Where are Ron and Ellen?
France: 7 September - 20 October 2005
Part 4: St. André-de-Sangonis - Paris, 5-20 October 2005
Ron and Ellen at Lac du Salagou
Links in the text below are to individual photos or to a small group of photos. To see all the photos from the St. André-de-Sangonis portion of our 22 October report combined on one page, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Afton, Virginia, USA, 22 October 2005
Links in the text below are to individual photos or to a small group of photos. To see all the photos from the Paris portion of our 22 October report combined on one page, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Dear Family and Friends,
Having procrastinated on writing our final travel bulletin because there were so many interesting things to do in our last days in France, we are now at home -- and are already missing the wonderful bakeries that were always within a quick walk.
We really enjoyed the 10 days we spent in St. André-de-Sangonis staying with our friend Thierry. He opened his home and his heart to us, and it was a unique and special experience for us to be part of the rhythms of everyday life -- cooking, shopping, school for his daughter Fanny, trips to the bakery, chess games (Thierry won them all!) -- in addition to seeing the lovely scenery and old towns of the area. We also spent a lot of time just sitting and talking about a wide range of topics -- and eating. Thierry's already excellent English probably improved a little bit, but Ellen's hesitant French improved significantly!
One day we went to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, an 11th century village in the Herault River gorges. Its stone buildings, winding streets, artisans shops, and Romanesque church are beautiful, tucked into a narrow valley next to the river. The sides of the valley rise steeply, and on one peak there are still foundations and some walls from buildings; it must have taken a lot of work to haul rock for construction up the steep hillsides. Now the only walls that remain are the ones that run in the direction of the strong winds, since the wind and rain have worked at and knocked down the walls that were crossways.
By bike we explored local ponds and small lakes (once gravel quarries), and rode along the Herault River. We also rode bikes along part of the road around Lac du Salagou and picnicked in a small conical stone building built several centuries ago, perhaps as a shelter by shepherds (but no one is quite sure). We visited Villeneuvette, a tiny village that had once had a family factory that made textiles for the king, and spent an afternoon in Pézenas, birthplace of Molière, whose narrow streets are now filled with a fascinating array of shops and artists' studios.
And we gave a little presentation at Thierry's daughter Fanny's school. Fanny is 9, and goes to a private school in Gignac where the teaching is in Occitan, the traditional local language. Although the classes are larger, the atmosphere and energy of the school reminded Ellen a lot of the small local private school for which she is on the Board. Thierry says there is a strong emphasis on "learning how to learn". We talked to the children about where we lived, showed them on a world map, and showed the postcards of our region we always carry when we travel, explaining a bit about each one. We told them that Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the US and an ambassador to France, came from our town, and showed a postcard of his home (Monticello) and a US nickel (5 cents) with a picture of Jefferson on one side and Monticello on the other. The children were enthusiastic and interested, and had lots of good questions. Ellen spoke French, Ron spoke English, the children spoke Occitan, as is required in their classroom, but somehow (with occasional help from Thierry and from their teacher to sort things out) we all understood each other.
Tuesday afternoon 11 Oct we reorganized and repacked our gear and had a trial packing of the car to see if we could get two bikes, two suitcase/carts, two packs, and three people into Thierry's VW Beetle. Amazingly, it worked! On Wednesday morning Thierry got us to the train station in Montpellier and we took the 8:45 train to Paris. The bikes (but not the packs or suitcase/carts) went into the luggage car, which the train official only opened about 2 minutes before the train left, and our seats were seven cars away. Thank you, Thierry, for helping us get everything on the train and in the right car! When we arrived in Paris 3 hours later, no one ever came to open the big door on the side of the baggage car, but Ron managed to extract the bikes through a corridor door and pass them out to Ellen on the platform; we put the wheels back on the carts, loaded the packs on the bikes, and rode to our hotel.
Paris lived up to its wonderful reputation. We explored both on foot and by bike, covering a lot of territory by each mode -- both our walking muscles and our biking muscles got tired and we were slower and slower climbing the hotel stairs at the end of each day. We saw all the usual famous sights: Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle (which Ellen first saw in 1964 and still thinks has the most beautiful stained glass anywhere), Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde, Tuileries, Luxembourg Gardens, Stravinsky Fountain, and more and more. We spent a morning in the Cluny Museum, an afternoon biking in the Bois de Boulogne, an afternoon wandering up and down the hills of Montmarte, a Sunday morning biking out of the city on the bike path along the Canal St. Martin, a morning in Père Lachaise cemetery (yes, we saw Jim Morrison's grave, along with those of Chopin, Cherubini, Heloise and Abelard), and saw the Eiffel Tower at night, all lit up and, on the hour, with tiny flashing lights that make it look like a giant sparkler. Ron's favorite time was his bike ride on Sunday night from about 10 pm to 2 am, when there were very few cars (but still lots of people on the streets) and he could easily ride in any direction and sail through the traffic circles without hesitation, and all the building were lit up. Ellen, of course, is a morning person and hates biking at night, so she was happily sleeping at the hotel and didn't have any regrets about what she missed!
We spent time sitting and reading and people-watching in various parks, large and small, including the little park across the street from our hotel. We concluded that a long scarf is the most essential fashion item for French men and women, tied or draped in various ways around the neck.
And we spent about an hour one day sitting on a bench across from the Arc de Triomphe watching the traffic flow in the huge circle around the Arc, with 12 major streets coming into the circle, trying to figure out the hidden rules (no traffic lights or police) that allowed the traffic to flow into and out of the circle at high speed and without hesitation, without accidents or even any near misses.
Although we couldn't cover as much ground walking as we could by bike, we could explore the streets in detail on foot, watch the people, look in all the shop windows, and examine the wares in the open air markets. We think Paris has the most amazing array of shops and the most ethnically diverse population of any place we've ever been. Have you ever seen a shop that repairs and restores antique and porcelain dolls (with a doll undergoing repairs as we watched through the window)? A book store with a book vending machine built into one outside wall, stocked from within? Two Euros gets you any one of about 20 different titles if you are a desperate reader and the book store is closed: novels, non-fiction, even a French-English dictionary. Painters, sculptors, potters, paper makers, metalworkers, bookbinders, jewelers. High fashion and wholesale clothing -- our hotel was near the wholesale clothing district, blocks of shops all run by Asians (Vietnamese? Chinese?) with signs stating emphatically "Gros ou demi-gros; ne pas vente en detail", and huge armloads of clothing being carried in and out. An antique expo set up in an elaborate series of tents along the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Asian grocery stores, middle Eastern grocery stores, north African grocery stores, Camaroonian grocery stores, shops selling only tea or only coffee or only jam, the Algerian sweet shop with piles of little cookies and pastries unlike any we've ever seen. There are so many restaurants that we wondered if anyone ever ate at home. And so many different kinds of restaurants that we thought you could eat dinner out every night of your life and never repeat -- and have an endless variety of ethnic choices in addition to the wonderful French food.
And of course every mini-neighborhood has a bakery, a butcher shop, a fish shop, a chocolatier, a flower shop, and a green grocer. You simply don't need a car for ordinary life, something that is true even in the smaller towns and villages. Ellen went out every morning to get bread for our breakfast, and on the day the nearest bakery was closed and she had to go to the one a little further away, it was 200 steps (she counted!) from the bakery back to the hotel door.
When you travel there is always something else to see, and never quite enough time to see and do everything you could. So in some ways we are always reluctant to leave. But, whether our trips are long or short, when the time comes to go home, we are ready to go and eager to be home. We've never figured out whether this is because we are really good at planning trips of the perfect length, or whether it is simply an unconscious trick to reset our thinking (we suspect the latter!). We spent Wednesday morning and part of the afternoon packing our bikes and camping gear and clothes and general stuff back into airline configuration (2 bike suitcases, one pack, monster duffel bag containing all the camping gear and the other pack, and two day packs for carry-on. Although we really loved the camping, we've vowed NEVER again to do a trip that involves towing the bike suitcases as carts, so if we do want to bike and camp, we'll have to figure out another configuration for carrying things. Pulling the cart is difficult, and dealing with it on trains, in cars, in hotels, etc is a real hassle. There wasn't very much we brought with us that we didn't use, but we'll be rethinking what we carry and how we carry it.
Our trip from hotel to home went smoothly, especially since we took a taxi all the way to the airport (on the good advice of friends in Paris with whom we had dinner on Tuesday night) rather than taking it just to the train station and then taking the train to the airport. On the plane from London to Washington, Ellen sat next to a young British astronomer from University of Durham (she glanced at what he was reading and immediately recognized one of the major professional journals in astronomy). We speculated on the odds of an astronomy librarian and archivist (of whom there are maybe 300 in the world) being seated next to an astronomer (of whom there are maybe 12,000 or so in the world) and decided they are long enough odds that no one should place bets! We shared the shuttle limo from Washington to Charlottesville with a fascinating man who, with 3 friends, had driven (!) from England to Kenya in the mid-1950s, and had spent the bulk of his life as a farmer, professional hunter, safari leader, and conservationist in Kenya. We arrived home to a still unfinished house addition, but our cats and dogs were happy and healthy -- thanks to all our friends who played a part in keeping them that way.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 9 December 2005
