France Without Friends
It is one thing planning for months to go to
France with your closest friends, it is entirely another going without
them. One cold winter night the four of us made our plane reservations,
Frequent Flyer on Delta, to fly to Paris in July 2003. Dick, an avid
and formerly obsessive (he had suffered three major accidents in four
years) cyclist wanted to see Lance in the one hundredth anniversary of
le Tour de France.
Jody and I planned to fly a couple of days earlier to Paris and a romantic hotel on Isle St. Louis, meet Dick and Joni's incoming flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport on July 12th and take the TGV together to Avignon. They would be jet-lagged but the trip would take a little over three hours and they could sleep. Since we were traveling on FranceRail passes, we had reserved four first class seats on the 11:40AM train for $11 apiece, one of the few bargains in France's new Euro-based economy.
It was on the trip south that their absence first hit us. A well-fed Frenchman was sitting in one of our four reserved seats reading Le Monde. He looked only slightly guilty in a demure French way as I said, "Pas de problem. Nous avons réservé quatre places mais nos amis ne viens pas." He smiled briefly and, as if acknowledging our disappointment, nodded and moved to a solo seat further down the car. We were left alone to contemplate the meaning of disappointed expectations.
The original plan was logical, simple and as economic as things could be in a year of the weak dollar. The four of us would rent a car from the TGV station in Avignon and venture on to our friend's new B & B (http://www.lelavandinprovence.com/) in Pernes les Fontaines. We would be there for six days: catch the Tour when we could, wallow in the humid heat of Provence and soothe ourselves in the pool, see an opera in Orange or Aix-en-Provence, go to a marché in a tiny village, eat exquisitely, rub lavender through our fingers whenever we wanted, buy palliative and soothing lavender gel at the Musée de Lavande, or simply do nothing.
As it turned out, les grêves put a stop to most cultural offerings throughout France. According to the International Herald Tribune the director of the Aix -en-Provence festival cancelled the summer season "just hours after a performance of La Traviata in the open-air former Archbishop's Palace was disrupted by the noise of protestors chanting, banging pots and pans and setting off fireworks. As the public filed out at the end of the performance, they were also insulted and harassed by groups of protestors." Jody and I had hoped to see the opera and when it was cancelled I tried to conjure up the protestor's plaints.
"Verdi était Italien. Vives la France."
"Amour est honte et nous voulons l'honneur."
"Nous sommes des personnnes valable."
Imagining a cacophonous political protest while Violetta was dying of tuberculosis seemed sacrilegious to us; the International Herald Tribune claimed that the French government had drawn a "cultural Maginot Line".
Since Dick and Joni were leaving two days later than we Joni took us to airport and announced en route that they likely would not be coming on the trip. Dick's father, recently placed in an extended care facility, was dying not expected to live more than ten days. It was definitely a bittersweet but ultimately correct decision: he died four days before the end of the planned trip.
Jody and I boarded the plane for New York and then Paris with vacillating feelings: both sad for our friends who had expectantly awaited the relief of a coveted trip to France and realizing we would have an opportunity to do it on our own, responsive only to our own needs and whims.
As the TGV hurtled towards Provence we realized we were sitting in Dick and Joni's seats: We had discovered during a TGV ride to Bordeaux on last year's trip to France (their first) that Dick liked to sit in the direction the train was going to avoid motion sickness. In deference to them we did not move.
Shortly after our arrival at le Lavandin, around 5:30 PM, Jason, the son of the proprietor ( a friend of ours who had moved from Salt Lake City to Provence to open the B & B) announced that he was driving half way to Alpe d''Huez (the end of the first mountain stage of le Tour de France), spending the night with some friends, and then would drive to the end of the next day's étape and ride up the mountain the riders would be ultimately be coming down. He was an avid cyclist and in fact had reserved Dick a good quality bike for his six day stay.
"Don't think I will be doing that," I said to him after he asked whether I would be interested. Interested yes but participating no. "I want to hear all about it when you get back."
I knew that Dick even sleepless and jet-lagged would have been on it in a sconce.
Throughout the remainder of our Provencal stay and a week in Paris with a living room window two hundred yards from la Tour Eiffel, an apartment rented for the four of us, we felt as if we were enjoying the trip doubly, for Dick and Joni and for us.
Visiting a market in Isle sur Sorgue Jody remarked, "Joni would love this." In deference to the thought she bought some extra linens.
We ate an orgiastic lunch at "our" favorite restaurant from last year's trip: le Caméleon.
We took a one hour nap in le Jardin du Luxembourg, "our" favorite park. Last year Dick, Joni and Jody jogged it daily while I walked, took photos and people watched.
We wandered by rue Joseph Bara to see if a twisted and rusted two wheeler chained to a bike rack which we had photographed in 2002 was still there. It was not but another was in its stead.
We noticed every Smart Car on Parisian streets (an average of twelve a day). Dick and I had been entranced with them and had even visited the dealership on rue Montparnasse.
We happened on an elegant wine store near rue St. Domique and bought a 1994 Pomerol, which the sommelier assured us was ready to drink to share with Dick and Joni when we returned. The cost was 21 euros.
Most importantly we wandered without plan or design, no exhibits we had to see, no restaurants where we had to eat, and no stores we had to visit (except Bon Marché... they, along with every other magazin in Paris, were having a sale). In short there was no urgency to our vacation.
We did purposely visit a free--though beautifully curated and designed--exhibit of le Centenaire du Tour de France at the Hotel de Ville. There, we bought a spectacular three volume commemorative of the race weighing at least twenty-five pounds for Dick which I carted around le Marais for eight hours. Such is the price of friendship and sorrow.
Ironically and appropriately we arrived home twelve hours before Charley's (Dick's father) funeral. It was somehow fitting that our trip should end as it began. Instead of Dick enjoying France with us he orchestrated, witnessed and experienced his father's death, a rite of passage probably more important than his planned trip. France will always be there, a prominent and always potent vestige of the Donald Rumsfeld's "Old Europe."
Dick, Joni, Jody and I know otherwise. It is not irrelevant to life in the Age of Terrorism as our Secretary of Defense would have us believe. On the contrary it is a place to be shared and relished. Sometimes life only permits you do it vicariously.
Jody and I planned to fly a couple of days earlier to Paris and a romantic hotel on Isle St. Louis, meet Dick and Joni's incoming flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport on July 12th and take the TGV together to Avignon. They would be jet-lagged but the trip would take a little over three hours and they could sleep. Since we were traveling on FranceRail passes, we had reserved four first class seats on the 11:40AM train for $11 apiece, one of the few bargains in France's new Euro-based economy.
It was on the trip south that their absence first hit us. A well-fed Frenchman was sitting in one of our four reserved seats reading Le Monde. He looked only slightly guilty in a demure French way as I said, "Pas de problem. Nous avons réservé quatre places mais nos amis ne viens pas." He smiled briefly and, as if acknowledging our disappointment, nodded and moved to a solo seat further down the car. We were left alone to contemplate the meaning of disappointed expectations.
The original plan was logical, simple and as economic as things could be in a year of the weak dollar. The four of us would rent a car from the TGV station in Avignon and venture on to our friend's new B & B (http://www.lelavandinprovence.com/) in Pernes les Fontaines. We would be there for six days: catch the Tour when we could, wallow in the humid heat of Provence and soothe ourselves in the pool, see an opera in Orange or Aix-en-Provence, go to a marché in a tiny village, eat exquisitely, rub lavender through our fingers whenever we wanted, buy palliative and soothing lavender gel at the Musée de Lavande, or simply do nothing.
As it turned out, les grêves put a stop to most cultural offerings throughout France. According to the International Herald Tribune the director of the Aix -en-Provence festival cancelled the summer season "just hours after a performance of La Traviata in the open-air former Archbishop's Palace was disrupted by the noise of protestors chanting, banging pots and pans and setting off fireworks. As the public filed out at the end of the performance, they were also insulted and harassed by groups of protestors." Jody and I had hoped to see the opera and when it was cancelled I tried to conjure up the protestor's plaints.
"Verdi était Italien. Vives la France."
"Amour est honte et nous voulons l'honneur."
"Nous sommes des personnnes valable."
Imagining a cacophonous political protest while Violetta was dying of tuberculosis seemed sacrilegious to us; the International Herald Tribune claimed that the French government had drawn a "cultural Maginot Line".
Since Dick and Joni were leaving two days later than we Joni took us to airport and announced en route that they likely would not be coming on the trip. Dick's father, recently placed in an extended care facility, was dying not expected to live more than ten days. It was definitely a bittersweet but ultimately correct decision: he died four days before the end of the planned trip.
Jody and I boarded the plane for New York and then Paris with vacillating feelings: both sad for our friends who had expectantly awaited the relief of a coveted trip to France and realizing we would have an opportunity to do it on our own, responsive only to our own needs and whims.
As the TGV hurtled towards Provence we realized we were sitting in Dick and Joni's seats: We had discovered during a TGV ride to Bordeaux on last year's trip to France (their first) that Dick liked to sit in the direction the train was going to avoid motion sickness. In deference to them we did not move.
Shortly after our arrival at le Lavandin, around 5:30 PM, Jason, the son of the proprietor ( a friend of ours who had moved from Salt Lake City to Provence to open the B & B) announced that he was driving half way to Alpe d''Huez (the end of the first mountain stage of le Tour de France), spending the night with some friends, and then would drive to the end of the next day's étape and ride up the mountain the riders would be ultimately be coming down. He was an avid cyclist and in fact had reserved Dick a good quality bike for his six day stay.
"Don't think I will be doing that," I said to him after he asked whether I would be interested. Interested yes but participating no. "I want to hear all about it when you get back."
I knew that Dick even sleepless and jet-lagged would have been on it in a sconce.
Throughout the remainder of our Provencal stay and a week in Paris with a living room window two hundred yards from la Tour Eiffel, an apartment rented for the four of us, we felt as if we were enjoying the trip doubly, for Dick and Joni and for us.
Visiting a market in Isle sur Sorgue Jody remarked, "Joni would love this." In deference to the thought she bought some extra linens.
We ate an orgiastic lunch at "our" favorite restaurant from last year's trip: le Caméleon.
We took a one hour nap in le Jardin du Luxembourg, "our" favorite park. Last year Dick, Joni and Jody jogged it daily while I walked, took photos and people watched.
We wandered by rue Joseph Bara to see if a twisted and rusted two wheeler chained to a bike rack which we had photographed in 2002 was still there. It was not but another was in its stead.
We noticed every Smart Car on Parisian streets (an average of twelve a day). Dick and I had been entranced with them and had even visited the dealership on rue Montparnasse.
We happened on an elegant wine store near rue St. Domique and bought a 1994 Pomerol, which the sommelier assured us was ready to drink to share with Dick and Joni when we returned. The cost was 21 euros.
Most importantly we wandered without plan or design, no exhibits we had to see, no restaurants where we had to eat, and no stores we had to visit (except Bon Marché... they, along with every other magazin in Paris, were having a sale). In short there was no urgency to our vacation.
We did purposely visit a free--though beautifully curated and designed--exhibit of le Centenaire du Tour de France at the Hotel de Ville. There, we bought a spectacular three volume commemorative of the race weighing at least twenty-five pounds for Dick which I carted around le Marais for eight hours. Such is the price of friendship and sorrow.
Ironically and appropriately we arrived home twelve hours before Charley's (Dick's father) funeral. It was somehow fitting that our trip should end as it began. Instead of Dick enjoying France with us he orchestrated, witnessed and experienced his father's death, a rite of passage probably more important than his planned trip. France will always be there, a prominent and always potent vestige of the Donald Rumsfeld's "Old Europe."
Dick, Joni, Jody and I know otherwise. It is not irrelevant to life in the Age of Terrorism as our Secretary of Defense would have us believe. On the contrary it is a place to be shared and relished. Sometimes life only permits you do it vicariously.
--
Louis Borgenicht is a pediatrician/writer living in SLC, Utah. He's the co-author, with his son Joe, of The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance.
