Maison St. Georges / St. Antoine L'Abbaye / Saint Marcellin / Our Gite for Week 2

For our second week in France, we stayed in the beautiful, amazing, medieval city of St. Antoine L'Abbaye. Our gite for the week was Maison St. Georges, an ancient stone building connected to what was once the old hospital where the monks of the abbey treated the poor.

There were many, many bedrooms, three bathrooms, and loads of fireplaces. The house had the unique feel of a very old structure that seems to exist on as many levels are there are rooms. Always stepping up, rounding a corner, twisting through a hallway, and ducking through an entrance, you really feel you're in an old castle, with surprises around every corner. Here are some of our pictures of the interior and exterior of the house:

This is the kids' bedroom, with their own bathroom / shower:



On the third floor was this cool sitting area, as well as two bedrooms and a full bathroom. There was also a patio for hanging clothes to dry and gazing at the scenery:



Here's a picture of the kitchen, looking rather lived in with all our stuff strewn around. The kitchen is on the second floor, definitely a hub of the house:



Definitely one of the kids' favorite rooms, a tiny little bathroom on the first floor that you kind of had to creep up into, almost like a confessional:



The view from the kitchen looking across into our bedroom:



The third floor bathroom, very roomy and luxurious. Old atmosphere, modern conveniences and appliances:



Here's a shot of the living room, and Sadie practicing her violin:



And here's a link to the gite's official site with more pictures.

Entering the city was like stepping back in time. When I envisioned staying in a little French town where we could walk to the grocer, the bakery, the cafes, and the ice cream shop, this is exactly what I had in mind. It was an amazing experience, living here for a week. We met some fantastic people, ate some wonderful food, and in the end felt right at home.

The owner of this gite was fantastic to deal with and the house was beautifully appointed. Everything worked perfectly, and we had no problems with any of the appliances or plumbing or anything. This house has been lovingly, painstakingly maintained and shows the love of its owner and the appreciation of all who stay here.

A few hints for living in St. Antoine L'Abbaye! There is no ATM in the town; you'll need to go to St. Marcellin to take care of banking and procuring cash. The two restaurants in town that we tried were lovely and well worth the price: Auberge L'Abbaye and the hostellier immediately across from the gite. Good food, good service, patience with English speakers, etc. There is a grocery down on the main lower road where you can buy most things -- milk, eggs, produce, etc. It's not open every day though! And the bakery at the end of the road is fantastic.

I highly recommend taking a ramble around the town on your first day -- you'll find little fountains, local artists, donkeys, alleyways and little hidden spots you'll really enjoy. It was a great walking town, and very friendly.

le Tour de France

One of the many reasons we went to France is to watch le Tour de France. Le Tour de France is a cycling race that is really long, so they have to do it in stages, like one day they begin racing in Switzerland, believe it or not, and then they go again in another Swiss city, and then they actually start racing in France, and then on the last day, they end up in Paris! The one in Paris

involves going down the Champs-Elysees, like below. You can see the arc de triumph, or whatever it's called, and you can see the Eiffel Tower from where I was standing!

The Alps

These are the alps. We did all sorts of things here, like cycling, going to the bakery, stuff like that.
Dad did a lot of cycling. He climbed a huge mountain, that reached CLOUDS! And guess what, he got from bottom, to top. I even filled my pockets with euros and went to the bakery all by myself. I said "Bonjour madame. Je veux drey deux baguettes sil vous plait." (Hello miss. I would like two baguettes please). I got two baguettes for €2.00 (€=euro) did you know one euro is worth like a buck sixty? It's true. In France, instead of having the currency symbol at the beginning, it's at the end. (e.g. 1.00$, 1.00€, 1.00£, 1.00¥ [¥=Japanese Yen, and £=British Pound.]). Oops, I was so busy talking about money, looks like we are at the end of this post.

July 17: Traffic in the South of France Destroys Our Souls

The plan this morning was to leave early, go swimming at Pont du Gard, make our way over to Pau, register Dan for his big L’Etape ride tomorrow, check into our gite, and maybe have a leisurely dinner. That did not happen.

We had immediate traffic issues as the medieval festival was launching and the street was clogged with vehicles – people unpacking their booths, arriving for the day, leaving town for the weekend, or whatever – the street was barely wide enough for one American car, but it was three deep in little Renaults, Citroens, and our Peugeot, as we tried to load up all our stuff. We managed to get out without forgetting anything (at least I haven’t remembered what it is yet) except to turn on the dishwasher before we left. So apart from annoying the house cleaners, there were no disasters, and we got to the freeway toward Nimes. That’s when disaster struck, and struck fiercely. Our arrival time as derived by the GPS info on traffic and route jumped from a pleasant 4pm to a horrifying 8pm as soon as we got to the autoroute. Dan absolutely had to sign in by 9 or not get a bib number – there was no late check-in for L’Etape.

Damn. We had to break it to the children that we were not going to swim at Pont du Gard, as planned, and while they took it well we both felt really bad, especially since we knew the day was going to be a dreadful one, full of traffic. We got on the road at 9:30am, and arrived in Pau at 6pm. The GPS tried to help us out, taking us on and off the Autoroute, through different back roads and byways, but even the back roads were clogged insanely. At times the traffic was just stopped completely. For long periods of time. So not good for Dan’s blood pressure – this L’Etape was the main event for him and if we didn’t make it to the sign up, he would completely miss out. Between Dan’s anxiety and the children’s impatience with each other, the day was pretty awful. We were traveling down Via Domitia, or at least next to it, but we did not experience any poignant moments of connection with history, unless history sometimes involved the relief of an overdue bathroom trip or a cold Coca Light. Everyone in Europe was heading to the Mediterranean. While I don’t blame them, I did start to resent them. There were just so many cars.

Benny spent a lot of the day worrying obsessively about a loose tooth, then it came out and he spent the rest of the day losing it and obsessing about finding it. This replaced the obsession with planning a diorama of Paris and was later succeeded by an obsession with mountain climbing. When the child is out of his element, he gets latched onto things. Really latched on.

We arrived at the Hippodrome in Pau, and it was swarming with cyclists – riding their bikes around, walking, clustered up in groups talking, and in general being in the way. As the L’Etape experience continued, this would become a familiar feeling for us – Dan on the bike and me in the car – 10,000 cyclists in the way. We parked next to an electrical building, and while Dan went in to sign up, several cyclists came by to duck behind the building and pee, although I was sitting right there with my legs sticking out the side of the car.
When Dan came back he had a backpack full of stuff – registration materials, swag, a t-shirt, etc. We peeled out of there and went to look for a grocery store – always a challenge, as GPS frequently sends us to ones that are closed. Most grocery stores close at 7:30, but we knew that Marche Plus stays open until 9:30, and we found one in downtown Pau.
Since leaving the coast and entering the Pyrenean area, we found France to be very different. Toulouse was quite a modern and kind of grungy town, at least the parts that we drove through, and we also found Pau to be sort of modern. The billboards bigger and more frequent, the buildings less picturesque – we saw tin roofs replacing clay tile roofs, poofy oaks replacing the spikey cedars of Provence. In general, the midi-Pyrenees reminded me more of Western PA than of anything. We couldn’t see the actual mountains – the weather was overcast and drizzling, and the mountains were hidden in clouds.

Downtown Pau had a kind of 19th century feeling. We found our groceries, packed them into the already-overloaded car, and asked the GPS to take us to Maubourguet. As we left town, we started recognizing a more familiar feeling – winding roads, tiny towns with very old churches, confusing switchbacks, and mountains. The roofs are different over here – some are thatch, and they have these kind of staircased structures along the eaves, I think to facilitate thatching. We wound around up through the hills, and found our village. It’s different from St. Antoine, not medieval, but picturesque and charming enough. There’s a river through it, and an old church. We felt better. The place had promise.



Our gite is a separate cottage attached to La Camellia, which is a bed and breakfast hotel run by a lovely English couple. Pulling through the gate and into the yard, I was reminded of England – something in how the place is laid out, and how our cottage is put together, reminded me of living in Hereford. Our hostess, Catherine Wales, came out to greet us and show us the place – she was so charming, and she’d prepared the cottage so thoughtfully. There was a loaf of fresh bread on the counter, food in the fridge, the beds were made up, and there was a TV and the promise of WIFI. I almost cried, listening to her pointing things out in the house. It was as if someone friendly was taking care of us, after being on our own for two weeks. She was the first person I’d really talked to since being here that was a native English speaker, and it felt really comforting. There was a huge bouquet of fresh hydrangea blooms in the hall. She had a ketchup bottle in the pantry – and while I’d bought the children “frites” to eat, a cheerfully familiar food after the long hot awful day in the car, but I’d forgotten ketchup, and here it was. Ketchup for the kids. It almost moved me to tears.



I got Dan fed his heap of pasta, got the children some food, got everyone showered and into bed by 11pm. We had to get up at 4am the following day, and we were so horribly obsessed with missing that wake-up that we set both of our phones and the children’s DSis to alarm at 4am. I went up to go to bed and found the whole bed was feathers – pillow, duvet, etc. I couldn’t sleep on it, and the children were in single beds. Bah. I wandered downstairs and thought I would go see if I could log onto the WIFI from the yard, as Catherine had said was possible. I couldn’t get out the door. The lock was locked from the inside, and turning the key in it produced no effect whatsoever except more key-turning. I had a bit of a panic over not being about to get out in case of a fire, then found a door that led out to the street that I could open. Then I realized we wouldn’t be able to get out to the car in the morning – the door to the street let us out outside the gate! After I found a window that opened that was big enough to get the bike through, I lay down on the sofa and tried to sleep. I think I finally got to sleep about 2am, and dreamed fitfully about the L’Etape, where Dan would probably go hurtling off a precipice in a glorious cascade of 10,000 other cyclists, all dashed to bits.

July 16: Climbing Alpe D'Huez and Tour Start at Romans

Today was about crossing things off our list. We woke up with a domestic and a foreign agenda, and we managed to wipe out all entries on each front. All around us, St. Antoine was gearing up for a weekend-long medieval festival. We couldn’t decide whether we were glad to be missing it because of congestion and noise, or sad because the kids would have loved all the pirate and wench action. We later found that the medieval festival means loud pop music all night long throughout the village, and that many of the locals actually leave for the duration.

First we needed to find a banque automatique that would dispense enough money to pay what we owed on the house. We had attempted at several different machines. Without knowing what all the symbols mean, and which machines will and won’t recognize your card, and which can only dispense 10 Euro bills and which can dispense 50s, it’s hard to stay in funds. I have no advice, having no clue what it all means, except that when you can get money out of a machine you should get a lot. We drove into St. Marcellin and found a machine attached to an actual bank – a good sign – and it gave us all the bills we needed.

Our next job was to find the market in St. Marcellin. We had been told that the market specialized in flowers, both cut and potted, and I wanted to buy some flowers to fill the pots outside our house in St. Antoine. Our host had not been able to break away from commitments in England to be able to come down and plant flowers this year, so I thought it would be nice if the house were spruced up for the medieval festival. The market was usually on Wednesdays, we knew, but had been moved due to Bastille Day. After driving around St. Marcellin fruitlessly, asking several women who were carrying empty baskets (and looking purposeful) and listening to streams of incomprehensible directions, we gave up and went to a garden store outside town. I bought geraniums and impatiens. Everybody likes those, right?

Back in St. Antoine, Dan went to check in with the neighbors who take care of the house, and I stuck the plants into the planters and gave them a drink. Then we were back into the car and on the road to Romans to see the start of the Tour de France.



One of the difficulties in following the tour is knowing exactly where, in a modern town the size of Romans, the race will be going through. If we had solid internet and an understanding of French, or if we could pick up the phone and ask the authorities, “Um, excuse me, on which road is the Tour de France travelling today?” then we would have a better chance of driving and parking intelligently. As it is, we knew in general that the tour was starting in Bourg de Peage, a suburb of Romans, so we put that into the GPS, drove as close to it as the local gendarmes would allow, and when we got stopped at a barricade, we got out and walked in the general direction that the other people were walking.



Turns out we were on the opposite side of the bridge from the start, but we found the race route and traced it back, a long long way toward the actual starting gate. We knew we had arrived when we heard the announcer over the loudspeaker, and saw the MASS of people. There was definitely a festival atmosphere, people walking around wearing tanks of frappucino and dispensing it with little nozzles into sample cups, balloons, banners, flags, and tons of TDF fans. As we learned yesterday, TDF fans are bloodthirsty, cutthroat individuals who will butcher their sainted grandmother to get a good spot on the railing. But in the absence of visible riders, they seemed to be just milling around having a nice time.





This lady had a bag on her head because it was hot:



Here's the Ricorre guy. Ricorre is like instant coffee but more milky:



We got as close as we could to the big stage, so that when the riders started signing in (they have to officially sign in to race at the beginning of each day, and it’s become a big ritual) we could sort of almost see. Each rider that signed in, the unintelligible announcer said his name, so we would hear the equivalent of this: “Oogly boogly woogly woggly ANDY SCHLECK! Boogly woogly!” And then the crowd would go nuts. At last the riders began to fill in the road behind the starting gate, and Benny (in typical Benny form) wormed his way to the front of the rail (sometimes on hands and knees) where we were standing, ending up next to a Cofidis rider. I passed him a Sharpie and my international driver’s license, and he (grudgingly) got the guy’s autograph. He wasn’t impressed with this rider because he wasn’t an American. I made myself a little pile of rocks to stand on, and as the riders filed in I saw Andy Schleck in yellow, Contador (not in yellow) and Mark Cavendish.



Then the riders moved up to the actual starting gate, and I lost all ability to see anything, being admittedly short, and the crowd on the rail was five deep. The last thing I heard was Benny saying “Wave your flag, mom, wave it like crazy!” So I stepped back, waved the American flag, and just tried not to get trampled. Dan had Sadie on his shoulders, so I could see her and knew where he was, but we both completely lost track of Benny. The riders stayed in this position for a while and then they were off, rolling off toward the city of Romans and the rest of the stage, and the crowd began to urgently mill about.

When we finally found Benny, he had an amazing tale to tell. He had poked his head over and seen Lance by the railing, then wormed and squirmed his way over to Lance Armstrong and had a conversation! According to Benny, he said, “I’m from America” and Lance said, “That’s cool,” and then they had a little chat about cycling. That’s all we could get out of him – I don’t know if he doesn’t remember or if it didn’t process accurately at the time, or what, but when we found him in the end he was very pumped! He’s very happy to have now met Barack Obama and Lance Armstrong. I told him Lance is probably more famous – after all, forty odd people have been President of the United States, but only one person has won the Tour de France seven times.



Back in the car, we got on the road to Grenoble and Alpe D’Huez. I had such a good time playing O Fortuna for Dan while he was climbing Mt. Ventoux that I wanted to find just the right song for the brutal, soul-crushing switchbacks of Alpe D’Huez. We considered trying to find the song that’s played by the band in the gazebo on Bugs Bunny when Yosemite Sam goes up the alp and back down and up and down. Then I had the idea to use the yodeling goatherd song from The Sound of Music, and MIRACULOUSLY Dan had the Gwen Stefani song that samples it on his iPod. Trust Dan to anticipate a good joke and get out in front of it.



We went back to Bourg d’Oisans and Dan got kitted out, ready to roll. After stopping by the DEPART sign to start his clock, he headed up to switchback 21. The turns are all numbered, and each named after a cyclist who won a stage on the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong’s turn is 19. We saw lots of people on the way up taking their pictures with the signs next to various turns. It was particularly poignant to me to see one pair of guys looking absolutely worn to a frazzle, taking their pictures next to turn 14. Having been up and down the mountain a couple of times now (in the car) I know that it really does seem like you’ve come an enormously long way, at turn 14. But I also know that it is still a long long way to the top!









Dan and I did the now familiar dance where I’d get ahead of him, he’d pass me, I’d get ahead of me, he’d pass me, etc. on up the mountain. At the last turn, I followed him up and tried to get video of him reaching the summit. Up on the top, there’s a charming little village with bike shops (in the winter they’re ski shops), restaurants, a post office and Mairie and everything, just a real little city way up in the sky. As Dan and the kids had some drinks in a restaurant with the Tour de France playing on a flatscreen, I snuck off to buy Dan an Alpe D’Huez jersey and shorts. His birthday is tomorrow, and I found one that’s skeletal and ironic enough that he might even wear it around town.







The kid were wearing their Celerity Cycling jerseys so we took a family picture by the summit. I have to say it was pretty fun to sit up there at an outdoor table and watch the people struggling up the mountain. A supreme effort, this climb, psychologically and physically. I’m impressed with anyone who even attempts it, but I’m particularly impressed with Dan who made it up in just under an hour. The world record is 36 minutes – I think he did awesome! For a guy who’s about to turn 38.

Back at home, we ate Friday night “clean out the fridge” dinner, and Sadie and I watered the flowers. Sadie had her turn to play her violin out in the street, with lots and lots of foot and car traffic as the medieval festival turned up the volume in preparation for the next day. She played all her favorite songs from book 1, sounding fantastic and huge. The acoustics just outside Maison St. Georges are so fantastic, with the sound echoing off the stone walls on each side. I think she really enjoyed playing, getting applause from the passersby and rocking out her tunes.



A fan, leaning out the kitchen window:



Dan walked the children up to the glacier by the abbey for ice cream, and when they got home it was time for bed. I spent the time packing and cleaning up the house, taking a quiet bath upstairs, hanging laundry, and getting ready to leave our awesome home in the mountains.

July 15: Climbing Mt. Ventoux and a Tour de France Finish

I told Dan I could hear it whispering to him… Mt. Ventoux. The most sinister of all the Alpen climbs. Come to me, Dan, it was saying, and bring me a baguette. Speaking of baguettes, I sent Benny on an errand this morning to the boulangerie in the village. It was the second morning he’s had this responsibility – getting our morning bread from the baker. I give him two euro coins, send him out the door, and he trots down the little street, past the mairie, the hostellier, the pub, and on to the edge of town where the bakery is. There he asks for deux baguettes, and we are in bread for the day. I can almost see him all the way there by leaning out the kitchen window, but not quite. He is very very pleased with himself that he has this intense responsibility, and he takes it very seriously. The sight of his brisk, important little orange head bopping along through the village is so cute it almost tears my heart:



But today, we were on our way to bring a baguette to Mt. Ventoux, so we packed up our supplies and got on the road to Provence. We could see it in the distance, from the freeway even, with its antenna on top, shrouded in clouds. Ventoux is by itself, not in a range like the other big Alps – it’s solitary. Driving along in Provence on our way to the mountain, there were lots of vineyards, fruit orchards, and roadside stands selling melons and tomatoes. Every little village was planning a festival of something – apricots, watermelons, or some other resident of the produce aisle. It looks like what I imagine Tuscany looks like – clay roofs, Italian-looking churches, wine tastings everywhere.

Malaucene was the city from which we departed on our climb. It was a mad hubbub of cyclists, with lots of shops spilling out onto the sidewalks of the main area – flowers, dresses, postcards, drinks, cycling jerseys that said “Ventoux Finisher.” I tried to get Dan interested in one of those jerseys but he wasn’t having it. It’s a hilarious difference between France and Virginia: in France, people wear the cycling kits of their favorite team all the time. In Virginia, that would be considered simultaneously presumptuous and lame. You wouldn’t show up to a training ride wearing a Saxobank jersey, or a RadioShack jersey – and you definitely wouldn’t race in one. Here, cyclists wear jerseys in support of their favorite team, or even their favorite cyclist – we saw a Tom Boonen jersey for example: QuickStep team jersey with the Belgian National Champion colors. No one thinks anything of it. It’s like in the US if someone went to the mall in a Brett Favre jersey. Same thing.



We got Dan into his gear, and after a quick stop for the socks he forgot, he was off on his way up the mountain.



Mont Ventoux is a thousand times nicer for motorists (and photographers) than Alpe d’Huez! There were many many places for us to pull off and wait for Dan to come up the mountain. We did this many, many times, with the kids waving their flags and running beside him, and me taking pictures.



Then we’d get in the car and chase him down, and I was playing Carmina Burana out the window at top volume. The best thing about the climb was that Dan was motoring up at an amazing speed – he was owning everyone on the road and I had a lot of “That’s my boyfriend!” moments as I would pull over thinking I had lots of time to set up my shot, only to see Dan boiling around the corner far before I expected him, looking fresh as a daisy. He was talking to the kids, laughing, and pounding the mountain into paste at the same time. After all that ominous whispering from the mountain, Dan ended up eating his own baguette after all.





My weakness, on the other hand, was multiplied with every passing kilometer. At first I was interested in the vistas in the context of taking pictures, but when it gets to the point that the signs say you are actually on Mont Ventoux and no longer climbing to it, and you start peeking over the side of the road and seeing about a mile down to the valley, and the guard rails stop, and then you stop being able to look over the side at all. Because your mind goes a little vacant, and you feel like you’ll hurl yourself over the side, just to have it over. OF course if you actually hurled yourself over the side in most places you would fall on your face about 10 feet down. But in some places you could imagine yourself drifting on the air currents all the way down to the rocks below. Or at least, you could if you were me.









The scope is impossible to communicate, but you can smell clouds, and you can no longer make out individual things on the ground below. It is so high, it’s really like looking out an airplane. Except you’re just standing there, in only your skin. When you turn to the left, and look beside you, there’s a very ordinary bush or tree, or a piece of concrete, or your car. Then when you turn to the right, and look beside you, there’s a precipice that takes your breath away. Having been on Ventoux, I will no longer be scared of bell towers or manmade monuments of any kind. It was just in another dimension. I felt like I was on Mt. Olympus, tiny and huge at once.







We made one last stop before the summit, above the tree line to take Dan’s picture on the part that’s been compared to the surface of the moon. One last place to cheer and yell and wave flags, and then he was at the summit and we drove up to meet him.





At the very top is some kind of tower, and also an observatory, and a lot of ground up rocks. It almost looks like sand dunes. Creepy. After we met up with the triumphant Dan at the summit for some photos, and explored around the little cluster of vendors and shops up there, we continued on to the other side of the mountain. The road up goes up and over – while we were up there, a guy driving a small car misjudged where the road was and ended up dumping his car over a bit of an incline, and crashing into some bicycles. There was an audible gasp from the entire group at the top.

Here they are at the official summit:



Dan descended, I descended, and we met up at the bike shop in Bedoin, where I convinced Dan he really needed a Ventoux jersey, and he submitted to me purchasing one on his behalf. I want to watch him ride around Virginia with a Ventoux jersey, and everyone that thinks he’s bragging can suck it, they’re just jealous.

Collecting ourselves and our thoughts, we pointed the car for Valence and drove like hell. According to the schedule we had, the tour would be finishing there at 5pm, and we had just a couple of hours to get into place. When we got off the autoroute, the road into Beorg de Valence was closed, where we knew the Tour was coming, so we parked on the side of the road like all the other schlubs, and started hoofing it. We got within the final kilometer and stopped to watch the caravan drive by. We caught some madeleines, and Sadie caught a slap bracelet. I saw a grown woman mauling a child Benny’s age over a t-shirt thrown from one of the vehicles. These people take their caravan swag very very seriously. It’s also very hazardous standing there by the side of the road when people are hurling out bottles and newspapers and whatnot – they can whack you right in the side of the head and no one cares.







Benny went up and down the railing chatting with other Americans while we held his spot on the barricade. People will stomp you, push you, elbow and sit on you to get your spot. Only Benny has the completely insensate attitude that allows him to motor through a crowd like that and get to the front.

We waited and waited for the riders to come through, then finally spotted the camera helicopter and the crowd got even more intense. Then they were upon us! The lead group came through the S turn very fast, setting up for the sprint, and then lots of following riders and groups came through.



We were trying to get a good picture of the “You Got Dropped” t-shirt next to a dropped rider, but it was hit and miss with the shot and I didn’t know who was dropped and who was in that first group – I didn’t want my great shot to be Lance or Levi getting dropped!



So, after all the riders came through we walked down all the way to the finish line, just to see it. We saw the VIP lounge and trucks, and all the décor – picked up a blue parking sign off a telephone poll, and listened to them doing the podium presentation. We even got to see some guy in the Livestrong tent putting his hand in his pants:





Finally satisfied that we had seen it all, we hiked the mile back to the car, boiling hot, happy, dehydrated.

The children had been so excellent and were so hot and hungry, and we so needed air conditioning and Wifi, that we had dinner at McDonald’s. After they ate, the children played in the playground and we Wifi-ed to our hearts’ content.

Pulling ourselves away from news of the world, of the Tour, of our friends, and of work, we stopped at the grocery store next door – I needed milk and we needed Coca Light. We had ten minutes until the store was going to close – plenty of time, I thought. The security guard greeted me with his hands up showing “ten minutes” and I agreed. Sadie, with me, picked up a little cart to push, and followed me as we rushed through the bakery, rushed through the store on our way to the milk. Another security guard. “C’est ferme” he said. It’s closed. “Je besoin lait et ouefs” I pleaded. He escorted me to the milk aisle (unrefrigerated – also unrefrigerated eggs) and I got my stuff, then he escorted me to the check-out, where the lights were being turned off. When they say closing at 9:30, they mean they are actually closing at 9:30, and not just the doors.

Home, wine, Umberto Eco, children to bed, me in the bath, then sliding into bed myself. Couldn’t even bring myself to look at the pictures, I was so tired. I know this: when we get home from France I am definitely going to need a vacation!