Nov 2 - Last France Road Trip

Well I've done it.....I bought my plane ticket back to the US. I arrive Nov 15th.

Marco and I did our last road trip to the south of France (for awhile at least). We went to the Southwest on the Atlantic coast and to a region called the Gers. The Gers is kinda like Minnesota - a far flung farm country that most people don't really know about. What I can tell you is that it's pretty. It's sunny. It has rolling hills with vinyards that produce a spirit called armagnac that is like cognac. It's full of old stone farms, pleasantly free of modern junk like cellphone antennas and factories like you find in Provence (a region I find WAY overhyped - heed my words American tourists!).

In France there are many extraordinary b&b's, but they are very cheap, even cheaper than a broken-down highway motel in the US. You find some memorable people and places if you stay in these places.

Sunday night we stayed in a 400-hundred-year-old house run by a guy who is a straggling remnant of a former aristocratic family. They once owned 10 homes but now they're down to one, which they almost sold. This guy is the last family member committed to keeping the ancestral home and he needs guests for the money. He cooked dinner himself for us and the four other guests, a good dinner, and we all ate it together at a looooooong carved oak dinner table, like in the movies. He served us wine and told family stories and showed us a hidden chapel built in the bookshelf (yes, in the bookshelf!) where his great-great-great-great grandfather secretly held mass during the French Revolution. The guy was a big hefty guy and was jolly and an excellent storyteller, not at all what you'd expect of a hoity-toity aristocrat. He looked more like a lumberjack. He was doing everything he could not to lose the family home. In a way he seemed sad and desperate not to lose his history.

The next day we went to the west coast of France, on the Atlantic. There the beaches are more or less wild, and have massive sand dunes that extend all along the coast. There had been a storm the night before and when we made it up and over the massive dune (taller than a 3-story building at least) we had a vast panorama of huge waves as far as the eye could see. They were far bigger than the waves we ever saw in California, and choppy and wild. Oh they roared! They crashed and exploded on the shore. We ran by the water and ran from the waves. The sun came out and for a day in October it was very warm. We only saw two other people on the beach. Then we walked along the crest of the sand dune, which is so high it gave us a long view over a curiously exotic-looking valley of a stream behind the dune (called L'Huchet).

But now we're back in Paris. Marco left to Dallas this morning for work, and from there he's going to Colorado to check out Boulder to see if we'd like it. He'll be gone a week. I think I'll be kinda lonely. By coincidence several of our other friends are gone during this week as well (two of them on a trip to New Zealand, lucky guys. Hearing their travel plans brought back memories. It's now almost been 10 years since I was there! Can't believe it!!) Anyway I hope I don't get too lonely. I can't stand Paris these days and it's easier to take when other people are around to keep me distracted. I'm thinking up activities to keep me occupied in the evenings. I think I'll knit a scarf.