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France

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Itinerary first; for those of you who like in-a-nutshell itineraries:

6/19 H & W meet at Joy's apartment in Paris; Seine River tour, H wakes up from jet lag slumber just in time to see the Eiffel tower; delicious dinner with Joy & Konstantin in a Moroccan restaurant. H knew Joy from Thunderbird. Joy moved to Paris a few years ago and met and married Konstatin, originally from Bulgaria.

6/20 H & W depart via TGV (high-speed train) to Lyon. Montmatresque Basilica, great views of city and rivers, fine dining—chef had to come out to explain an indecipherable, handwritten and complex menu.

6/21 H & W board TGV again to Avignon, rent cute car and drive to town of St. Remy de Provence where van Gogh hospitalized himself and painted some of his best known paintings, check in at the 18th century Chateau de Roussan for next four nights…oh la la!

6/22 Up late, late for everything day. Tour towns of Les Baux, Carpentras, and in the Luberon, Venclause and Gordes. Fortified hill towns with spectacular vertigo-defying views. Visited the abandoned (circa 1850) troglodytic village of Les Bourides, which consists of small primitive buildings made from slabs of rock. Interesting to see how the other half used to live.

6/23 Drive to the Camargue to see saline marshes with Camarguais horses and pink flamingos and mosquitoes. Stop in Arles to view the Roman arena and where van Gogh painted on the way back.

6/24 Canoe under the Pont de Gard, swim in the river Gord; then Avignon to see Palais des Papes and gardens and Pont d'Avignon (all day long we are singing "Sur le pont d'Avignon"). Panoramic views of the Rhone valley.

6/25 Depart St. Remy and drive to Languedoc via Sete (sur le Mediterreanée). Stayed with our friends' the Rodenbecks for two nights. They live south of the town of Mazamet, and north of Carcassonne in an abandoned hamlet. The R's are old friends of H's parents. They live in Cairo half the year where he teaches at A.U.C. [Their son Max, a correspondent for The Economist based in Cairo, recently wrote a fascinating history book on Cairo called 'Cairo, The City Victorious'.]

6/26 Tour villages and castles of the Cathars (medieval heretics–all eventually burned at the stake), lunch at Carcassonne, and then more rolling hills, forests and villages. Dinner with R's in an ancient Mazamet inn.

6/27 Leave Languedoc and drive NW to Dordogne, Cro-Magnon cave country. Check into Les Glycines hotel for two nights, in the tourist town of Les Eyzies.

6/28 Drive to larger regional center of Perigueux to meet Caroline, old friend of W's who is a resident nearby. [Her husband is looking to buy a chateau so he will have more wall space to hang his growing painting collection.] Get an informed tour of the largest charming town we visited.

6/29 From Les Eyzies, see caves with stalactites and stalagmites and cliff overhang where cavemen dwelled. Move to a 16th century inn set in the rolling hills of the Dordogne called 'La Grande Marque' and then drive up to Perigueux again to meet Joy and Konstantin, who were coming from a wedding north of Bordeaux. Dine at a country inn for four hours and many, many courses...see menu below (unless you're on a diet).

6/30 Whole family swims at the Grande Marque's pool and lunch in town of Cyrenac and tour extensive gardens of Chateau de Marquessayac with breathtaking views of the Dordogne river valley and its many chateaux. Dinner with an attitude in Sarlat (baby again, mais oui).

7/1 Drive up north to view exquisite cave paintings at Lascaux II. Then drive back to Bordeaux to catch TGV to Paris. Miss train. Get later train with many free seats but 1.5 hour wait for taxi at Paris end. Arrive Joy's apartment: 1:15 AM.

7/2 Konstantin flies to India for work, Joy back to work in Paris. H & W tour Paris: Montmatre, Pere Lachaise cemetery (where many famous Parisians are buried) and tea in the Luxembourg Gardens, where W posed as The Lion King and H as The Statute of Liberty.

7/3 H & W say good-bye to Joy and Lea, and fly home, 15 hours in transit, and prepare for Lara's imminent arrival from Israel.

Paris
On the way from Nuremberg to Paris W was privileged to have a rowdy entourage of U2 roadies on board, and was that fun or what? [You know, U2 the big Irish rock band…roadies are the road crew, the tattooed guys who put up the huge stages and sound systems before concerts.] H showed up a day late due to bad weather on the East Coast, where she stopped over for a family wedding in Maine. Poor W had to console himself at the Louvre (the Vermeers were sadly not on display that day) on a cloudy day. But she did bring the sun with her the next day and it was sunny, with the exception of one day, for the rest of the trip! [Unlike Northern Europe L .]

Where are you from?
Since many Brits and Dutch frequent France in the summer, we were often mistaken for being one or the other. The reaction to our true nationalities after hearing H speak French was: "une Americainne qui parle Francaise!" [They politely did not bother commenting on W's French.]

Road Rage?
We had heard about driving habits of the French of course. On one hand, they passed each other and us on dangerously narrow roads with a passion. W named such passers, who were usually but not always male: "Monsieur Le Moi." On the other hand, they were very restrained in the honking department, even though we were guilty of numerous slow starts at stop signs from frequent stalling in first gear. H figured this was because we were in a country of manual transmissions. ['Esmeralda' our rented car, was a peppy, emerald green Peugeot hatchback.]

Hot Provence
The weekend of the summer solstice we spent in Provence. It stayed light until 10 PM which made long days of sightseeing very doable. After a hot day of driving around and investigating quaint medieval villages, it was nice to return to a restaurant in St. Remy that we knew. After getting through the ordeal of ordering, H leaned back in her chair to relax against, unbeknownst to her, a candle on a ledge. W noticed a certain glow from the back of her head and frantically motioned for her to come forward so he could look at the back of H's head. H, still befuddled from jet lag, had not a clue as to what he was trying to say. [Communication was NOT good that day.] W jumped up and quickly extinguished the fire (H's hair is red enough.) Anyway, a few charred strands of hair later, the proprietors of this family restaurant were fussing over her smelly ponytail. For additional amusement, there was a parade of traditionally dressed paysannes on foot and horseback celebrating their local patron saint's day to watch out the window.

On Fire
A summer solstice fire; we were sleeping peacefully after the longest day of the year when the sound of sirens and wheels of fire trucks crunching over gravel in the courtyard woke us up. Evidently, someone had called the fire department after seeing a tree on the chateau grounds go up in flames. A smoker had apparently dropped a cigarette into a pile of leaves beneath said tree. The ruckus wasn't over yet. At minuit, loud music started blasting. A party had started a few houses away. It sounded like it was just downstairs. W used earplugs for the first time…at least the music demonstrated a certain Gallic sophistication.

Seven Lives
On another hot day we soaked ourselves in a half canoe, half kayak contraption which took us under the Pont de Gard, a towering Roman aqueduct. After two hours of flailing about in the canoe, a good soak in the river looked most inviting. And so we, along with hordes of French locals, went for a dip in the refreshing swift current. After our swim, we went back to the parking lot and noticed two British ladies clucking over a parked car. "Is this your car?" they asked in French. Inside the car was a very hot and panicked kitten. The kitten was desperate to get out. It was panting, frantically running back and forth on the dashboard and meowing for help. The inside of the car must have been 120F - outrageous. H noticed that one of the windows was open just enough for her skinny arm to, after the third try, get through and unlock the door. Out came the panting kitten. We poured water over it, eventually left it with the canoe office and left a tart note in the car for the errant owners.

Delicious Dordogne
Our classic French country Inn dinner (four hours long):

1) Aperitif made from dandelions, red wine and nettle soup with croutons.

2) Charcuterie (dried ham, smoked ham, pork neck pate, pork skin pate), fresh bread, and big pickles.

3) Salad with roses, wildflowers, fresh mint, and various greens.

4) Duck drumsticks, spiced heart of bamboo, roast potatoes.

5) Beef curry (we're full by now).

6) Cheese tray with 4 different types and ages of goat cheese (chevre) and 3 types of cow cheese, and more rustic bread (chef has plenty of time between courses to boast that he usually makes the breads and cheeses on the farm).

7) Three different quick breads (cumin, pepper and nut) with rose, gooseberry and honey sauces for dessert.

8) Coffee, candied fresh mint, cardamom cookies and a choice of 6 unusual homemade liqueurs.

9) Ohhhhhhhhhhh!

So homey was this country inn that the chef-owner brought his diaper-clad son down from the domestic quarters to flirt with little Lea.

Diaper Diatribes
As our friend Joy observed, "you never know what is going to piss off the French." We all had a candid camera opportunity to test this observation. We had just joined up with Joy, Konstantin, and their 17 month old daughter Lea, and were on our way to the auberge (farmhouse that serves food and rents rooms) mentioned above. Just ten minutes away from our potential feast, Lea decided she had been in a car seat long enough and threw up. Joy bade H to stop the car right away. There we were on a skinny country road in the midst of pastures. The sun was still high in the sky at 7 PM. It was a perfect spot to bathe a baby. Of course, we were not alone for long. Every five minutes or so, a car would pass by. The drivers of the cars would look at us curiously, see the naked baby, who was happily out of her car seat, and cautiously pass around the spectacle. Then a persnickety sour-faced woman came by in a filthy and rather battered Renault. She had a flea-bitten poodle-mix mutt in the front seat. (You could tell she was anti-child.) She began throwing her hands up in the air and swearing away in total exasperation. It was blatantly clear that she could easily get by. H mentioned to her that everyone ELSE had passed by and Konstantin gallantly offered to assist her, but she only got madder and nastier. She said she could not get by and why did we "block" the road so the baby could fait pee-pee? French idioms and insults flew back and forth. She motioned to write our license plate number down on a dog-eared card. Then she stopped to gossip viciously about us with a car that had approached from the other direction while totally blocking the road. Apoplexy.

North of the Border
In the Dordogne the Dutch are generally disliked, although they tend to speak fluent French, as they bring everything they need in large trucks including food, supplies, Dutch architects and contractors to work on their houses, and everything else they might need. [But who would want to bring FOOD to France?] One Dutch couple asked their imported Dutch architect to convert half of an old barn into glass walls and ceilings - adding a great deal of light as well as heat in the summer (microwave) and cold in the winter (deep freeze). The English on the other hand, who speak comically bad French (Franglais), believe in preserving the old architecture of the farmhouses they are buying up. And they do buy food from the locals because they know English food is not worth importing! On the other hand, the French seemed to love American attire. We saw many Frenchmen wearing Oxford button down shirts, boat shoes, polo shirts, blue jeans, penny loafers, even Madras shorts and pants (American sartorial imperialism?).
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