France 2000: a tale of onion soup and chateaux
A generation or so ago there was a word, “putter” whose origin is close to lost, and whose use is definitely almost gone. My father used it to describe what he did on Saturday mornings in the garage, doing a bit of this, a tad of that. I like to think the word came from the sound of those early small motors, the ones that went “put put” down country lanes and streams. Not aimless, just slow and meandering.
When I describe our trip to France I think of puttering, as we followed the river Loire from the large city of Orleans to the sea. Savoring each moment, meandering on occasion. Something almost obsolete in this world where four days is a “vacation”.
My spouse knew that he had to take some “paid time off” or lose it at year end, so he assigned me to plan a “vacation”. I had “taken a package”, which is a euphemism for “laid off”, so I had the time to look for internet specials and deals. He left for a business trip in Asia that involved five cities in five days, starting with Bali, confident that I would come up with something great.
He returned to find that I had not booked anything. I had wavered between Ireland and Italy. I was bewildered by choices and tradeoffs and “hot deals” that didn’t seem too hot. Besides, those “last minute specials” were usually fully booked or had strange but mandatory requirements. Depart from Cleveland. Or stay in an unknown, unrated resort. Somehow the internet had made planning more, rather than less, difficult. Planning the trip had become worse than planning our business travel. This was no vacation. I froze.
My spouse was tired of rigid itineraries and business hotels. He remembered driving through France on business years ago, wishing he could linger. We wanted to go somewhere interesting in the off-season, but neither of us wanted to be on a set schedule. So he called American Airlines Vacations and booked tickets and a car, for not much more than my internet bargains. Done.
With only ten days notice, planning was minimal. We would find something interesting wherever we went in France, and with that philosophy, we sketched out a trip to see the chateaux of the Loire, with a side trip to Brittany. We would see as much as we could in eight days, and not worry with advance reservations. Besides, many hotels that seem fully booked weeks ahead have cancellations a day or so before one’s projected arrival. I took a couple of guidebooks for their hotel recommendations, planning to call ahead each day for the next hotel.
Now that we had decided not to plan, the pressure was off. We looked forward to discovering the unknown, the other side of France. We didn’t plan to consciously avoid tourist spots, we just freed ourselves from the “must-see” agendas we had carried as burdens for most of our adult lives. As it turned out, we saw almost no tourists. In our most “touristy” spot, Mont St. Michele, we were enchanted by six year old French children on a field trip. Their wonderment and squeals of delight as they raced up the hundreds of stone steps was tourism of the best kind.
I did not want to arrive in France without a reservation for the first night. Returning to the Internet, I used the site
www.france.com to hunt for a hotel not too far from Orly Airport, yet near some point of interest. Ultimately I made a reservation at a Novotel, a holiday inn-like chain, in Fontainbleau. Since the desk clerk spoke very little English, the printed email I handed her was most useful. (The French often read more English than they speak.) Also, we used charge cards wherever possible to take advantage of their excellent exchange rate, and we used ATMs for cash in francs, always. I came home with all of the dollars that I took!
We flew into Charles DeGaulle airport, which is HUGE, easily on a par with LAX or SFO. Although we arrived at Terminal 2, all of our directions were for Terminal 1, so finding Hertz was a bit complicated. It was also raining. We finally got a very nice Puegeot that was large enough for 3 people, and with enough zoom to deal with freeways. We thought we had good directions for driving around the loop of Paris but within 5 minutes we dodged a very serious spinout in our lane, and we missed our exit. After a stressful hour we finally reached the countryside, and found our Novotel, in the middle of fields, and hidden from the highway. Good thing I had the internet directions! On the other side of the freeway I saw the Nina Ricci perfume factory, and I knew I was in France.
We booked adjoining rooms for our twentysomething daughter and ourselves (figuring with jet lag weneeded it) for about $45 each. The rooms were basic twins, a sofa that was really a bed, and a small TV and the first of a series of MORE THAN ADEQUATE bathrooms. Remembering the France of 30 years ago, I had packed wash cloths and this was one of the few places that did not supply them. But the new fiberglass shower had soap and other toiletries found in U.S. hotel chains. This Novotel had three stars in the French hotel rating system, and we quickly adapted to using those stars in our search for hotels.
Jetlagged but buoyed by the pleasant hotel, we drove into Fontainbleau, about 5 miles thru the forest. As soon as we entered the town we knew we were in Disneyland. The castle is bigger than life and dominates the town, just as Sleeping Beauty's castle looms over Mr. Toad. It was still raining buckets, so we bought the only umbrella left in town, a lovely souvenir. We devoured onion soup in a family-run café, sharing the last booth with giggling eight-year olds, the children of the proprietor. Figuring we had a few hours to kill, we toured the castle. No one else was touring on such a rainy Sunday so we raced through in less than an hour. Fontainbleau has been beautifully restored, and the paintings and furnishings gave us a good framework for imagining how the other chateaux would appear.
After retrieving our daughter from her student flight into Orly Airport, we went back into Fontainbleau for a fabulous dinner at a brasserie, one of those wonderful glass and mirror cafes that are all over France. I had moules, mussels, Joe had steak. Yumm.Until we started reading the (French) lighted sign outside the cafe, which mentioned the municipal parking lot was open until 2000 heures. Hummm. 8 PM. It was then 8:40 PM. So we finished our meal quickly, bravely murmuring to each other "We can take a taxi. No problem.” The sign was incorrect or the garage manager was lenient, because we easily retrieved our car and returned to our snug Novotel.
Our first real day in France was one of navigating through Orleans and
other smaller cities, following the Loire on a non freeway. Roundabouts
were challenging but my spouse mastered them early. We went to a supermarche
and bought jambon (ham, wonderful French ham), cheese, baguettes, orangina, and the first of a succession of bottles of wine. The wine was so
inexpensive and the labels so seductive!
We planned to picnic for lunches, and the first of these was at a city park next to a chateau. It was brisk and windy and gray, and Joe and Mary walked off the wine on the chateau grounds while I studied the map. We quickly concluded that we were not going to make it to our destination, Amboise, that day. Instead we stopped in Blois, an ancient town dominated by its huge chateau. We
stopped at the tourist office opposite the chateau and asked them to make a
reservation for us at a hotel from my guidebook, the Hotel Medici. It was really a restaurant with a hotel above. My husband grumbled mildly that it was near the train station and not in the center of town, and I worried that we should have gone to the Ibis (another chain and part of the Novotel group) nearer the Chateau.
We loved the room. It was an attic room with dormer windows opening out
on to the slate roof, with an alcove with the third bed, almost like
shipboard. (We found throughout that when we booked one room for the three of us, it was usually carved out of the attic.) The bathroom was elegant with all of the amenities. The walls were covered with a wild pink green and blue flowered print material. We saw fabric covered walls in other hotels also. We stowed
our luggage and returned to the center of town for the chateau tour.
The Chateau at Blois was an early home of Francis I, a long-lived and beloved ruler who built many of the royal residences in the Loire Valley. We exclaimed over the architecture and the decorations while reading aloud from the Michelin book on the Loire, which I had checked out of the library at home. We were the only English-speaking tourists.
Afterwards we had a 5 pm coffee break and did some casual shopping in
the medieval streets around the chateau, returning to the underground
parking garage for the car just as the rains started. Ensconced
in our attic room with the rest of the lunch time wine, we congratulated ourselves that we didn’t have far to go for dinner.
Dinner at the Café Medici was the best meal of the trip, and that is high
praise in itself. My spouse and I shared a Normandy chicken dish, cooked in a
clay pot sealed with bread dough, and then sauced with calvados brandy.
The presentation was awesome, but we were disappointed when the bread did
not come back to the table: it had been for show, not for consumption.
Don't ask why we didn't ask for it. We were spell-bound by the sights and aromas.
Our daughter had a fish cooked in a clay package, which the waiter
shattered with a hammer to release. Parchment paper also sealed in the moisture of herbs and wine. We all agreed it was the best fish ever. She had ordered “Le Menu”, the special multi-course meal which included a selection of cheeses and a souffle to finish. Her parents watched her delicately choosing three local cheeses and agreed they couldn’t have eaten a bite more.
Even with our knowledge of French, a phrase book was very useful in ordering food. Duck has at least two names in French, lobster, steak, etc all have multiple names. Sometimes the waitor could translate, more often not. But they always understood, and could provide, "pommes frites". French fries.
After such an impressive meal, we climbed our three flights of stairs to the attic and collapsed. Rain pattered on the slate roof all night and we slept very well, using the ear plugs which I brought along, having read that French hotels are
noisy with thin walls. Not so in any hotel we stayed in.
The next morning our helpful waiter of the night before had morphed into
the helpful desk clerk. We had noticed that Hotel Medici also belonged to a consortium called "Hotels and Chateaux of France”. Our choice for the next night, the Chateau de Pray, was listed in this book. Our desk clerk was quite happy to phone ahead and make a reservation for us! I was thrilled, as my previous internet inquiry had returned a “Sorry, we’re full.” And we had the whole day to amble among the chateaux!
We all agreed we wanted to start with Chambord, the largest of the
chateau, build by Francis I with the collaboration of his good friend
Leonardo de Vinci. It was build as a renaissance palace rather than a
fortified keep. A river was diverted to provide its lake. Sandstone
was brought in by river barge from other parts of France. We could
tell we were approaching a national treasure by the size of the car
parks and the number of souvenir stands. We felt like we were in
Disneyland again. Oh how I wish we had done this years ago before the commercialization of France’s treasures. (Afterwards we ate cheese and bread and ham in the parking lot, supplemented by coffee and cookies at another chateau.)
But only a couple of tour buses with daytrippers from Paris were parked in spaces intended for many more. We rented headphones (in English) and were glad we did so, as this was the only chateau with that option. The architecture was stunning, but the graffiti on the soft stone dated 1606 was even more impressive. Here we also saw many of the tapestries and some of the paintings and furnishings from the time of Napoleon.
From Chambord we drove back roads to reach the Chateau de Chenonceau,
which everyone refers to as "the one built over the water". The
French refer to it as the Chateau des Dames because HenryVII gave it to
his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who built most of it. After Henry
died, his wife, Catherine de Medici, forced her to trade it for another
one, and Catherine enhanced the estate and put her own stamp on it. The
long gallery built over the river has its own impressive history as a negotiation site in this century’s wars. We saw more tourists here than anywhere else, almost all French. Chenonceau has an extensive park and beautiful gardens also.
During our rambles over back roads we found numerous smaller castles
and keeps and small towns and villages with wine "Caves". We were too
timid to drive right up to the vineyards and see if there was tasting,
although in a few instances we saw signs to that effect. We also drove
up to another major chateau, just by chance, Cheverney. The entire
village outside the castle walls has been restored by the French
government, and when you read their war memorials you understand why.
Many of the villages lost almost their entire male population in WWI.
So again, it was a bit like Disney.
We finally made it to Amboise in the early evening, and found the
Chateau de Pray easily. Somewhat famous people have lived there as recently
as the mid 20th century. At dinner we were seated under the painting of
Lafayette, a former inhabitant. Dinner again was a production that occupied almost three hours. No one minded. The bedroom itself was a large chamber with high ceilings and a fireplace and long windows overlooking the drive. Monogrammed linens. By the way, at none of these hotels did we buy the continental breakfast. It was usually about $10 each and we don't eat breakfast.
Or shall we say we preferred to stop at a pastry shop later and choose
something really good, like pan chocolate (a croissant stuffed with dark
chocolate). This meant that I did not always get a cup of coffee early
in the day. Our days also did not start early, since by mid October France does not get light until after 8 am. A lovely excuse to snuggle in.
This day we devoted to Amboise. The chateau itself is the one where
Francis I was raised. It has a strategic location high above the Loire
and the views are breathtaking. Lots of stairs. Tunnels where guards
spent their days lighted only by candles and flares. I could imagine a
secret dungeon. Terraces on top of the castle were once used for gardens
and parties and I could well imagine the lifestyle in the summer. In
the winter it must have been freezing.
By now the Hess trio had toured or seen about 7 chateaux and were ready for some random shopping in the medieval streets around Amboise. All of the shops close for the lunch break, so this was a challenge. A charcuterie or deli/meat store/gourmet store remained open, and we raided it for local pate in jars. Once again we were overcome by the cheapness of the Loire wine. Our daughter and I had great fun picking out wine from the regions we had driven thru the day before. So having seen Chateau Ceverny, then we looked for a wine with the same domain name (kind of like the internet, huh)...
Next stop was up the hill (and the narrow streets, the cobblestones, and
the onion soup I had for lunch made it tough walking) to the small estate
where Leonardo de Vinci spent the last three years of his life. Its size and splendor was that of a rich merchant, not a noble, of the time. We sat in the rose garden with our afternoon coffee and imagined living there. Leonardo’s good friend Francis I supposedly used those underground passages and chambers of Chatuau Amboise to come see him every day. We enjoyed the tiny chapel, the Italian garden, the gallery with its view of the Loire, and the painting of the Chataeau Amboise that Leonardo painted from the villa. The coffee was good too.
We retrieved the car determined to make some mileage, because we wanted to
reach the Atlantic Coast before dashing up to Mont St. Michel. We
made it about three miles before we were diverted by the regional wine cooperative where the vintners bring their grapes and share the huge
stainless steel vats and other machinery. In prior ages the winemakers were very
competitive and jealously guarded their grapes and secrets. Now they
recognize the value in sharing expensive facilities while still making
their own distinctive vintages. And yes we bought wine. The trunk of the car was beginning to fill up.
The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to drive around Tours and on
to Nantes. I swore never again to do a driving trip without
yellow Michelin maps, which are much more detailed than the red ones.
And we went through several rainstorms, whose huge puffy thunderheads signaled that we were near the sea. By the time we pulled into Nantes, which is a charming university town on the Loire, we were exhausted. We wished we had a hotel reservation.
After parking in the railroad parking garage we set out on foot, looking
for one of the hotels in my Frommers book. The first and largest hotel
was completely booked. We could see a huge banquet going on in the
ballroom off the lobby. We felt like grubby tourists in our jeans and tennis
shoes. Our daughter persuaded the harried desk clerk to call ahead to a nearby
hotel to see if they had a room, which they did. It was a long three
blocks to walk in the rain, but the hotel was away from the main traffic street. The Hotel Astoria was run by two charming middle-aged Frenchwomen. They thought our daughter was delightful. She admired their single gold fish on the registration counter, who happened to be named Pouchemon (one of the Pokemon characters, I understand.) They stood there giggling "Pouchemon" or whatever its name was, at each other, in perfect accord. And the ladies had an enclosed garage next door where we parked the car. Madam desk clerk opened and closed the garage doorherself. The garage was actually an extension of the hotel used for hanging towels on lines to dry when empty!
The room was another attic room with dormer windows, pink roses climbing
the wallpaper, and a lovely bathroom. Out the dormer window we could see a
gothic church and hear the choir rehearsal. I suggested we drop in but
the other two were starving. So we walked back to the main street to an Alsatian seafood restaurant. All around us diners were eating sausages and kraut, but being so close to the sea, I wanted seafood. I had a very adventuresome meal. I ordered the seafood plate, which came displayed on a three-tiered cake plate. Pink shrimp were easy to peal and eat. Gray shrimp were tiny and one wiggled so I concluded they were uncooked and I did not eat them. Joe cracked the crayfish for me. I loved the mussels, but refused to eat the snails, the little ones from my childhood. We had a local wine, and I concluded the only way to eat the meal was by "washing it down with quantities of white wine" as I had read somewhere. We all slept well and were cheerfully sent on our way the next day by the two women.
When we left Nantes we headed to Vannes, a seaport where the Loire
enters the Atlantic, and our first town in Brittany proper. Anne of
Brittany is as big a historical figure to the region as Francis I is to
the Loire. Vannes has its share of stories about her and about the
Celts who settled the region, not to mention pirates who roamed the
coast and the numerous offshore islands. We drove to to the center of town,
which has a yacht harbor and numerous seafood restaurants as well as the
tourist office. I can well imagine the hords in the summer. It was
raining and the tourist office closed for lunch so we were forced to
pick a cafe and have crepes, steak and fries, and onion soup. I had the
onion soup, of course. After lunch it was still raining so we ducked thru
a medieval arch and into a shop selling quimper, the gaily painted Breton
pottery. My husband returned from the tourist office, having found le Hotel Roof. It proved to be one of the best hotels of the trip. We had a balcony overlooking an inlet with boats and water taxis to the islands across the bay, and a magnificent sunset.
Our daughter spent the afternoon exploring the park and shore adjacent to the hotel, while my husband and I spent the afternoon chasing monoliths. When he said enroute to Vannes that he wanted to see Brittany’s equivalent of Stonehenge, I thought it would be a real wild goose chase. Not so, they were in the next town, Carnac. We drove twenty minutes up the freeway and then over a hill or two toward the ocean. The monoliths number in the hundreds, most of them larger than a person, and are built in rows aligned with some celestial markers. Impressive and deserted at this time of year. This part of the coast is also a very popular beach vacation destination in the summer, and is close to some of the legendarily snobbish French beach resorts. We just saw the monoliths and the sheep grazing among them.
Dinner at the hotel that night was the only less than perfect meal, and it was
because the menu was in Breton, a Celtic kind of French that we did
not understand. I played it safe and ordered the daily special but the others each tried something obscure and regretted it. The waiter did not speak English and our French didn't work well either. Moral: if you don't speak and read French, you will have a better meal if you have a dictionary.
The next day was our big driving day, as we had to go from the southwest
Atlantic coast to the northeast coast, to Mount St. Michel. We figured it was on the way back to Paris, sort of. Reading the map again proved to be deceptive as the roads have been renumbered to conform to the European Union, and don't match the map. Plus exits and entrances were not marked. We went round many a roundabout looking for our destination city on the signs. We enjoyed a random stop for a pastry, stumbling on a picturesque market and a gothic church. As always, the French drivers were courteous and not too fast. It was a relief from our daily commute.
The approach to Mount St. Michel is over two lane roads and through
miniscule villages, dotted with tourist accommodations. We were not
sure we were going the right way until we saw it appear on the horizon,
somewhat like catching a view of Sleeping Beauty's castle at
Disneyland. There is a causeway over the tidal flats, but a guard made us
park on the shell lot below the causeway. We put overnight things in our carry-on luggage to hike up the hill to our hotel. I had called from our previous hotel for a reservation at one of the half dozen hotels on the island. One narrow cobbled street funnels all of the visitors up to the Abbey and we found our hotel easily. We left our bags in the lobby and wandered through the ramparts and up the
hill for a couple of hours. The cobblestones were wet and slippery and
the climb was strenuous enough to cause us to stop several times. Everywhere the view was captivating and people watching was fascinating. The inevitable tourists were mostly French and young. A group of French school children, paper and pencil in hand, were obviously on a field trip. They ascended the steps in groups of five, accompanied by an adult, excitedly chattering and shrieking at the steep ascent. Disneyland.
We checked into our room after 3 pm and found ourselves climbing again,
to a hotel annex. We had no complaints, as our room was fabulous. A window seat overlooked the bay, while the breakfast alcove had a view of the spires of the abbey. Bright peach walls were covered in framed reproductions of famous signatures from the guest book. Russian grand dukes, the king of Rumania, movie stars and singers---reading them was irresistible
The big activity at Mont St. Michel is watching the tide come in. My spouse
had moved our car to the causeway once we checked in and he could show
the guard a room key. At six thirty a loud speaker came on all over the
island warning people about the incoming time, and telling them to move
their vehicles. Most people left the island at that point, and an eerie silence descended on the streets.
We lingered on the ramparts with about fifty others who were staying the
Night, to watch the oncoming tide--it is the fastest in Europe, and
moves about 12 miles an hour. The sunset reflected in the rippling expanse of water was indeed glorious.
Of course the next activity was dinner. We ordered omelets, a traditional Breton and Mont St. Michel dish, and I had raw briny oysters. We did a little shopping
but almost everything on the island shuts down by about 8 pm. The Abbey
is beautifully lighted and people were running around the ramparts until late that evening. We figured out later that we were on the island on Friday the 13th!!!
The next day we drove to Paris, a drive that my spouse had been dreading. As soon as we went inland from the coast and into the Seine Valley the weather became gray and misty. We skirted Rouen and kept to the freeway until St.
Germaine-en-Leye, where we got off and tried to find the place where
our daughter went to school as an exchange student at the age of ten. Saturday afternoon traffic was horrible, I am sure the French would agree, and we got lost trying to get back on the loop around Paris. At one point we were on surface
streets following the Seine. We knew where that would take us!
Finally we found Charles de Gaulle and turned the car in. We had seven bottles of wine in the trunk, picked up over the week in our drive! We had
considered taking the train or a bus to our hotel but we figured with
three people a taxi would be cost effective, and besides we were
stressed from the drive. Our taxi driver, however, did not know how to
find our hotel. He looked it up in a book and phoned it, then told
us that it had changed its name from Tonic Hotel Louvre to the
Victoria. In one week. I was sitting in the front seat and I looked at
the map and said "Oh, and did the street name change also?" Whereupon
he realized that we understood French, could read a map, and really did
want to go to the Tonic Hotel. Was he trying to take us to another
hotel? Yes. Was he trying to cheat us or get a kickback? Probably
no. We cheerfully congratulated him on finding the hotel, and said good riddance.
The hotel was one block off the Rue Rivoli and one block from the
Louvre. The photo on france.com had shown elegant rooms with exposed beam ceilings and original rock walls. The review on the web said it was not recommended because of the "carelessness of the staff". Hmmm. Unable to find anything else because of the international auto show, and hoping the review was old, I had booked the hotel.
The room was exactly as shown on the web, but I soon found out about the careless staff. The young lady at the desk booked us into the Bateaux Mouches,the boat trip down the Seine, called us a taxi to take us there, and collected a cash deposit. She had actually booked us into a different boat trip, which we never did find. After some haggling we did get on the boat and had a romantic trip by moonlight through the historic district of Paris, with a gourmet dinner and champagne. This was my "must do" that I had postponed from 1972 and I have to say it lived up to all my expectations. On the hour the Eiffel Tower “sparkles” as it did for the Millenium New Years, and we went topside on the boat to enjoy the spectacle. A grand evening. (We were later refunded our deposit on the other trip, but the hotel still insisted that they were “right.” Strange.)
The next morning we left my husband to sleep in, and walked over to the
Louvre, arriving just as it opened. We went to see the Venus de Milo,
the Winged Victory, and the gift shop. I had never seen the glass pyramid, and enjoyed it as much as the art. Then we left, before the influx of Sunday visitors. A great visit! Then we shopped in the touristy stores around the Louvre for the perfect Eiffel Towers and other souvenirs. Arriving back at the hotel, we picked up my spouse and set out for the Marais, one of the few areas of Paris open on Sunday.
Along the way we saw Centre Pompedieu, some intriguing antiques stalls along
Rue St. Paul, and had Sunday lunch in a brasserie. I had the best onion
soup of the trip and later remembered that we were near Les Halles, the
former market, which was famous for its soup. I bought a cut velvet scarf, and our daughter bought a velvet jacket. We saw many of the same clothes that we saw thirty years ago, finally realizing that they were used, retro fashion items.
We also saw the school where our college student son went as an exchange student when he was ten. It is one block in from the Seine, near Pont Ave Marie, on Rue Ave Maria. Very beautiful and a historic address. We were impressed, the more so since our son had taken it all in stride.
Back to the hotel to send our daughter on her way, to return to work in San Diego. She took most of the wine with her as gifts, planning to pay duty if necessary. After all, the ten per cent duty on a $4 bottle of wine was nominal. We put her in a taxi on the Rue Rivoli with many francs and asked the driver to take care of her.
Childless once more, we set off in the mist and rain to see the Eiffel Tower. Thirty years ago we tried to walk to it and failed, as it looms over much of Paris and can seem closer than it really is. This time we took a taxi and enjoyed seeing the cleaned and restored historic buildings as we went. We decided to ascend to the third level of the Tower rather than go to the top, since the mist was so strong that the view would not have been good. We stood in line for about twenty minutes even to go that far, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Oh yes, we had an excellent coffee and pastry on the third level. I found that late afternoon coffee revived me enough to continue sightseeing through the evening.
For our last evening in Paris we went to a restaurant across from the
Gare du Nord that had been recommended to us by a Cisco person and former Paris resident, for its oysters (Belones #1’s). The energy of people traveling was evident in the hustle and bustle of this very nice, and reasonable, restaurant. We were caught up in the romance of the golden age of train travel, and the elegance of a bygone era of dining. We encountered our first American tourists, who eased us back into our real life by informing us that the Giants lost the playoffs and Notre Dame beat Stanford. We were ready to go home.
The next morning we woke up to a huge rainstorm. Entwined under our souvenir umbrella, we returned to a couple of shops that we had hope to visit, but nothing was open before we had to leave for the airport. So we spent a weekend in Paris with basically all the stores closed! My spouse thought it was funny.
We had a delightful trip, with enough photos and memories to last through another Northern California rainy season. We look forward to another nine or ten days to putter, dawdle and meander. A plane ticket and a car, and a different region to explore. We are so hurried and so harried in our daily lives that being without a set schedule made the trip more adventuresome. Our attitude of “Enjoy the moment” is one we should adopt at home.
