or at least New England. I wonder at the reaction if I showed up with a bushel of Maine potatoes - hard to get more "down home" than that.
There was now a little more than a week to go, and the lists were made. I'd read the two most well-known recent novels on New Zealand, The Bone People and Once Were Warriors. The latter has been controversial, describing in intimate and sordid detail contemporary urban Maori life, and is unsparing in its condemnation of the practice of blaming the whites (pakeha) for the Maoris degradation over the years. I suspect that Maori slums are not on our itinerary, but I want to know more about this fierce people who ate their dead enemies on occasion.
Despite my best intentions to travel light, I ended up with a large duffle bag on wheels and a backpack, and my friend Carol had two medium bogs. Jamie and family, bringing lots of gifts and cameras and amusements that would keep a 6 year old busy for four weeks, were loaded. The treasure turned out to be a portable DVD player about the size of a small laptop, with a dozen movies that will get lots of play over the next month. Car and I solved the "gifts for hosts/hostesses" problem with Vermont maple syrup in plastic jugs and scarves, both of which turned out to be well accepted - or our hosts were being extra polite.
BOSTON TO AUCKLAND
Logan Airport was nerve-wracking, with long lines and doubt in my mind that they would ever get us all aboard the full flight.
We were finally off on the great adventure. The much-touted extra leg room on American Airlines turns out to be not just hype - it is really there, and it was a comfortable six hours to Los Angeles. Qantas hasn't yet gotten the message, and quarters were very close, in a plane that appeared not to have an empty seat. United Airlines has announced it is pulling out of the New Zealand market, and evidently has already cut back on flights. We were also traveling at the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the time most people want to visit.
Greeting us at Auckland Airport at 6:30 a.m. was New Zealand sister Joan Mirkin's daughter, Sarah, the first of the Mirkin family to extend what became an almost embarrassing hospitality. Sarah works and lives in New Zealand's largest city and commercial capital. Coffee and catching up on the rest of the family - and then we were climbing aboard the rented van for the drive to Rotarua, a couple of hours away, and the "center of Maori culture".
A resort city, Rotarua is set in a volcano's caldera, next to a lake of the same name, and is permeated by the smell of sulfur and the steam bubbling up from the fumaroles along the lake shore, some extending into town. Hot thermal baths provide the reason for the town's initial existence, and it grew up around the baths commercialized by the central government beginning in 1903. The Maori focus came later, although the Maoris (of the Te Awara tribe) have been in the area for centuries.
The hotel pool was heated, but not from the local waters, and therefore, not part of the "cure" which has drawn people to Rotarua for a century. Skipping the hotel dining room for breakfast the next morning, Carol and I walked into the center of town to the FAT DOG, a funky local restaurant that would have been at home in Arlington or Waltham. One cultural note: poached eggs don't come with toast automatically as they seem to here, as Carol found out.
An hour's walk along a trail which followed the edge of the lake brought us back to the hotel in time for a water-aided massage at the nearby spa, and melting in a series of increasingly hot outdoor pools. Pursuit of health or decadence?
The afternoon was spent at the Rotarua Museum, learning about the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of 1886 at nearby Lake Rotoramaha and the current state of Maori art. A wonderful docent made two and one-half hours much too short to see everything we wanted to - and the Museum would be closed the next day, Christmas. So many sights, so little time.
Christmas eve, along with several hundred other tourists, we were entertained at a Maori Hangi, dances, songs, hakas (more about that later) and a meal, in a replica of a Maori village in the countryside outside Rotarua. All the festivities celebrated Maori culture in a cleaned-up kind of way. A great plus was a group of visiting Tahitian women of all ages, who sang and danced for us. It was a little hokey, to be sure, but the singing of both groups---both original chants and Maori chants set to Western music---was really quite wonderful to hear.
The maori dialog left no doubt that they understand exactly what they are doing and that they are no less determined to have a place in New Zealand society than did their ancestors, whose fierceness forced the British to sign a treaty with them in 1840, having not been able to beat them conclusively in the field.
Although there are virtually no full-bloods left, those designated as Maori number 20% of the population. They are beginning to engender some hostility on the part of the whites at the concessions they have been able to wrest from the government.
Two weeks before our trip, I had gone to visit my brother, who was hospitalized in Virginia with a variety of ailments. He had not been doing well when I was there, but seemed to be recovering in the weeks afterward. But his condition hung over my preparations , and my journey as well.
Christmas in Rotarua was subdued by American standards - a few decorated trees but little of the street lighting we are used to. Carol said, “It’s a family affair here,” and I think she is right.
With the temperature in the 70’s, the Christmas spirit is hard to conjure up. It is my first Christmas season away from Lexington and all my children that I can remember. I’ve always had mixed feelings about this holiday, a time of confusion of feelings about celebrations that have nothing to do with my Jewish faith but which have such a secular context that it is difficult to avoid participating.
SOUTH FROM ROTARUA TO MAHIA
Leaving Rotarua, the town stopped quickly, with none of the straggling small communities that connect New England towns. The countryside takes over abruptly, and for long stretches, I was reminded of a drive across Newfoundland 30 years ago. The road was a two-lane blacktop, no shoulders no guard rails, no houses, no stores, very little traffic for dozens of miles. This is very open country with very few people.
Plantations abound - straight lines of evergreens climb precipitous hills in ordered files. Clear cutting strips the land of all trees, and replanting is done, I suppose, by hand, since machines would be useless in this jumbled terrain.
Distances are very deceiving in the mountainous and hilly areas like the ride south from Rotarua. What looked like five hours on the map actually took seven.
The drive south east took us through the town of Napier to our next stop, a sheep farm stay near the Mahia Peninsular on the southeastern coast of the North Island. Our “cottage” is the rebuilt sheep shearers’ quarters, hauled up from the lowlands some miles away. From the living room, at 9 p.m. the sun is setting to the right over the peninsular, while two hundred feet below us, the surf crashes on the rocky shore. The view to the left is northeastward up the coast towards Gisbourne.
We were on a working sheep farm, with 2000 head on 150 acres of hills. There are cattle roaming as well, and sheep and cattle shit everywhere - the “cottage” is surrounded by paddocks, with sheep who have gotten under the fence in our front yard. Lee, of course, is entranced.
The climb was steep - the van wouldn’t make it until we had unloaded the passengers and some of the luggage. But once up there, the view was terrific.
Christmas dinner was awaiting us in the fridge - not the traditional turkey but New Zealand crayfish, the size of two pound Maine lobsters without the claws.
Our hosts were away but a friendly farm-sitting couple took very good care of us, and friends of theirs shared a large piece of Pavlova with us, New Zealand’s national dessert. Invented to honor Anna Pavlova, the great dancer, on her first visit to New Zealand in 1893, it is a concoction of whipped cream, meringue and fruit, that is both beautiful to behold and exquisite to taste when properly made.
The following morning was spent at a spa 20 kilometers away, high on a hill in the dense forest, with a series of heated pools. I spent more time than I should have in the hottest of the pools, and scared myself and everyone a bit, but recovered relatively quickly, A small shop at the spa had greenstone carved jewelry, which turned out to be the best value we saw on the trip - but, alas, like all travelers, early in the trip we had no means of comparison, and we didn’t buy nearly enough.
There was a surf beach at the nearby village of Makanga that occupied our afternoon. Our last day included a massage for me from a local therapist in return for his getting a reiki treatment from Cynthia, and I cemented the relationship with a spare jar of maple syrup. Next trip, I will stock it by the case.
Lee got a horseback ride, as well as several on a 4 wheel ATV which seems to be the main method of transport on pasture farms. She got to romp with half a dozen sheep dogs, and in general had a great time.
It is hard to describe how bright the stars are in the clear night atmosphere, far from city lights and air pollution. The view from the front deck over the sea at night was very difficult to leave for bed. And leaving the farm, called in Maori, Te Au (The Mist), was even more difficult.
MAHIA TO WELLINGTON
Lee had a date to swim with dolphins at an aquarium in Napier on Friday morning. From a message awaiting us at the aquarium, I learned my brother's condition had worsened, but efforts to reach my sister-in-law proved unavailing. While the news was not unexpected, I began to brace myself for worse.
A night at a not unpleasant commercial hotel in Palmerston North broke up the journey south to Wellington. As we drove towards the capital city, the hills smoothed out, the road proved straighter and we reached Joan Mirkin's home on the south side of the city shortly after noon.
Joan's home sits high on a hill overlooking Wellington Harbor with a view to the southwest into Cook Strait, the body of water between North and South Islands. Ferries between the islands passed in the middle distance, and a few pleasure boats were out, though not in the numbers I would have expected on a warm summer's day. (I found on this, as on many other occasions, that I needed to keep in mind that New Zealand, with a total land area about that of California has a population 40% less than Massachusetts - just 3.8 million people.)
Present for lunch were Joan's twin nephews, the 20 year old sons of her brother Geoff, as well a Joan's boyfriend Phil, a painting contractor. The twins had stopped in to see us on their way to what was assuredly the only Jewish children's camp in New Zealand, where both would be counselors. With just 7,000 Jews in the country, it is essentially an invisible minority, shrinking yearly.
Dinner was quintessentially NZ: lamb chops, beef steaks, and venison sausage, barbecued on the gas grill on the deck, with fresh tomatoes, and lettuce, potato salad and wonderful bread. Jamie's old friend Jennie Pike, who had been head of NZ/AFS in 1969, and her husband Doug Crump and son Jamie (!), joined us, for a wonderful evening.
The house was a bit cramped with five guests but we managed. Cultural note - there are no screens on windows in any of the city dwellings we visited since insects seem to be almost non-existent, and those that do get in are tolerated. I got to check my e-mail that morning, and was amused to find nothing of substance in 67 messages!
The weather, which had been pleasant but cool and partly cloudy, relented and gave us a couple of days of sun and warmth. Part of one day was given over to the marvelous new national museum, Te Papa, and several hours in a recreated "bush" (NZ for forest) guided by Jennie's husband, a polymath scientist who knew the name and circumstances of every plant, bush and tree. Doug gardens, does world-class needlepoint, and has lived in the states on several occasions.
Jennie caters on a part-time basis for many of the embassies in Wellington, and the wonderful meal at her home that night was testimony to her skill, with a frozen boysenberry cream pie for dessert that was totally over the top. Carol, who ordinarily is a semi-vegetarian, discovered fresh New Zealand lamb and for the rest of the stay at least, became a flesh eater, like the rest of us.
We were wined and dined and cosseted beyond belief, including a gala New Year's Eve party at Joan's. a good deal of which I missed, felled by an allergy attack that struck me down. My mood had not been exactly effervescent, dimmed by thoughts of my brother, but Carol was relentless in moving me along, assuring at least one long walk every day.
I found a New Zealand of few imperfections. The people recycle religiously, the streets are clean, and the environment is treated respectfully everywhere we went. If crime and poverty and squalor are present, they are little in evidence. Admittedly, we saw nothing of the small Maori towns and neighborhoods, but in the areas we visited, the Maoris appeared thoroughly integrated into the larger society, and there has been recompense for past wrongs. So much so, in fact, that I found some mutterings among the whites about the pendulum having swung too far. The Maori are certainly still an underclass, but gains appear to have been made.
Rugby, the premier national sport, is dominated by Maori, with cricket less so. My first ever live cricket match was underway in a stadium in Wellington when we wandered in. Typically, a game goes on for most of the day, and important matches can last several days.
After an hour, I began to have some slight understanding of the strategic nature of the game - but an hour was certainly enough. Around us were people who would be there until dark.
Before I had retired early to nurse my allergies on New Year's Eve, Doug Crump and I talked long about New Zealand and the fact that a country with less than 4 million people has produced the best sailors in the world, plus world class rugby players, mountain climbers and track and field athletes. Doug had no easy explanations.
Wellington, as the capital of the country, is the site of the parliament buildings, which we toured and admired. The political parties are both far more socialistic than ours, in the sense of providing for all layers of society, and changes in administration have not meant big changes in government policy, on the whole.
As we loaded the car on New Year's morning to begin the journey to the South Island, Jamie told me he had gotten a call that Harvey had died. I felt the same conflict I had felt in Virginia when I had seen him two weeks before we left - I was committed to the trip and refused to believe that he was as bad as he evidently was. He died on December 31st, just two weeks short of his 76th birthday.
I reached his daughter Joan, and later his wife Ruth, who comforted me as I tried to comfort her.
It is some seventy years since Harvey and I beat each other’s brains out while our mother, Lucy, stood helplessly by. Glastonbury was the stocks then, and we were the country cousins to the rest of the family - the Katz boys from Glastonbury. Trolleys still ran along Main Street to Hartford , and the hills along the New London Turnpike were full of peach orchards.
Our paths diverged but never separated. I was best man at his wedding at Terplitsky’s Old English Manor on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. I was with him the night he became the first Democrat elected the state legislature from Glastonbury, keeping faith with our father’s bedrock adherence to the Democratic Party.
We never lost touch and we grew closer as the years went on. Fifteen months ago, he and Ruth were with me at my wife;s death,
And now it is over but I will keep my memories of his great good humor - never with malice, and always enjoying a joke on himself. He was a good lawyer, a good husband, a good father and a good brother - and I will miss him.
WELLINGTON TO CHRISTCHURCH
The car was left at the ferry terminal in Wellington - we would pick up another on the other side - as we began the three hour trip in calm seas and sunny skies. Most of the trip is through Marlborough Sound, with hills rising on all sides, very lush and green, and isolated homes widely scattered along the shore and up on the slopes.
We did pick up a car in the small terminal town, Picton, but as Jamie said, "What a country!" Through miscommunications when we changed our ferry schedule, no van was waiting for us as promised. Rather than make us wait the four hours until the time the van was expected, we were given a Camry, and told to go on our way with the assurance that the van and what luggage wouldn't fit into the Camry would be delivered to our hotel, two hours down the coast, that evening. And so it was. Avis in New Zealand really does try harder.
The trip down the east coasts of the South Island took us through the wine country of Marlborough, and then along the coast, through hills with the ocean on our left. Seals basked in the sun in the kelp beds in the shallow coves. Caravans and tents showed up unexpectedly in makeshift campsites on the narrow coastal plain. NZers are casual about where they camp, - any likely patch of level grass seems to qualify.
Kiakora, a small town right on the water two hours south of Picton, exists primarily as the base of the whale watching boats which follow the sperm whales which inhabit the ocean off the South Island. We were fortunate enough to see four whales break from their stay on the surface and dive, flaunting their massive tales in the air.
Abalone shell, which is called paua in Maori, is collected in quantity in Kiakora and polished to bring out its multicolored surface. Whole shells and shell made into jewelry and souvenirs dominated the stores which have sprung up to take advantage of the whale watchers drawn to the town.
Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, and jumping off place for most Antarctic expeditions, had the feeling of a city in the British Midlands, complete with the Avon River running through the heart of the town, and punts as in the namesake river in Oxford England.
Our accommodations were in a bed and breakfast which turned out to be two houses, one of which was turned over to us. Carol and I had the first floor, complete with living room, dining room, kitchen, bath and large bedroom, with a similar suite upstairs. with two bedrooms. A Victorian home built in 1903, it was restored by a German couple, with two children, aged four and five.
Lee and the children bonded immediately, and she spent all her free time with them. Unusually, the five year old was a boy born to a Maori woman and adopted by the German couple. Unusually, the father told us, because Maoris rarely let children be adopted out of the community. He said, in this case, the mother had not wanted her parents to know she was pregnant and was happy to have the child placed with a white family.
The town was relatively empty, with many people away, we were told, on holiday. I reached Jo Hannah, and learned that she, Stanzie, Mara and Harry will all be at Harvey's funeral in West Hartford tomorrow. Despite his many ailments, I never truly thought I would outlive him. Seize the day and make the most of it, as Carol keeps telling me.
As in most New Zealand cities, a botanical garden and park figure prominently in the configuration of the town, and Christchurch was not exception. Theirs including a huge wading pool which Lee took full advantage of. Carol and Cynthia walked to the park from the house while we followed in the car. Both are avid walkers, and I slow them down, although I try to do at least a mile a day.
CHRISTCHURCH TO WANAKA
On Sunday, January 5th, we headed west, across the Canterbury Plains, the largest level farming area in the country. On the South Island, mountains run down the country from north to south roughly two-thirds of the way across. Driving over Arthur's Pass - we couldn't resist the obligatory picture of Arthur at his pass - we arrived on the west coast at Hokitiki, and traveled a few miles south to Whataroa, a very small town, where we had reservations at a farm.
What was once sheep and beef cattle country along the west coast between the sea and the mountains is now the province of thousands of milk cows, whose daily production gets trucked to Hokitiki, to the processing plant that turns it into dry milk for export to the Orient.
The farmer, at whose specially-built-for-tourists home we stayed, leases 150 acres for dairy cattle, fenced off into neat 5 acre paddocks between which the herd of 500 cattle are moved frequently to keep the grass fresh. He has another 90 acres which is being developed for the same purpose, as well as 70 acres he keeps for himself to handle 100 sheep and a few cows.
He was my age, and we found we had both served in the Army of Occupation in Japan in 1946-47, albeit in different armies. He and his wife proved great company, talking of their 8 children and 22 grandchildren, all except two children living outside New Zealand. Here, as with other families we met, the children evidently find New Zealand too confining, and many take off to see the world, marry abroad, and never come back permanently. Making it easy is the fact that New Zealanders can work in the UK and other Commonwealth countries for up to two years without special papers or permits.
We were the only guests while we were there, and used most of the available rooms. Breakfast was part of the package, but dinner was on offer and we wisely ate in both nights we were there - marvelous lamb one night and corned beef and blue cod the next.
We had seen the tiny town - population 350 - which appeared to lack much in the way of anything except a convenience store with a snackbar. Whataroa's size and low density of people are typical of the west coast - the entire Westland area, thousands of square miles, has only 31,000 inhabitants.
Jet boats were invented in NZ to cope with the multitude of shallow rivers. We had our first experience at Whataroa, running down one river to the sea and up another to reach the only mainland nesting area in NZ of white herons. Dozens were on their nests, taking care of their young chicks, with spoonbills looking on from their own nests - a truly lovely sight, and reachable only by jetboats, which operate in as little as eight inches of water at speeds up to 30 miles per hour.
The land that has not been claimed for farming on the west coast is temperate rain forest, full of huge fern trees, creepers entwining the other species, and as dense as would be expected with the enormous rainfall on that part of the island. Since NZ has virtually no native mammals and a paucity of insect life, the walk through a portion of the jungle to reach the blind on the river, set up to observe the herons, was most comfortable.
That afternoon, Cynthia, Carol and I found the beach a Okarito, twelve miles away. Set in a magnificent shallow bay, perhaps three miles long between the headlands, the beach was a hundred yards deep with fine black sand - and no more than 20 people in sight as we drove in through the tiny beach resort. Okarito had been a gold mining town of 3000 souls briefly in the 1860’s, but now had about 20 permanent residents and a dozen “baches” - NZ for weekend cottages.
Cynthia’s adventure for the day consisted of being knockdown by a wave and being dragged seaward by the undertow while looking for a waterfall we had seen earlier. A passerby hauled her out, wet but undaunted.
Lee had a wonderful time on the farm, riding on the 4 wheel ATV, watching the milking at the central milking parlor, and feeding the sheep in a small corral adjoining the house. She started holding bread over the fence - but by the second day she was in the pen, with the sheep crowding around her.
The farming couple were delightful. He is third generation New Zealander, a legitimate farmer, while she is a master weaver who has taught weaving in Japan for a number of years.
COUNTER-CULTURAL NOTE: When the farmer was growing up, New Zealand had not converted to the metric system, and he still talked of miles and yards and feet, and not meters and kilos.
ROADS: New Zealand roads are designed for small cars and little traffic. An unexpected feature are one-lane bridges, even on major highways. As you approach, signs indicate whether you have the right of way, and we backed up only once. Evidently, the lack of traffic when most of the bridges in the countryside were built dictated the money saving configuration. There are long stretches of this two lane blacktop without shoulders or guard rails in the mountains, where passing is possible only when the slower vehicle ahead , usually a truck, pulls into a “lay-by”. NZers tend to be impatient behind the wheel, and we were honked at on several occasions for our relatively slow pace, albeit at the speed limit of 66 miles per hour. Driving is on the left, and the few times I’ve driven when Carol and I have gone off on our own, it has not been a problem, as along as one is careful in entering and exiting the roundabouts, which we would call traffic circles and which are much more common in NZ.
Contrary to our expectations, NZ has turned out to be virtually rainless for our trip. It rained last Saturday night for the first time on our trip, but the sky was clear by morning. We had expected the South Island to be cooler than the North but the opposite has been true - we were experiencing temperatures in the 80’s for the first time.
With the high rainfall, the landscape is unbelievably lush, which is wonderful to behold, but hell on my allergies. I found some Chlortrimetron which seemed to work.
South from Whataroa, the main road meets the Franz Josef Glacier, and everyone except me - I’m not especially fond of helicopters, - rode a copter to the glacier and loved the experience. It is also possible to take a guided walk in, and all the tourist amenities are in evidence.
From the glacier, it was a fairly brief run to Wanaka, to enjoy the hospitality of the Guthrie family, John, Jenny and assorted young people. John and Jamie had been best friends at school, and John and his kids had been to visit with us in Lexington on a number of occasions over the years. John teaches marketing at the University of Otago, and most years has managed to find a conference or a lectureship that gets him on the road. Their home is in Dunedin, and Jenny is a lawyer working for the law firm of Geoff Mirkin, Jamie’s New Zealand brother.
The family has a rambling summer home on Lake Wanaka, which for twenty years had been the home of John’s father, and was still housed an apartment for his unmarried sister, who had also visited with us twenty-five years ago.
With six Guthries and five of us, tents proved to be very useful - the children, including Lee, slept in one and Carol and I in another. On the grounds were a grass tennis court - John plays doubles on an international level - and a greenhouse, and a very complicated water system that John’s son, Hamish, 18, was attempting to subdue.
John’s father was an avid gardener and there were flowers and bushes everywhere. Inside the house, acres of books were piled in every room, together with memorabilia and just plain stuff, accumulated in the 25 years of his father’s retirement.
A beach is a quarter mile away, with snow-capped mountains rimming the lake. John launched his ski boat, and Lee got a ride on a “biscuit” which we would call a tube. She even tried the water skis but that didn’t quite work out. The three Guthrie children and John himself are very proficient skiers.
Wanaka is a summer resort, but primarily for cottages. We had the laziest days of the trip, walking, reading in the garden, taking the boat up the lake - it is miles long and not very wide - and on the last day, celebrating John’s birthday with an outdoor lunch at a winery on the lake shore a couple of miles away.
Reading in the garden, I was serenaded by songs of birds I’d never before heard, the soft shush of the sprinklers and the murmur of Lee and the Guthrie children and their friends from the nearby tent.
Meals were excellent, although on the first day, we arrived at 4:30 for dinner which finally materialized at 9 o’clock. Most meals at the Guthries are barbecue of one kind or another.
On our last night, there were sixteen of us on hand, for Jenny at the last minute had invited a family of six to join us, but it went off without a hitch. Dinner featured lamb chops and sausages, with oven-baked chicken legs, boiled potatoes, asparagus, a green salad and tomatoes, easy to throw together is you have the ingredients. NZers love FRESH in fruits and vegetables and the difference is palpable. Jenny was a marvelous hostess.
The visit ended on a high note, with everyone together for lunch in the open at Rippon Vineyard’s restaurant on the lake shore, accompanied by the establishment’s excellent Merlot-Shiraz.
WANAKA TO QUEENSTOWN TO DUNEDIN
Clearly, we had to follow a schedule on this trip, because so much of it involved meeting and staying with friends. But it also meant passing by places that were clearly worthy of closer scrutiny. As unlikely as it seems, another month would not have been too much time to enjoy all there was to embrace.
CULTURAL NOTE: In many NZ homes, as in England, the toilet is in a separate room from the shower or tub or wash basin. Many hoppers have two flush modes, to save water - light for liquids and full for other materials. The hot and cold faucets are often reversed.
The road from Wanaka to Queenstown crosses the Crown Range, and descends in a series of esses into the valley where Queenstown sits, providing dramatic views of the lake and the countryside. The town is the most popular winter and summer resort in New Zealand, and the tourists are everywhere.
International flights direct to the town’s small airport bring Japanese, Chinese and other Asians, and many of the tourist stores are Japanese owned, apparently.
Our lodging was a bed and breakfast, chosen for the owner’s status as a “natural healer”. It was a couple of miles out of town, set into a steep hillside, with spectacular gardens and a stream running through the property. Small waterfalls in the stream were just outside our door, making a lovely white noise.
In keeping with the hostess’ profession, breakfast was completely organic, which worked well with the bread but not as well for me, at least, with the cereal. But homemade jams, yogurt, black currant juice and a very good herbal tea were all consumed with appreciation.
Queenstown is the gateway to Milford Sound, a long deep fjord that has been the focus of visitors’ attention since the West Coast was opened in the 1860’s. Two options for visiting exist: a six hour bus trip in and the same six hours out, or a flight of half an hour.
We had booked the latter, but the weather refused to cooperate, with clouds down below the tops of the surrounding hills. We settled for a trip to the top of one of the local hills by gondola, where a ski lift went further up the hill for those intrepid souls, like my son and granddaughter who chose to come down concrete chutes on wheeled sleds.
After three days, the weather on Sunday morning lifted enough for us to fly into and over the Sound, but without landing - which left us with some spectacular memories but not really satisfied.
In the meantime, we had taken a trip to the Dart River - first, a bus to the village of Glenorchy, occupied when we arrived by a motorcycle rally. Another bus brought us to the river, along a highway, unpaved, through the bush. Although the road was designated a national highway, we forded streams at least four times in the hour ‘s ride, passing several of the sites of the filming of Lord of The Rings.
A ten minute walk through the bush to the landing site, and then an hour’s ride up the Dart on a jet boat, far enough so that the trees were down to the water’s edge on both sides and navigation became problematic.
CULTURAL NOTE : The opossum is not native to NZ. It was introduced, accidentally or deliberately, some years ago. With no natural enemies, it has overrun large areas of the country, devastating forests. Declared a national pest, it is exterminated whenever possible. The thrifty NZers have devised a method for combining the fur of the animal with wool to produce exquisitely soft sweaters, hats and other apparel. At Glenorchy , I found a shop which tanned the hides and made gloves and caps and jackets of the fur - of surpassing softness and warmth.
Carol and I had also taken a steamer to the far end of the lake, on a lovely calm afternoon, while waiting for the weather to clear. Although Milford Sound is only a few miles in a direct line from Queenstown, the mountain range which separates the two areas produces distinctly different climates. Queenstown weather is not an indicator of what is happening across the range to the southwest.
Eventually, on the last afternoon, the weather cleared enough for us to fly into the Milford Sound area, but not unfortunately to land. The area lived up to its hype - next time, the bus trip for sure.
Jamie’s NZ brother, Geoff Mirkin, joined us in Queenstown, staying at a hotel in town. We traveled to Dunedin in a caravan, with Geoff taking us over out-of-the way roads through the wine and sheep country of Central Otago, the province of which Dunedin is the central city.
The countryside continued to be hilly, with strange rock formations showing through the pasture land. A mid-trip stop for ice cream which had become a daily - sometimes, twice daily event - broke up the four hour trip.
NZ ice cream puts most American brands to shame, for creaminess and richness. Even Carol, who normally completely eschews ice cream, was seen scrapping the last of a two-liter carton of Caramello ice cream at Geoff’s one evening.
GUSTATORY NOTE: NZ milk is much richer than American, due evidently to the fact that the cows are pasture fed on grass or hay - in the winter - and virtually never on grain. Few antibiotics are needed, and “trim” milk, which is what we would term 2%, tastes as good as our whole milk.
In Dunedin, Carol and I stayed with Rose Mirkin, in the same room Jamie had occupied more than 30 years ago, while the others were lodged with Geoff and Sue in the house just below Rose’s. Both sit high on hill overlooking the harbor and Otago Peninsular, jutting eastward into the Pacific Ocean.
It was cloudy and cool our first morning in Dunedin, and I broke down and bought a pure wool sweater on sale for NZ $60 (about US $35). My luggage was falling apart by this time, and Geoff drove us to a discount house (yes, in NZ too), and Carol found place mats and coasters.
Dinner at Geoff’s featured leg of lamb, and we managed to literally eat everything put on the table. Afterwards, Sue, Carol and I talked long into the evening.
Sue has worked in hospice in the past, in addition to her training as a physical therapist. She quizzed both of us on the death of our spouses, interested in what she terms the “transition” but what we call death. In her terms, something happens that is not oblivion.
Sue recently signed up for courses in anatomy at the Otago Medical School to further her interest in connective tissue work as part of physical therapy.
The warmth that I remembered from her visit more than ten years ago to Lexington was there in abundance. She in turn had fond memories of Mara’s welcoming to her and her two sons when they visited Mara in Denver.
Rose’s house is a contemporary, which would fit nicely into Five Fields, having been built in the early ‘60s, when “contemporary” was virtually unknown in NZ. The house features wooden built-ins with comfortable seating, and large windows looking east over the harbor. The grounds are full of blooming flowers and trees, completely screening it on all sides from the streets. A garden path leads down to Geoff’s contemporary house below.
Dunedin is touted as the wildlife capital of NZ, based on three phenomena - a colony of yellow-eyed penguins and a colony of albatross, both on the eastward, ocean end of Otago Peninsular, which forms the south side of the town’s harbor; and a colony of seals in the same general area.
Both colonies were raising chicks during our visit, and we were fortunate - we were told - to see albatross on the wing. These magnificent birds, with wingspan up to eight feet, glide on wind currents for thousands of miles, returning to land to breed annually. Several swopped close overhead as we watched seals along the rocks below the rookery.
A few miles away, penguins, who had been out catching fish in the ocean waters, paddled ashore, across a wide beach, and up a bluff to their nests set in open areas above the beach.
An enterprising farmer had dug trenches in the nesting area, camouflaged them with lattice work and netting, and opened them to tourists. The trenches were deep enough so that the humans who passed through them were the height of the penguins, which evidently was reassuring enough so that we were within three or four feet of the nests. As we watched, the chicks, covered in grey-brown fur which they later lose, stick their long beaks down the parent’s throat to get at the regurgitated fish the parent has spent the day catching.
Lee struck up an acquaintance with another girl who appeared about her own age, and the pair seemed to be getting along very well. When we arrived back at the parking lot, it was to find that the girl was Dutch, spoke no English, but the two had found some means of communication.
A museum in Dunedin devoted much exhibit space to the various immigrant groups that had contributed to the city’s growth and diversity over the years. But I also learned that I would not be welcome as anything other than a tourist - a mock application for a permanent visa was turned down: probably too old and not wealthy enough. For Asians, the fence appears to be even higher.
Our three days in Dunedin included a trip out the northern coast of the harbor, to visit a colony of bachelor seals, and see divers coming up with abalone, the shells of which are a major temptation to tourist dollars.
The day before we left, we all went north along the coast to visit Moeraki, a sacred place, where perfectly round boulders grace the beach. Formed by accretion around a core, deep in the earth, the boulders rise to the surface through uplifting of the tectonic plates. It was a warm sunlit day, made warmer by the hospitality of Douglas McTavish, a NZ classmate of Jamie’s, a Scottish engineer who has worked all over the world, but has settled at Moeraki while working on a huge irrigation scheme for Central Otago.
A final meal with the Mirkins made we aware that while we would probably see Geoff and Sue and John and Jennie, it was unlikely that we would see Rose again. At 80, she can no longer make the long trip to the states.
After our 11 hour flight from Auckland to Los Angeles, I decided that the next trip to NZ, if we make one, will be in stages, with stops in Hawaii and Fiji.
After nearly four weeks, I was tired of travel, finally. Doing it again, I would opt for one day every week in which there was nothing planned - just time to relax and be rather than do. The last few days, I opted out of a couple of things, having run out of reserves.
But it was a wonderful experience. I don’t think I have ever before been to a place that I could find nothing wrong with. It is a country that the people who live there have decided to take care of. That in itself is unusual, and we may have missed the more disagreeable aspects of life in NZ, but we certainly saw few of them.
I want to go back to see all the things we missed, and to relish the warmth we felt from everyone we met. On our last day, shopping in downtown Dunedin, Carol asked for tee shirts for her grandchildren. The saleslady apologetically told her the store didn’t have what she wanted, but took us out on the street and pointed to a store further along the block that would carry what Carol asked for.
That encounter seemed to epitomize the spirit of the country. I hope it stays that way -
by
Arthur Katz
This journey actually began in 1969, when my son Jamie went off to New Zealand at the age of 16 as an exchange student for a year. He left in the middle of his junior year at Lexington High School, in what now seems like a much more innocent time. I've since wondered what inspired our confidence in his ability to handle the move away from the cocoon that was 1969 Lexington to the unknown, half a world away.
But he did handle well his sometimes difficult situation, in a culture which at that time was at least a full generation behind the one in which he had grown up. He wore the school uniform required by the private school he attended, although keeping his socks up - the uniform included short pants - proved a continuing source of irritation to both Jamie and his headmaster.
His New Zealand family were South African Jews, who had emigrated in the early 1960s to escape the oppressive political and social climate then prevalent under the apartheid regime. As an orthopedic surgeon, his father, Dr. Leo Mirkin, was able to set up a practice and eventually joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Otago in Dunedin. There were two children, a boy Jamie's age and an older daughter.
Although orthopedics surgeons in the United States rank close to the top of the medical professions in income, in the New Zealand of 1969, professionals like Dr. Mirkin were comfortable rather than wealthy. The upper and lower edges of income distribution were much closer together than in America at the time or since.
The family had a contemporary home, most unusual at that time in Dunedin, the second largest city of the South Island. Both children were in private school, and that was where Jamie was enrolled.
McGlaushan College was modeled on the English public (actually private) high school model, and Jamie had his first experience with cricket and rugby (almost a religious exercise in New Zealand, where the national team, the Blacks, was world renowned). He managed to make the basketball team, an eventuality that would have been most unlikely at Lexington High.
He returned in January 1970, much more than a year older, leaving behind a family and friends whose relationships he has continued to cherish and nourish.
Within months of his return, we had the first of what would be, for twenty years or more, a fairly regular parade of visitors from New Zealand.
Thirty-three years ago, New Zealand seemed to be further from the rest of the world than it does now. When New Zealanders left to see the rest of the world, it was not uncommon for the . walkabout" to last for several years. So, a visit to our home in Lexington might last as long as six months, and was rarely less than a week.
Over the years, we came to know and thoroughly enjoyed his father, his mother, his sister, his brother, his friends, and his friends' families. And always, there were invitations for us to come to visit.
As the years went on, and the trip became financially possible, there was the problem of timing. With the seasons reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, December through February were right times to visit the South Island, which experiences temperatures in the 30's in our summer months.
That meant being away during the December holidays or taking work time in January, both of which proved too disruptive. So, we talked about it, but never went.
In the meantime, Jamie and his wife - who had been an exchange student in Indonesia, - went back twice: once in 1992 and again in 1996. And though the visitors from New Zealand to Lexington had become increasingly rare as students became working adults with families and responsibilities, they still came on occasion.
Early in 2002, Jamie began to talk about another visit, motivated by the declining health of his NZ mother, and the desire to show his now five-year-old adopted Chinese daughter to his friends. My wife's death and my own retirement had erased the time constraints, and when he asked me and agreed that I could bring a friend along, it was an easy decision.
We would leave before Christmas, returning in late January. Our first touchdown would be in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city and its major air terminus, after a 12-hour flight from Los Angeles. driving south, our first destination would be the center of Maori (native New Zealander) culture at Rotarua, and then we would move into a remote area in the southeast of the North Island. before stopping in Wellington, the country's capital.
From there, leaving our rental car and taking the ferry across the strait separating the two major islands, we would pick up another car for the drive southeastward to Christchurch, jumping off port for Antarctic voyages. From there, we would head west across the mountainous spine of the country to the lush west coast, with its dense forests, fjords, glaciers and played-out gold mining sites. This would include a side trip to storied Milford Sound, one of the largest fjords in the world, a visit to the summer vacation areas around Queenstown, and finally, arrival at Dunedin for our last week, to be spent with friends and family.
Jamie had done all the planning - air line tickets, reservations for hotels, b and Us, form stays, jet boat trips, a helicopter to the glaciers, a small plane to Milford Sound instead of a six hour bus trip. Out came the guide books, and the recent novels about New Zealand and what histories I could find in local libraries.
As I began to read, I quickly realized that over the years, I had acquired some sense of the current New Zealand but none at all of its history. Yes, I knew Robert Burns' brother and a group of Scottish emigrants had founded Dunedin, and there had been savage battles with the native Maori. But this had been 1840 or later, and I had no sense of the history of the country before that time, nor any understanding of the forces that produced the New Zealand of our time.
Over the years, reading about places before I visited them has been part of the travel experience for me. With guide books all sounding roughly the same, finding reliable histories and essays on an area's culture has been key to my own understanding. How does one know that a particular historian is unbiased and accurate? Vetting the writer can be a formidable task, lacking access to an expert in the region.
So, one makes as intelligent a choice as one can, and hopes the public libraries will disgorge the volumes when a decision is made on which to read.
As the reading went on, I began to confront the other issues that present themselves.
Should the gifts for the people we will be staying with in New Zealand say something about New England specifically -like maple syrup - or should it relate to the recipient, who I may not have seen in twenty years?
I can remember packing bath soap for business trips to Europe in the 1960's, when the tiny slivers provided in the hotels were inadequate for my rather large frame. Since then, we appear to have instructed the world on that score, and free toilet soap, is now ubiquitous.
I've never kept a journal, but this seems an appropriate time to start one, and I carried two blank books, recent gifts designed to get me going. They went into the carryon which held my reading and writing materials and other essentials I might need for the initial flights.
For me, this would be the longest journey I've ever taken, both in distance and time, since returning from service in Japan after World War II. In the years before my wife became ill, we traveled in the American East, West and South, to Mexico, to Canada, and to Europe, but never for as long a period as this journey will take.
What do I have to do to prepare to be away for 26 days? Turn off the hot water heater, and turn down to heat. Stop the newspaper delivery. Notify the Postal Service to hold my mail until I return. My driveway will be plowed if it snows while I'm away - a distinct possibility - but should I have the steps to the front door shoveled? Without a garage for my car, will it start when I return, after the car has sat unheeded for a month? Hire someone to start it once a week? Clean out the refrigerator, so I am not confronted with green mossy globs when I return?
Who do I need to tell of my plans? And what do I take? Aside from a week's change of clothing - on the assumption that we will be doing laundry from time to time - I'll need reading matter for the 18 hours of flight time going. The vexing problem of gifts for the friends with whom we will be staying has not been solved. It ought to be something, I think, that is peculiarly Lexington or Boston or at least New England. I wonder at the reaction if I showed up with a bushel of Maine potatoes - hard to get more "down home" than that.
There was now a little more than a week to go, and the lists were made. I'd read the two most well-known recent novels on New Zealand, The Bone People and Once Were Warriors. The latter has been controversial, describing in intimate and sordid detail contemporary urban Maori life, and is unsparing in its condemnation of the practice of blaming the whites (pakeha) for the Maoris degradation over the years. I suspect that Maori slums are not on our itinerary, but I want to know more about this fierce people who ate their dead enemies on occasion.
Despite my best intentions to travel light, I ended up with a large duffle bag on wheels and a backpack, and my friend Carol had two medium bogs. Jamie and family, bringing lots of gifts and cameras and amusements that would keep a 6 year old busy for four weeks, were loaded. The treasure turned out to be a portable DVD player about the size of a small laptop, with a dozen movies that will get lots of play over the next month. Car and I solved the "gifts for hosts/hostesses" problem with Vermont maple syrup in plastic jugs and scarves, both of which turned out to be well accepted - or our hosts were being extra polite.
BOSTON TO AUCKLAND
Logan Airport was nerve-wracking, with long lines and doubt in my mind that they would ever get us all aboard the full flight.
We were finally off on the great adventure. The much-touted extra leg room on American Airlines turns out to be not just hype - it is really there, and it was a comfortable six hours to Los Angeles. Qantas hasn't yet gotten the message, and quarters were very close, in a plane that appeared not to have an empty seat. United Airlines has announced it is pulling out of the New Zealand market, and evidently has already cut back on flights. We were also traveling at the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the time most people want to visit.
Greeting us at Auckland Airport at 6:30 a.m. was New Zealand sister Joan Mirkin's daughter, Sarah, the first of the Mirkin family to extend what became an almost embarrassing hospitality. Sarah works and lives in New Zealand's largest city and commercial capital. Coffee and catching up on the rest of the family - and then we were climbing aboard the rented van for the drive to Rotarua, a couple of hours away, and the "center of Maori culture".
A resort city, Rotarua is set in a volcano's caldera, next to a lake of the same name, and is permeated by the smell of sulfur and the steam bubbling up from the fumaroles along the lake shore, some extending into town. Hot thermal baths provide the reason for the town's initial existence, and it grew up around the baths commercialized by the central government beginning in 1903. The Maori focus came later, although the Maoris (of the Te Awara tribe) have been in the area for centuries.
The hotel pool was heated, but not from the local waters, and therefore, not part of the "cure" which has drawn people to Rotarua for a century. Skipping the hotel dining room for breakfast the next morning, Carol and I walked into the center of town to the FAT DOG, a funky local restaurant that would have been at home in Arlington or Waltham. One cultural note: poached eggs don't come with toast automatically as they seem to here, as Carol found out.
An hour's walk along a trail which followed the edge of the lake brought us back to the hotel in time for a water-aided massage at the nearby spa, and melting in a series of increasingly hot outdoor pools. Pursuit of health or decadence?
The afternoon was spent at the Rotarua Museum, learning about the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of 1886 at nearby Lake Rotoramaha and the current state of Maori art. A wonderful docent made two and one-half hours much too short to see everything we wanted to - and the Museum would be closed the next day, Christmas. So many sights, so little time.
Christmas eve, along with several hundred other tourists, we were entertained at a Maori Hangi, dances, songs, hakas (more about that later) and a meal, in a replica of a Maori village in the countryside outside Rotarua. All the festivities celebrated Maori culture in a cleaned-up kind of way. A great plus was a group of visiting Tahitian women of all ages, who sang and danced for us. It was a little hokey, to be sure, but the singing of both groups---both original chants and Maori chants set to Western music---was really quite wonderful to hear.
The maori dialog left no doubt that they understand exactly what they are doing and that they are no less determined to have a place in New Zealand society than did their ancestors, whose fierceness forced the British to sign a treaty with them in 1840, having not been able to beat them conclusively in the field.
Although there are virtually no full-bloods left, those designated as Maori number 20% of the population. They are beginning to engender some hostility on the part of the whites at the concessions they have been able to wrest from the government.
Two weeks before our trip, I had gone to visit my brother, who was hospitalized in Virginia with a variety of ailments. He had not been doing well when I was there, but seemed to be recovering in the weeks afterward. But his condition hung over my preparations , and my journey as well.
Christmas in Rotarua was subdued by American standards - a few decorated trees but little of the street lighting we are used to. Carol said, “It’s a family affair here,” and I think she is right.
With the temperature in the 70’s, the Christmas spirit is hard to conjure up. It is my first Christmas season away from Lexington and all my children that I can remember. I’ve always had mixed feelings about this holiday, a time of confusion of feelings about celebrations that have nothing to do with my Jewish faith but which have such a secular context that it is difficult to avoid participating.
SOUTH FROM ROTARUA TO MAHIA
Leaving Rotarua, the town stopped quickly, with none of the straggling small communities that connect New England towns. The countryside takes over abruptly, and for long stretches, I was reminded of a drive across Newfoundland 30 years ago. The road was a two-lane blacktop, no shoulders no guard rails, no houses, no stores, very little traffic for dozens of miles. This is very open country with very few people.
Plantations abound - straight lines of evergreens climb precipitous hills in ordered files. Clear cutting strips the land of all trees, and replanting is done, I suppose, by hand, since machines would be useless in this jumbled terrain.
Distances are very deceiving in the mountainous and hilly areas like the ride south from Rotarua. What looked like five hours on the map actually took seven.
The drive south east took us through the town of Napier to our next stop, a sheep farm stay near the Mahia Peninsular on the southeastern coast of the North Island. Our “cottage” is the rebuilt sheep shearers’ quarters, hauled up from the lowlands some miles away. From the living room, at 9 p.m. the sun is setting to the right over the peninsular, while two hundred feet below us, the surf crashes on the rocky shore. The view to the left is northeastward up the coast towards Gisbourne.
We were on a working sheep farm, with 2000 head on 150 acres of hills. There are cattle roaming as well, and sheep and cattle shit everywhere - the “cottage” is surrounded by paddocks, with sheep who have gotten under the fence in our front yard. Lee, of course, is entranced.
The climb was steep - the van wouldn’t make it until we had unloaded the passengers and some of the luggage. But once up there, the view was terrific.
Christmas dinner was awaiting us in the fridge - not the traditional turkey but New Zealand crayfish, the size of two pound Maine lobsters without the claws.
Our hosts were away but a friendly farm-sitting couple took very good care of us, and friends of theirs shared a large piece of Pavlova with us, New Zealand’s national dessert. Invented to honor Anna Pavlova, the great dancer, on her first visit to New Zealand in 1893, it is a concoction of whipped cream, meringue and fruit, that is both beautiful to behold and exquisite to taste when properly made.
The following morning was spent at a spa 20 kilometers away, high on a hill in the dense forest, with a series of heated pools. I spent more time than I should have in the hottest of the pools, and scared myself and everyone a bit, but recovered relatively quickly, A small shop at the spa had greenstone carved jewelry, which turned out to be the best value we saw on the trip - but, alas, like all travelers, early in the trip we had no means of comparison, and we didn’t buy nearly enough.
There was a surf beach at the nearby village of Makanga that occupied our afternoon. Our last day included a massage for me from a local therapist in return for his getting a reiki treatment from Cynthia, and I cemented the relationship with a spare jar of maple syrup. Next trip, I will stock it by the case.
Lee got a horseback ride, as well as several on a 4 wheel ATV which seems to be the main method of transport on pasture farms. She got to romp with half a dozen sheep dogs, and in general had a great time.
It is hard to describe how bright the stars are in the clear night atmosphere, far from city lights and air pollution. The view from the front deck over the sea at night was very difficult to leave for bed. And leaving the farm, called in Maori, Te Au (The Mist), was even more difficult.
MAHIA TO WELLINGTON
Lee had a date to swim with dolphins at an aquarium in Napier on Friday morning. From a message awaiting us at the aquarium, I learned my brother's condition had worsened, but efforts to reach my sister-in-law proved unavailing. While the news was not unexpected, I began to brace myself for worse.
A night at a not unpleasant commercial hotel in Palmerston North broke up the journey south to Wellington. As we drove towards the capital city, the hills smoothed out, the road proved straighter and we reached Joan Mirkin's home on the south side of the city shortly after noon.
Joan's home sits high on a hill overlooking Wellington Harbor with a view to the southwest into Cook Strait, the body of water between North and South Islands. Ferries between the islands passed in the middle distance, and a few pleasure boats were out, though not in the numbers I would have expected on a warm summer's day. (I found on this, as on many other occasions, that I needed to keep in mind that New Zealand, with a total land area about that of California has a population 40% less than Massachusetts - just 3.8 million people.)
Present for lunch were Joan's twin nephews, the 20 year old sons of her brother Geoff, as well a Joan's boyfriend Phil, a painting contractor. The twins had stopped in to see us on their way to what was assuredly the only Jewish children's camp in New Zealand, where both would be counselors. With just 7,000 Jews in the country, it is essentially an invisible minority, shrinking yearly.
Dinner was quintessentially NZ: lamb chops, beef steaks, and venison sausage, barbecued on the gas grill on the deck, with fresh tomatoes, and lettuce, potato salad and wonderful bread. Jamie's old friend Jennie Pike, who had been head of NZ/AFS in 1969, and her husband Doug Crump and son Jamie (!), joined us, for a wonderful evening.
The house was a bit cramped with five guests but we managed. Cultural note - there are no screens on windows in any of the city dwellings we visited since insects seem to be almost non-existent, and those that do get in are tolerated. I got to check my e-mail that morning, and was amused to find nothing of substance in 67 messages!
The weather, which had been pleasant but cool and partly cloudy, relented and gave us a couple of days of sun and warmth. Part of one day was given over to the marvelous new national museum, Te Papa, and several hours in a recreated "bush" (NZ for forest) guided by Jennie's husband, a polymath scientist who knew the name and circumstances of every plant, bush and tree. Doug gardens, does world-class needlepoint, and has lived in the states on several occasions.
Jennie caters on a part-time basis for many of the embassies in Wellington, and the wonderful meal at her home that night was testimony to her skill, with a frozen boysenberry cream pie for dessert that was totally over the top. Carol, who ordinarily is a semi-vegetarian, discovered fresh New Zealand lamb and for the rest of the stay at least, became a flesh eater, like the rest of us.
We were wined and dined and cosseted beyond belief, including a gala New Year's Eve party at Joan's. a good deal of which I missed, felled by an allergy attack that struck me down. My mood had not been exactly effervescent, dimmed by thoughts of my brother, but Carol was relentless in moving me along, assuring at least one long walk every day.
I found a New Zealand of few imperfections. The people recycle religiously, the streets are clean, and the environment is treated respectfully everywhere we went. If crime and poverty and squalor are present, they are little in evidence. Admittedly, we saw nothing of the small Maori towns and neighborhoods, but in the areas we visited, the Maoris appeared thoroughly integrated into the larger society, and there has been recompense for past wrongs. So much so, in fact, that I found some mutterings among the whites about the pendulum having swung too far. The Maori are certainly still an underclass, but gains appear to have been made.
Rugby, the premier national sport, is dominated by Maori, with cricket less so. My first ever live cricket match was underway in a stadium in Wellington when we wandered in. Typically, a game goes on for most of the day, and important matches can last several days.
After an hour, I began to have some slight understanding of the strategic nature of the game - but an hour was certainly enough. Around us were people who would be there until dark.
Before I had retired early to nurse my allergies on New Year's Eve, Doug Crump and I talked long about New Zealand and the fact that a country with less than 4 million people has produced the best sailors in the world, plus world class rugby players, mountain climbers and track and field athletes. Doug had no easy explanations.
Wellington, as the capital of the country, is the site of the parliament buildings, which we toured and admired. The political parties are both far more socialistic than ours, in the sense of providing for all layers of society, and changes in administration have not meant big changes in government policy, on the whole.
As we loaded the car on New Year's morning to begin the journey to the South Island, Jamie told me he had gotten a call that Harvey had died. I felt the same conflict I had felt in Virginia when I had seen him two weeks before we left - I was committed to the trip and refused to believe that he was as bad as he evidently was. He died on December 31st, just two weeks short of his 76th birthday.
I reached his daughter Joan, and later his wife Ruth, who comforted me as I tried to comfort her.
It is some seventy years since Harvey and I beat each other’s brains out while our mother, Lucy, stood helplessly by. Glastonbury was the stocks then, and we were the country cousins to the rest of the family - the Katz boys from Glastonbury. Trolleys still ran along Main Street to Hartford , and the hills along the New London Turnpike were full of peach orchards.
Our paths diverged but never separated. I was best man at his wedding at Terplitsky’s Old English Manor on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. I was with him the night he became the first Democrat elected the state legislature from Glastonbury, keeping faith with our father’s bedrock adherence to the Democratic Party.
We never lost touch and we grew closer as the years went on. Fifteen months ago, he and Ruth were with me at my wife;s death,
And now it is over but I will keep my memories of his great good humor - never with malice, and always enjoying a joke on himself. He was a good lawyer, a good husband, a good father and a good brother - and I will miss him.
WELLINGTON TO CHRISTCHURCH
The car was left at the ferry terminal in Wellington - we would pick up another on the other side - as we began the three hour trip in calm seas and sunny skies. Most of the trip is through Marlborough Sound, with hills rising on all sides, very lush and green, and isolated homes widely scattered along the shore and up on the slopes.
We did pick up a car in the small terminal town, Picton, but as Jamie said, "What a country!" Through miscommunications when we changed our ferry schedule, no van was waiting for us as promised. Rather than make us wait the four hours until the time the van was expected, we were given a Camry, and told to go on our way with the assurance that the van and what luggage wouldn't fit into the Camry would be delivered to our hotel, two hours down the coast, that evening. And so it was. Avis in New Zealand really does try harder.
The trip down the east coasts of the South Island took us through the wine country of Marlborough, and then along the coast, through hills with the ocean on our left. Seals basked in the sun in the kelp beds in the shallow coves. Caravans and tents showed up unexpectedly in makeshift campsites on the narrow coastal plain. NZers are casual about where they camp, - any likely patch of level grass seems to qualify.
Kiakora, a small town right on the water two hours south of Picton, exists primarily as the base of the whale watching boats which follow the sperm whales which inhabit the ocean off the South Island. We were fortunate enough to see four whales break from their stay on the surface and dive, flaunting their massive tales in the air.
Abalone shell, which is called paua in Maori, is collected in quantity in Kiakora and polished to bring out its multicolored surface. Whole shells and shell made into jewelry and souvenirs dominated the stores which have sprung up to take advantage of the whale watchers drawn to the town.
Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, and jumping off place for most Antarctic expeditions, had the feeling of a city in the British Midlands, complete with the Avon River running through the heart of the town, and punts as in the namesake river in Oxford England.
Our accommodations were in a bed and breakfast which turned out to be two houses, one of which was turned over to us. Carol and I had the first floor, complete with living room, dining room, kitchen, bath and large bedroom, with a similar suite upstairs. with two bedrooms. A Victorian home built in 1903, it was restored by a German couple, with two children, aged four and five.
Lee and the children bonded immediately, and she spent all her free time with them. Unusually, the five year old was a boy born to a Maori woman and adopted by the German couple. Unusually, the father told us, because Maoris rarely let children be adopted out of the community. He said, in this case, the mother had not wanted her parents to know she was pregnant and was happy to have the child placed with a white family.
The town was relatively empty, with many people away, we were told, on holiday. I reached Jo Hannah, and learned that she, Stanzie, Mara and Harry will all be at Harvey's funeral in West Hartford tomorrow. Despite his many ailments, I never truly thought I would outlive him. Seize the day and make the most of it, as Carol keeps telling me.
As in most New Zealand cities, a botanical garden and park figure prominently in the configuration of the town, and Christchurch was not exception. Theirs including a huge wading pool which Lee took full advantage of. Carol and Cynthia walked to the park from the house while we followed in the car. Both are avid walkers, and I slow them down, although I try to do at least a mile a day.
CHRISTCHURCH TO WANAKA
On Sunday, January 5th, we headed west, across the Canterbury Plains, the largest level farming area in the country. On the South Island, mountains run down the country from north to south roughly two-thirds of the way across. Driving over Arthur's Pass - we couldn't resist the obligatory picture of Arthur at his pass - we arrived on the west coast at Hokitiki, and traveled a few miles south to Whataroa, a very small town, where we had reservations at a farm.
What was once sheep and beef cattle country along the west coast between the sea and the mountains is now the province of thousands of milk cows, whose daily production gets trucked to Hokitiki, to the processing plant that turns it into dry milk for export to the Orient.
The farmer, at whose specially-built-for-tourists home we stayed, leases 150 acres for dairy cattle, fenced off into neat 5 acre paddocks between which the herd of 500 cattle are moved frequently to keep the grass fresh. He has another 90 acres which is being developed for the same purpose, as well as 70 acres he keeps for himself to handle 100 sheep and a few cows.
He was my age, and we found we had both served in the Army of Occupation in Japan in 1946-47, albeit in different armies. He and his wife proved great company, talking of their 8 children and 22 grandchildren, all except two children living outside New Zealand. Here, as with other families we met, the children evidently find New Zealand too confining, and many take off to see the world, marry abroad, and never come back permanently. Making it easy is the fact that New Zealanders can work in the UK and other Commonwealth countries for up to two years without special papers or permits.
We were the only guests while we were there, and used most of the available rooms. Breakfast was part of the package, but dinner was on offer and we wisely ate in both nights we were there - marvelous lamb one night and corned beef and blue cod the next.
We had seen the tiny town - population 350 - which appeared to lack much in the way of anything except a convenience store with a snackbar. Whataroa's size and low density of people are typical of the west coast - the entire Westland area, thousands of square miles, has only 31,000 inhabitants.
Jet boats were invented in NZ to cope with the multitude of shallow rivers. We had our first experience at Whataroa, running down one river to the sea and up another to reach the only mainland nesting area in NZ of white herons. Dozens were on their nests, taking care of their young chicks, with spoonbills looking on from their own nests - a truly lovely sight, and reachable only by jetboats, which operate in as little as eight inches of water at speeds up to 30 miles per hour.
The land that has not been claimed for farming on the west coast is temperate rain forest, full of huge fern trees, creepers entwining the other species, and as dense as would be expected with the enormous rainfall on that part of the island. Since NZ has virtually no native mammals and a paucity of insect life, the walk through a portion of the jungle to reach the blind on the river, set up to observe the herons, was most comfortable.
That afternoon, Cynthia, Carol and I found the beach a Okarito, twelve miles away. Set in a magnificent shallow bay, perhaps three miles long between the headlands, the beach was a hundred yards deep with fine black sand - and no more than 20 people in sight as we drove in through the tiny beach resort. Okarito had been a gold mining town of 3000 souls briefly in the 1860’s, but now had about 20 permanent residents and a dozen “baches” - NZ for weekend cottages.
Cynthia’s adventure for the day consisted of being knockdown by a wave and being dragged seaward by the undertow while looking for a waterfall we had seen earlier. A passerby hauled her out, wet but undaunted.
Lee had a wonderful time on the farm, riding on the 4 wheel ATV, watching the milking at the central milking parlor, and feeding the sheep in a small corral adjoining the house. She started holding bread over the fence - but by the second day she was in the pen, with the sheep crowding around her.
The farming couple were delightful. He is third generation New Zealander, a legitimate farmer, while she is a master weaver who has taught weaving in Japan for a number of years.
COUNTER-CULTURAL NOTE: When the farmer was growing up, New Zealand had not converted to the metric system, and he still talked of miles and yards and feet, and not meters and kilos.
ROADS: New Zealand roads are designed for small cars and little traffic. An unexpected feature are one-lane bridges, even on major highways. As you approach, signs indicate whether you have the right of way, and we backed up only once. Evidently, the lack of traffic when most of the bridges in the countryside were built dictated the money saving configuration. There are long stretches of this two lane blacktop without shoulders or guard rails in the mountains, where passing is possible only when the slower vehicle ahead , usually a truck, pulls into a “lay-by”. NZers tend to be impatient behind the wheel, and we were honked at on several occasions for our relatively slow pace, albeit at the speed limit of 66 miles per hour. Driving is on the left, and the few times I’ve driven when Carol and I have gone off on our own, it has not been a problem, as along as one is careful in entering and exiting the roundabouts, which we would call traffic circles and which are much more common in NZ.
Contrary to our expectations, NZ has turned out to be virtually rainless for our trip. It rained last Saturday night for the first time on our trip, but the sky was clear by morning. We had expected the South Island to be cooler than the North but the opposite has been true - we were experiencing temperatures in the 80’s for the first time.
With the high rainfall, the landscape is unbelievably lush, which is wonderful to behold, but hell on my allergies. I found some Chlortrimetron which seemed to work.
South from Whataroa, the main road meets the Franz Josef Glacier, and everyone except me - I’m not especially fond of helicopters, - rode a copter to the glacier and loved the experience. It is also possible to take a guided walk in, and all the tourist amenities are in evidence.
From the glacier, it was a fairly brief run to Wanaka, to enjoy the hospitality of the Guthrie family, John, Jenny and assorted young people. John and Jamie had been best friends at school, and John and his kids had been to visit with us in Lexington on a number of occasions over the years. John teaches marketing at the University of Otago, and most years has managed to find a conference or a lectureship that gets him on the road. Their home is in Dunedin, and Jenny is a lawyer working for the law firm of Geoff Mirkin, Jamie’s New Zealand brother.
The family has a rambling summer home on Lake Wanaka, which for twenty years had been the home of John’s father, and was still housed an apartment for his unmarried sister, who had also visited with us twenty-five years ago.
With six Guthries and five of us, tents proved to be very useful - the children, including Lee, slept in one and Carol and I in another. On the grounds were a grass tennis court - John plays doubles on an international level - and a greenhouse, and a very complicated water system that John’s son, Hamish, 18, was attempting to subdue.
John’s father was an avid gardener and there were flowers and bushes everywhere. Inside the house, acres of books were piled in every room, together with memorabilia and just plain stuff, accumulated in the 25 years of his father’s retirement.
A beach is a quarter mile away, with snow-capped mountains rimming the lake. John launched his ski boat, and Lee got a ride on a “biscuit” which we would call a tube. She even tried the water skis but that didn’t quite work out. The three Guthrie children and John himself are very proficient skiers.
Wanaka is a summer resort, but primarily for cottages. We had the laziest days of the trip, walking, reading in the garden, taking the boat up the lake - it is miles long and not very wide - and on the last day, celebrating John’s birthday with an outdoor lunch at a winery on the lake shore a couple of miles away.
Reading in the garden, I was serenaded by songs of birds I’d never before heard, the soft shush of the sprinklers and the murmur of Lee and the Guthrie children and their friends from the nearby tent.
Meals were excellent, although on the first day, we arrived at 4:30 for dinner which finally materialized at 9 o’clock. Most meals at the Guthries are barbecue of one kind or another.
On our last night, there were sixteen of us on hand, for Jenny at the last minute had invited a family of six to join us, but it went off without a hitch. Dinner featured lamb chops and sausages, with oven-baked chicken legs, boiled potatoes, asparagus, a green salad and tomatoes, easy to throw together is you have the ingredients. NZers love FRESH in fruits and vegetables and the difference is palpable. Jenny was a marvelous hostess.
The visit ended on a high note, with everyone together for lunch in the open at Rippon Vineyard’s restaurant on the lake shore, accompanied by the establishment’s excellent Merlot-Shiraz.
WANAKA TO QUEENSTOWN TO DUNEDIN
Clearly, we had to follow a schedule on this trip, because so much of it involved meeting and staying with friends. But it also meant passing by places that were clearly worthy of closer scrutiny. As unlikely as it seems, another month would not have been too much time to enjoy all there was to embrace.
CULTURAL NOTE: In many NZ homes, as in England, the toilet is in a separate room from the shower or tub or wash basin. Many hoppers have two flush modes, to save water - light for liquids and full for other materials. The hot and cold faucets are often reversed.
The road from Wanaka to Queenstown crosses the Crown Range, and descends in a series of esses into the valley where Queenstown sits, providing dramatic views of the lake and the countryside. The town is the most popular winter and summer resort in New Zealand, and the tourists are everywhere.
International flights direct to the town’s small airport bring Japanese, Chinese and other Asians, and many of the tourist stores are Japanese owned, apparently.
Our lodging was a bed and breakfast, chosen for the owner’s status as a “natural healer”. It was a couple of miles out of town, set into a steep hillside, with spectacular gardens and a stream running through the property. Small waterfalls in the stream were just outside our door, making a lovely white noise.
In keeping with the hostess’ profession, breakfast was completely organic, which worked well with the bread but not as well for me, at least, with the cereal. But homemade jams, yogurt, black currant juice and a very good herbal tea were all consumed with appreciation.
Queenstown is the gateway to Milford Sound, a long deep fjord that has been the focus of visitors’ attention since the West Coast was opened in the 1860’s. Two options for visiting exist: a six hour bus trip in and the same six hours out, or a flight of half an hour.
We had booked the latter, but the weather refused to cooperate, with clouds down below the tops of the surrounding hills. We settled for a trip to the top of one of the local hills by gondola, where a ski lift went further up the hill for those intrepid souls, like my son and granddaughter who chose to come down concrete chutes on wheeled sleds.
After three days, the weather on Sunday morning lifted enough for us to fly into and over the Sound, but without landing - which left us with some spectacular memories but not really satisfied.
In the meantime, we had taken a trip to the Dart River - first, a bus to the village of Glenorchy, occupied when we arrived by a motorcycle rally. Another bus brought us to the river, along a highway, unpaved, through the bush. Although the road was designated a national highway, we forded streams at least four times in the hour ‘s ride, passing several of the sites of the filming of Lord of The Rings.
A ten minute walk through the bush to the landing site, and then an hour’s ride up the Dart on a jet boat, far enough so that the trees were down to the water’s edge on both sides and navigation became problematic.
CULTURAL NOTE : The opossum is not native to NZ. It was introduced, accidentally or deliberately, some years ago. With no natural enemies, it has overrun large areas of the country, devastating forests. Declared a national pest, it is exterminated whenever possible. The thrifty NZers have devised a method for combining the fur of the animal with wool to produce exquisitely soft sweaters, hats and other apparel. At Glenorchy , I found a shop which tanned the hides and made gloves and caps and jackets of the fur - of surpassing softness and warmth.
Carol and I had also taken a steamer to the far end of the lake, on a lovely calm afternoon, while waiting for the weather to clear. Although Milford Sound is only a few miles in a direct line from Queenstown, the mountain range which separates the two areas produces distinctly different climates. Queenstown weather is not an indicator of what is happening across the range to the southwest.
Eventually, on the last afternoon, the weather cleared enough for us to fly into the Milford Sound area, but not unfortunately to land. The area lived up to its hype - next time, the bus trip for sure.
Jamie’s NZ brother, Geoff Mirkin, joined us in Queenstown, staying at a hotel in town. We traveled to Dunedin in a caravan, with Geoff taking us over out-of-the way roads through the wine and sheep country of Central Otago, the province of which Dunedin is the central city.
The countryside continued to be hilly, with strange rock formations showing through the pasture land. A mid-trip stop for ice cream which had become a daily - sometimes, twice daily event - broke up the four hour trip.
NZ ice cream puts most American brands to shame, for creaminess and richness. Even Carol, who normally completely eschews ice cream, was seen scrapping the last of a two-liter carton of Caramello ice cream at Geoff’s one evening.
GUSTATORY NOTE: NZ milk is much richer than American, due evidently to the fact that the cows are pasture fed on grass or hay - in the winter - and virtually never on grain. Few antibiotics are needed, and “trim” milk, which is what we would term 2%, tastes as good as our whole milk.
In Dunedin, Carol and I stayed with Rose Mirkin, in the same room Jamie had occupied more than 30 years ago, while the others were lodged with Geoff and Sue in the house just below Rose’s. Both sit high on hill overlooking the harbor and Otago Peninsular, jutting eastward into the Pacific Ocean.
It was cloudy and cool our first morning in Dunedin, and I broke down and bought a pure wool sweater on sale for NZ $60 (about US $35). My luggage was falling apart by this time, and Geoff drove us to a discount house (yes, in NZ too), and Carol found place mats and coasters.
Dinner at Geoff’s featured leg of lamb, and we managed to literally eat everything put on the table. Afterwards, Sue, Carol and I talked long into the evening.
Sue has worked in hospice in the past, in addition to her training as a physical therapist. She quizzed both of us on the death of our spouses, interested in what she terms the “transition” but what we call death. In her terms, something happens that is not oblivion.
Sue recently signed up for courses in anatomy at the Otago Medical School to further her interest in connective tissue work as part of physical therapy.
The warmth that I remembered from her visit more than ten years ago to Lexington was there in abundance. She in turn had fond memories of Mara’s welcoming to her and her two sons when they visited Mara in Denver.
Rose’s house is a contemporary, which would fit nicely into Five Fields, having been built in the early ‘60s, when “contemporary” was virtually unknown in NZ. The house features wooden built-ins with comfortable seating, and large windows looking east over the harbor. The grounds are full of blooming flowers and trees, completely screening it on all sides from the streets. A garden path leads down to Geoff’s contemporary house below.
Dunedin is touted as the wildlife capital of NZ, based on three phenomena - a colony of yellow-eyed penguins and a colony of albatross, both on the eastward, ocean end of Otago Peninsular, which forms the south side of the town’s harbor; and a colony of seals in the same general area.
Both colonies were raising chicks during our visit, and we were fortunate - we were told - to see albatross on the wing. These magnificent birds, with wingspan up to eight feet, glide on wind currents for thousands of miles, returning to land to breed annually. Several swopped close overhead as we watched seals along the rocks below the rookery.
A few miles away, penguins, who had been out catching fish in the ocean waters, paddled ashore, across a wide beach, and up a bluff to their nests set in open areas above the beach.
An enterprising farmer had dug trenches in the nesting area, camouflaged them with lattice work and netting, and opened them to tourists. The trenches were deep enough so that the humans who passed through them were the height of the penguins, which evidently was reassuring enough so that we were within three or four feet of the nests. As we watched, the chicks, covered in grey-brown fur which they later lose, stick their long beaks down the parent’s throat to get at the regurgitated fish the parent has spent the day catching.
Lee struck up an acquaintance with another girl who appeared about her own age, and the pair seemed to be getting along very well. When we arrived back at the parking lot, it was to find that the girl was Dutch, spoke no English, but the two had found some means of communication.
A museum in Dunedin devoted much exhibit space to the various immigrant groups that had contributed to the city’s growth and diversity over the years. But I also learned that I would not be welcome as anything other than a tourist - a mock application for a permanent visa was turned down: probably too old and not wealthy enough. For Asians, the fence appears to be even higher.
Our three days in Dunedin included a trip out the northern coast of the harbor, to visit a colony of bachelor seals, and see divers coming up with abalone, the shells of which are a major temptation to tourist dollars.
The day before we left, we all went north along the coast to visit Moeraki, a sacred place, where perfectly round boulders grace the beach. Formed by accretion around a core, deep in the earth, the boulders rise to the surface through uplifting of the tectonic plates. It was a warm sunlit day, made warmer by the hospitality of Douglas McTavish, a NZ classmate of Jamie’s, a Scottish engineer who has worked all over the world, but has settled at Moeraki while working on a huge irrigation scheme for Central Otago.
A final meal with the Mirkins made we aware that while we would probably see Geoff and Sue and John and Jennie, it was unlikely that we would see Rose again. At 80, she can no longer make the long trip to the states.
After our 11 hour flight from Auckland to Los Angeles, I decided that the next trip to NZ, if we make one, will be in stages, with stops in Hawaii and Fiji.
After nearly four weeks, I was tired of travel, finally. Doing it again, I would opt for one day every week in which there was nothing planned - just time to relax and be rather than do. The last few days, I opted out of a couple of things, having run out of reserves.
But it was a wonderful experience. I don’t think I have ever before been to a place that I could find nothing wrong with. It is a country that the people who live there have decided to take care of. That in itself is unusual, and we may have missed the more disagreeable aspects of life in NZ, but we certainly saw few of them.
I want to go back to see all the things we missed, and to relish the warmth we felt from everyone we met. On our last day, shopping in downtown Dunedin, Carol asked for tee shirts for her grandchildren. The saleslady apologetically told her the store didn’t have what she wanted, but took us out on the street and pointed to a store further along the block that would carry what Carol asked for.
That encounter seemed to epitomize the spirit of the country. I hope it stays that way -
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
THE WEST REALLY IS DIFFERENT
THE WEST REALLY IS DIFFERENT
June, 2006. On the third day of our visit to Montana, we found ourselves in Ennis, 50 miles southwest of Bozeman, on the Madison River. (The Madison is one of the three rivers that come together west of Bozeman to form the Missouri.)
Mara has designed a house for a client on a two hundred acre site near Ennis, and is deeply involved in the construction and furnishing of the place. She came to work and we came to watch.
Ennis is a fly-fishing center, with just under 800 permanent residents but a very lively main street, and a killer gourmet restaurant catering to the well-heeled fly fisherman who come in from all over the country.
With Mara totally absorbed in her project, we went off on our own, driving south on Saturday, running parallel to the Madison until we met its source - two lakes, one formed by a man-made dam and the other, Quake Lake, the result of an earth slippage during a 1959 earthquake.
Our Montana map showed a wild life refuge to the west of the lakes, allegedly the home of a flock of rare trumpeter swans, and other assorted birds and beasts. We followed the road around Henry’s Lake , bending west on Highway 287 - which quickly became a gravel road.
For the next twenty-five miles we drove slowly over a well-graded but shoulderless road, going due west into a broad valley, with mountains on both sides, and a long lake in the center. Aside from the road and some fencing, there were no signs of civilization. Perhaps three other vehicles passed us going in the opposite direction.
The trumpeter swans could be seen on the lake, but they were too far away to be heard. A large coyote crossed the road, as well as the ubiquitous gophers that want their share of every gravel road we traveled.
I managed to avoid killing any as they crossed and recrossed, but other drivers hadn’t - we saw dozens of tiny corpses in our travels.
Twenty-five miles into the valley sits a small community, the site of the headquarters of the reservation. To our chagrin, it was closed for the weekend - which makes good sense, I guess. Why be available for times when tourists are likely to show up to bother the rangers?
A little frustrated - we had used up our water - and attacked by insects the moment we opened the car doors, we started back, stopping at a state campground which boasted a spring with delicious cool water.
With twelve miles of gravel road to go, I heard the dreaded flapping sound of a tire which had lost its air. Pulling over to the side of the two-lane, shoulderless road, I looked at the very large, very flat left rear tire on the very large SUV I had rented.
When I opened the rear door, the spare was not readily apparent, and I was standing in some bafflement, when a pickup truck pulled up, driven by a twenty-something young man, out for a Saturday drive with his grandmother.
He asked if I needed any help. He quickly found the spare beneath the floor of the cargo space, got it out - no small task - and proceeded to change the tire, refusing to accept anything but thanks. In the meantime, Carol struck up a conversation with the grandmother, which ended with an exchange of addresses.
Since the spare was a brand new full size tire,I wasn’t terribly concerned about getting back to Ennis, where I expected I would find a garage and get the flat fixed.
What I hadn’t reckoned with was Saturday afternoon, on July 4th weekend. A series of calls by a very helpful woman in a florist shop where we stopped produced no help. After calling the rental agency, it was clear that I would have to return to the Bozeman airport and get another car, keeping my fingers crossed about another flat.
But another niggling worry cropped up. A light on the dashboard indicated low pressure in a tire. The local gas station was open, and had free air - but no gauge on the hose. While I was standing there with a worried look, another Montanan materialized to ask if he could help.
Taking a tire gauge from his truck, he proceeded to check my tires, actually bleeding air from the over inflated spare. Again, just “thank you” was all he would accept.
The “friendly” West may be a cliché, but in our experien ce it really exists.
Finally, today we returned to Mara’s new house from doing errands in town to find a home made rhubarb pit sitting at the back door with a note to Mara, from a neighbor, welcoming her to the community.
Case closed.
A TRULY SMALL TOWN
Saturday afternoon, we drove with Mara west from Ennis through the historic goldrush towns of Virginia City and Nevada City, and through Alder to Laurin.
Lark and Chuck Smotherman had invited us for dinner at their home, a renovated and modernized 1906 brick school house.
The Smothermans travel extensively in the course of their work. Lark is a professional photographer, specializing in homes inside and out, and Chuck is a food and wine writer. Their recommendations for lodging and restaurants in Paris had been excellent, and we had looked forward to meeting them.
Set on the banks of the Ruby River, Laurin (pronounced ‘Laray’ locally) was founded in 1863 by a French entrepreneur and fur trapper named Laurin, and at one time was a thriving commercial center.
Within a hundred yards of the Smotherman’s home is the Catholic church, St. Mary of Assumption, built by Laurin of stone, with a richly furnished interior and beautiful stained glass windows. Services are still held, and attract a wide-spread congregation.
Most of the eight or ten houses surrounding the tiny green were built in the French Gothic tradition, decidedly unwestern in appearance. Some are seasonal, and some house Laurin’s TEN permanent residents (including the Smothermans). As might be expected, the Smothermans knew all of the three or four people we met on our post-dinner stroll around town.
June, 2006. On the third day of our visit to Montana, we found ourselves in Ennis, 50 miles southwest of Bozeman, on the Madison River. (The Madison is one of the three rivers that come together west of Bozeman to form the Missouri.)
Mara has designed a house for a client on a two hundred acre site near Ennis, and is deeply involved in the construction and furnishing of the place. She came to work and we came to watch.
Ennis is a fly-fishing center, with just under 800 permanent residents but a very lively main street, and a killer gourmet restaurant catering to the well-heeled fly fisherman who come in from all over the country.
With Mara totally absorbed in her project, we went off on our own, driving south on Saturday, running parallel to the Madison until we met its source - two lakes, one formed by a man-made dam and the other, Quake Lake, the result of an earth slippage during a 1959 earthquake.
Our Montana map showed a wild life refuge to the west of the lakes, allegedly the home of a flock of rare trumpeter swans, and other assorted birds and beasts. We followed the road around Henry’s Lake , bending west on Highway 287 - which quickly became a gravel road.
For the next twenty-five miles we drove slowly over a well-graded but shoulderless road, going due west into a broad valley, with mountains on both sides, and a long lake in the center. Aside from the road and some fencing, there were no signs of civilization. Perhaps three other vehicles passed us going in the opposite direction.
The trumpeter swans could be seen on the lake, but they were too far away to be heard. A large coyote crossed the road, as well as the ubiquitous gophers that want their share of every gravel road we traveled.
I managed to avoid killing any as they crossed and recrossed, but other drivers hadn’t - we saw dozens of tiny corpses in our travels.
Twenty-five miles into the valley sits a small community, the site of the headquarters of the reservation. To our chagrin, it was closed for the weekend - which makes good sense, I guess. Why be available for times when tourists are likely to show up to bother the rangers?
A little frustrated - we had used up our water - and attacked by insects the moment we opened the car doors, we started back, stopping at a state campground which boasted a spring with delicious cool water.
With twelve miles of gravel road to go, I heard the dreaded flapping sound of a tire which had lost its air. Pulling over to the side of the two-lane, shoulderless road, I looked at the very large, very flat left rear tire on the very large SUV I had rented.
When I opened the rear door, the spare was not readily apparent, and I was standing in some bafflement, when a pickup truck pulled up, driven by a twenty-something young man, out for a Saturday drive with his grandmother.
He asked if I needed any help. He quickly found the spare beneath the floor of the cargo space, got it out - no small task - and proceeded to change the tire, refusing to accept anything but thanks. In the meantime, Carol struck up a conversation with the grandmother, which ended with an exchange of addresses.
Since the spare was a brand new full size tire,I wasn’t terribly concerned about getting back to Ennis, where I expected I would find a garage and get the flat fixed.
What I hadn’t reckoned with was Saturday afternoon, on July 4th weekend. A series of calls by a very helpful woman in a florist shop where we stopped produced no help. After calling the rental agency, it was clear that I would have to return to the Bozeman airport and get another car, keeping my fingers crossed about another flat.
But another niggling worry cropped up. A light on the dashboard indicated low pressure in a tire. The local gas station was open, and had free air - but no gauge on the hose. While I was standing there with a worried look, another Montanan materialized to ask if he could help.
Taking a tire gauge from his truck, he proceeded to check my tires, actually bleeding air from the over inflated spare. Again, just “thank you” was all he would accept.
The “friendly” West may be a cliché, but in our experien ce it really exists.
Finally, today we returned to Mara’s new house from doing errands in town to find a home made rhubarb pit sitting at the back door with a note to Mara, from a neighbor, welcoming her to the community.
Case closed.
A TRULY SMALL TOWN
Saturday afternoon, we drove with Mara west from Ennis through the historic goldrush towns of Virginia City and Nevada City, and through Alder to Laurin.
Lark and Chuck Smotherman had invited us for dinner at their home, a renovated and modernized 1906 brick school house.
The Smothermans travel extensively in the course of their work. Lark is a professional photographer, specializing in homes inside and out, and Chuck is a food and wine writer. Their recommendations for lodging and restaurants in Paris had been excellent, and we had looked forward to meeting them.
Set on the banks of the Ruby River, Laurin (pronounced ‘Laray’ locally) was founded in 1863 by a French entrepreneur and fur trapper named Laurin, and at one time was a thriving commercial center.
Within a hundred yards of the Smotherman’s home is the Catholic church, St. Mary of Assumption, built by Laurin of stone, with a richly furnished interior and beautiful stained glass windows. Services are still held, and attract a wide-spread congregation.
Most of the eight or ten houses surrounding the tiny green were built in the French Gothic tradition, decidedly unwestern in appearance. Some are seasonal, and some house Laurin’s TEN permanent residents (including the Smothermans). As might be expected, the Smothermans knew all of the three or four people we met on our post-dinner stroll around town.
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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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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